All because of her and her stupid fucking decisions and life choices.
“Argh,” I scream into the silence of my room.
Why am I so drawn to those who are bad for me?
Why do I keep going back time and time again no matter how much they hurt me?
What is wrong with me?
With my heart in tatters and my body still weak from my earth-shattering release, I clean up and get ready for bed.
My phone taunts me, but I don’t turn it back on.
I can’t.
My fragile state won’t cope with whatever he might have said back to my final message.
Instead, I just lie there in the dark, running the events of the past few weeks through my mind.
Moving here. Starting over at Knight’s Ridge. It was meant to be a fresh start. The beginning of a new future, one that might even include some success, unlike the one I was destined to live if I stayed in Lovell. But… I let out a sigh. Yet here I am tangled up in the middle of three gangs, none of which I really want anything to do with.
I toss and turn, but I never manage to drift off, and I’m still awake when Dad finishes his shift at the studio sometime after midnight.
He often stops and knocks, but normally I only answer if I’m still awake working or watching TV. If I’m curled up in bed, I usually pretend I’m asleep.
But not tonight.
Tonight, something forces me to call out to him.
Pushing the door open, he pokes his head around the door.
“Hey, kiddo. You doing okay?” he asks, slipping inside.
“Yeah, can’t sleep.”
“I’d have thought you’d be exhausted after all that exercise earlier,” he quips.
Groaning, I shove my face into my pillow.
“Cruz sent it to you?”
“Yeah, he’s pretty proud of his bad-arse niece. Gotta say, I am too. You killed it in that ring, kiddo.”
I shrug, risking a look at him. “I lost.”
“Against a boy who’s been training since he could first walk and must be double your body weight. You held your own like a pro, and you should be proud.”
“Meh,” I mutter, flipping onto my back. “What’s that?” I ask, noticing a parcel in his hand.
“No idea. Found it at the front door. It’s got your name on it,” he says, holding it out to me.
My brow wrinkles as I stare at it.
“Not expecting anything then?” he jokes.
“N-no, I wasn’t,” I mutter, taking in the black wrapping paper it’s covered in.
That in itself should have been a clue, but I can’t claim that I’m really firing on all cylinders at this moment in time, so when a very familiar shirt falls from the wrapping, I gasp in shock.
I stare down at it with my heart in my throat and tears burning the backs of my eyes.
My shirt. I mean… Theo’s shirt.
My heart is like a runaway train in my chest as I think about him dropping it off.
Why didn’t he knock? Why didn’t he try to convince me to let him in?
“Knocks a guy on his arse and still gets gifts. You’ve got him wrapped right around your little finger, huh?” Dad says lightly, studying my over-the-top reaction to a stupid t-shirt.
“I-I—” I stutter but give up trying to even start explaining how I feel.
“Life’s complicated, Emmie. Love is even worse. Take your time to figure all this out. You don’t need to make rash decisions. We have time to work out a way to get you out of all of this, if that’s what you want?”
“And if I don’t?” I ask, feeling weird even hearing the question fall from my lips.
“That’s for you to decide, kiddo. This is your life, your future. All I can do is advise you the best I can, but only you know what’s truly in your heart.”
I stare at my dad, tears balancing dangerously on my lashes. “Who are you and what did Piper do to my hard-arse father?”
“Em,” he breathes, dropping down on the edge of my bed and taking my cheeks in his hands. “I loved Piper more than life when I was not much older than you. Things might not have worked out for us back then, but I never forgot or let go of that feeling. And no one else would ever have filled the hole she left behind.
“I guess… What I’m trying to say is that I get it. People might say you’re too young to understand, to feel as strongly as adults do, but I know all of that is bullshit. I fell in love young, and I know just how real, how raw, how painful that can be.”
When my tears finally drop, Dad swipes them away with his thumbs.
“Trust your heart, Emmie. No one else’s opinion on this matters. Not mine, or Damien’s, or your friends. Only the two of you know what it’s really like, and only the two of you can decide where it goes from here.
“You want to walk away, I’ll be right by your side and find you the best lawyer in the country to get you out of this. You want to stay, see what can come of it, well then, I’ll be right here too.”
The sob that rips from my throat is anything but attractive, but his words cut me open in the best possible way.
To have his unwavering support means more to me than I could ever begin to explain.
“I might think he’s an entitled prick,” Dad mutters, making me laugh. “But I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He cares, Em. Really fucking cares.” His lips part to say more, but he decides against it. “I can’t ask for any more than that for my little girl.”
He pulls me into his arms and holds me once again as I cry, my tears soaking his shirt through.
I have no clue how long we sit there, but when he finally pulls back and presses a kiss to my head, exhaustion hits me.
“Get some sleep kiddo. You’ve got some big decisions to make. Starting with tomorrow.”
With another kiss, he stands and leaves me alone with just a little bit of Theo.
Gathering the shirt in my hands, I bring it to my nose and breathe him in deep.
I knew the second it fell in my lap and his scent hit me that he’s been wearing this. He’s been wearing it so he could give it back, knowing it would smell like him. If only he understood just how much that meant to me.
15
THEO
“This is fucking bullshit,” I bark, slamming my hand down on the steering wheel of the replacement Maserati Dad managed to sort me out with while I decide what to do about the wreck I left on the side of the road at the beginning of the week.
How the fuck that was only four days ago, fuck only knows.
The pain might have mostly subsided, even after sparring with Emmie yesterday, but the bruises linger.
The car is fine. Nice even. But it’s not mine. And that makes it all kinds of wrong.
The seat isn’t right despite playing with its positioning for days. The mirror doesn’t sit right. The speakers don’t quite cut it.
“Chill the fuck out, man. We’re almost there,” Seb says lightly from the passenger seat while Alex mumbles around a mouthful of fucking crisps in the back.
My grip on the wheel tightens as I think about all the fucking crumbs he’s currently pushing into the fabric around him.
It might not be my car, but that doesn’t mean I want it to be covered in his shit.