He dips his head in a slow nod. “Okay then.”
“It’s not okay. I know that. But can we at least agree to try to sort this out together? The three of us?”
Hank hesitates. Takes a breath through his nose. Hesitates some more. His eyes flick above my head. I turn around to see what he’s looking at, but I only glimpse the bar. Lindsey raises her eyebrows, sticking her thumb up. If only she knew how much of a thumbs down this situation is.
“Okay,” Hank says at last.
“Good. Now can I give you a hug?”
He scoffs again, but this one is less angry than the others. “You can always hug me, Emma. No need to ask.”
I don’t need to go up on my tiptoes to hug him the way I do with Samuel. But there’s something weirdly familiar about the way Hank wraps his arms around my waist and holds me against him. His body is warm and solid, and I silently ask the universe to send someone his way. Someone who deserves his unique brand of awesomeness.
I start to pull back at the same moment I hear footsteps behind me. Hank’s eyes flick above my head again. The look in his gaze darkens.
“Hank? Everything okay?”
He looks back at me. A beat of charged silence passes between us.
And then, without warning, Hank ducks his head and kisses me.
“What?” I say against his mouth, freezing. My heart bangs loudly against my breastbone, and my blood rushes cold. The sensation is awful, like what I imagine walking barefoot through the snow would feel like—a chill so deep it burns.
There is no tenderness in this kiss. Just hurt.
I jerk backward, our lips making this terrible smacking noise as I break contact. From the corner of my eye, I see my sister launching off her barstool.
That’s when the voice behind me spits out, “What the fuck?”
Chapter Thirty-One
Samuel
That twist in my center—it’s the knife. The one I thought for sure Emma would plunge into my back the second she got the chance.
Turns out it was my brother who ended up stabbing me.
Emma’s eyes go wide. What is she doing here? She pulls Hank’s arms off her waist and opens her mouth, but he beats her to the punch.
“Now you know how it feels, brother.”
I don’t need to ask Hank what he means by that. I can tell by the hard, mean gleam in his eyes that he did it on purpose.
He wanted me to see him kissing Emma. Because I lied to him. Often, though not without remorse.
But I had my reasons. Good reasons. If he’d only let me explain—
No. This fuckwad is the one who owes me an explanation.
“What are you doing here?” I growl.
Hank’s nostrils flare. “I followed you.”
“What the f—”
“What else was I supposed to do? You’ve been lying constantly to me. You’ve been checked out, mentally anyway, for weeks. When I ask how you’re feeling, you shove me aside like I don’t matter. I was worried.”
“Jealous,” I snap. “You were jealous. Don’t you dare confuse the two.”
I stare him down, rage ballooning inside my body down to my fingertips. His face is bright red.
I ball my hands into fists.
A blonde with Emma’s chin and cheekbones appears at my elbow. “What in the world is going on?”
“I’ll explain everything in a minute, Linds.” Emma turns to Hank, holding the back of her hand to her mouth. “Why’d you do that? Kiss me?”
“Because he wants to hurt me,” I say. “Biggest dick move in the book.”
The blonde gasps. Emma grimaces.
Hank just stares me down, his shoulders starting to tremble as he takes deep breath after deep breath.
I’m trembling too. I’m not used to feeling this way. Like I’m raw inside and out, bare nerve endings breaking through my skin to deliver shock after shock of agony. The depth of the pain is staggering.
It knocks the wind out of me.
This is what Emma was talking about when she said living this way, making myself vulnerable, is hard.
“Even bigger dick move?” I ask, just barely managing not to shout. “Touching a woman without her permission. Apologize, Hank. Right fucking now.”
He glances at Emma. “I’m sorry,” he says gruffly. “But not gonna lie, right now I hate y’all.”
“Feeling is mutual,” I reply.
“Stop,” Emma says. “Hank, what you did was so not okay, but I won’t be the reason you guys are fighting. Let’s talk this through. Hank, I know you have feelings for me—”
“He said that?” I turn to my brother. “You motherfucker. You accuse me of lying, yet you’re guilty of the same sin? You literally told me you didn’t have feelings for Emma. What kind of bullshit is that?”
“Your kind, actually,” he replies smoothly. “I learned how to bullshit from you.”
Fuck.
What the hell do I say to him? He’s not wrong. But this is not the time nor the place for this conversation, and at the end of the day, it was a dick move going after Emma, knowing there was something between us.
“You know what?” I manage. “You’re right. I wasn’t upfront about my feelings for Emma. But there’s a reason for that.”
“Many reasons,” Emma adds, silently imploring me to…what? Stay silent? Tell him everything?
“So do it,” Hank says. “Be honest. Right now. Tell me everything, both of you.” The restaurant has gone completely silent. I feel everyone’s eyes on me, waiting for the next line of dialogue in this ridiculous tragicomedy we’ve got going on.
I clench my jaw. Lock eyes with Emma for a beat. This is not the way I wanted to tell her I love her. I wanted something better for us. Something special, a memory that’d make us smile while we shuffle our walkers through the nursing home together fifty years from now.
Welp. Leave it to me to fuck that up. But I’ll do what I can to salvage the moment. I move my gaze over her body, memorizing everything about her. The set of her shoulders. The color of her jeans. Her shoes—
My hand comes down, hard, on my chest. Good news: my heart is not a hole. Bad news: I think it just stopped working.
The stilettos are even more killer in person. They’re sky-high, giving Emma a good boost in height. The decoration on her heels glitters in the restaurant’s low lighting, making me blink.
Emma is Lady V.
I glance up at Emma and stare. “V?”
Emma’s eyes glisten. She nods.
“Wow,” I say like an idiot. I laugh, a hushed sound. “Wow. Now that I’m thinking about it…the ’76 Riesling you talked about, and our safe word…Jesus Christ, Em, how did I not see it sooner?”
She sniffs, offering me a watery smile. “I know, right? We’re blind. Or maybe blinded by our—um, witty banter.”
“My God,” Hank scoffs.
I ignore him and step toward Emma.
“Baby,” I say, and without thinking, I reach out and cup her face in my hand. “Please don’t cry. I’ll fix this, I promise. And you know I don’t make promises lightly. Not anymore.”
“You,” she breathes, tears leaking out of her eyes left and right. They’re good tears. Bad tears. I feel each one like a pinprick in my heart. “It was you all along.”