“He was . . . is if he’s still alive, a violent man. I don’t remember a single dinner without his palm, fist, or boot connecting with some piece of my mom.” Emma was talking more like a robot than a human, her expression just as stilted. “He split after he put her in the hospital the third time and there was really no way to blame the visible size twelve tread stamped all over her body on another fall down the stairs.”
I was able to trap the shudder before it ran its course down my back so, to keep another one from surfacing, I rolled onto my side and looped my other arm across Emma. The last thing on my mind was what she would think, or what her brothers would if they saw, or if it was appropriate, or any of the hundred other things I could have been worrying about. I did it because it felt right. I didn’t know any other way to comfort this kind of pain than with a physical embrace.
Instead of stiffening against my hold, she melted into it, her body melding into mine.
Weaving her fingers through mine, she closed her eyes. “I don’t have a single fond memory of my father.”
That was the saddest thing I’d heard in a long time. My father, as removed as he could be, had left me with a dresser full of fond memories. Emma’s father had left her with none. Her dad had hit her mom. Her dad had hit her mom . . .
“Did he ever hit you?” I said, trying not to snarl, although I knew I failed. If he had, I didn’t care where he was or if, when I did find him, he was a blind mute confined to a wheelchair. I was going to beat him within an inch of his sorry life.
“No, but he did hit the boys every now and then, although I’m sure he would have hit me too when I got older,” she said, her voice fading back from robot to human. “If a man’s conscience allows him to hit a woman, it won’t stop him from hitting a little girl.”
I wanted to hit something. I needed to hit something. I knew responding to violence with violence wasn’t the answer, but until another option presented itself, I was going to keep my fists curled at the ready for the next thing that presented itself to me to beat. I needed something, her father preferably, to be the outlet for my surge of anger.
“So dear ol’ dad left, mom did all she was capable of, and the boys and I worked our butts off at everything we did. It was the only way we knew we’d be able to break the cycle.” Her fingers worked against mine, kneading the tension of them away one by one. “I know, I know. We sound like some Oprah Christmas charity special, but you know what I’d ask for if someone said they’d give me anything I wanted?” she asked, tilting her head back towards mine. “Normalcy. Everyone cringes when they hear the word normal, but to me, normal sounds perfectly dreamy.”
I’d been one of those people. The ones that curled their nose at the normal anything. But I’d never look at the norm again without remembering this conversation. Without recalling the way Emma’s face twisted when she’d bared her soul to me. How normal was a beautiful thing for someone who’d never had a stitch of it to cling to when their world was falling apart around them. When their world had never been put together properly in the first place. Emma wanted normal. After everything, it was what she deserved.
It was the one thing I couldn’t give her.
Nothing about my life was normal, other than the image of a college student I was attempting to convey, and honestly, nothing had been exceptionally normal about my life before I’d found myself on the other side of infinite. How could I deny her a life of predictability, mornings of toast and coffee, evenings of walks around the park after dinner, weekends of dinner and movie dates, when the promise of these instances in the future got her through the shadows and trap doors of her past?
I couldn’t. If I really cared for her, which I knew with every molecule of my makeup I did, I had to want what was best for her. And who knew what was best for her other than Emma? Realizing I could not be any part of the normal future Emma craved was as simple as a game of fill in the blanks.
A regular day in my life pre-college tour had included finding myself in several continents by day’s end, often near enemy lines, and in between foreign dates with death, I trained newbie Immortals in the arts of combat. I couldn’t imagine a less normal life. Predictability for me was waiting for a summons from the Council or running in the opposite direction of those chasing me, metaphorically speaking.
There was no place for me to fit in the life Emma wanted for herself.
A bullet to my gut would have been more pleasant than the ache pulsing from there now. I would know too. A bullet had ended my not-so normal life and been the catalyst for my not-even-close-to normal life.
Knowing I’d wandered too far and long down the dark paths of my mind, I forced myself to resurface, not wanting to leave Emma alone with the memories she’d let out into the open.
Hoping I wouldn’t sound or look like a man who’d just lost a woman, I said, “I’m so sorry, Emma. That’s a sucky, sucky thing to go through.” My arms tightened around her. I might have accepted I wasn’t a part of her future, but that didn’t mean I was ready to let go just now.
“I didn’t tell you that so you’d feel bad for me,” she said, her eyes shifting over the stars. “I told you so you’d better understand me. Why I am the way I am. Why I’m such a hard nose when it comes to staying on the straight and narrow. I don’t have a net to catch me if I fall. If I fail, I become my mom,” she said, her voice whisper-like. “That’s why I’ve been so hard on you. You’re something of a wild card, and I don’t have the luxury of those in my life.”
I thought about her roommate and boyfriend and wondered how I got classified as the wild card above them, but she was right. Her instincts served her well in that I quite possibly would have been the wild card of her life if she’d let me into her life the way I wanted to enter it. But, the big but again, just because I was willing to accept I couldn’t make Emma happy in her quest for a life of the norm, I wasn’t going to rest until she’d dumped that life-sucking leech of a boyfriend in the dumpster with the rest of the trash.
A flash of last night, me straddling his shoulders while I made good work of turning his face into mincemeat, wiggled its way into my conscious. Me, the Immortal hulk, beating a helpless man—a man she loved, misplaced or not—while she watched.
“Oh my gosh, Em,” I breathed, wondering how pale my face had blanched. “Last night . . . I’m so sorry. You must have seen your father in me when I was going all ape on your boyfriend.” I wanted to punch myself a few times. In fact, I would later on when she didn’t have to witness any more of my violence seeping through. “I’m sorry, so, so, so . . .”
Her hand molded over my cheek before tilting it until I was forced to look her in the eye. My face was a mess, I didn’t want to imagine how contorted and colorless it was, but hers was peaceful. Peaceful like a late spring day lounging down by the river my brothers and I fished at in Montana. Peaceful like I’d never seen it. Somewhere, in the chaos of revealing her past to me, she’d found a peace I hadn’t after centuries of searching for it. I wanted that face imbedded on Emma forever.
But I was a realist, most days, and knew that look was meant for girls with pristine pasts and flawless futures.
“It’s all right, Patrick,” she said, the warmth of her hand radiating through me. “Don’t be sorry. Ty and his guys deserved to get their butts kicked after what they did and said last night.”
And now, to make this picture of her more unearthly, a breeze shifted our way, swirling the short layers of hair around her face. I was good as falling off the wagon after seeing her this way tonight and realizing I wouldn’t be seeing her this way every night forward.
“I’m not against self defense or a good old fashioned case of teaching someone some respect because my daddy beat my mommy. Ty deserved it,” she said, her eyes inviting me closer. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not.”
Before I could translate why they were inviting me closer, the invitation was revoked. As batty I was becoming, I could have been imagining it.
“Although, after watching you win a fight against a guy who never even got a hit in and, mind you, this is a guy known for never losing the bi-weekly fights he likes to find himself in,” she said, sliding her hand off my cheek, “evidence is mounting that you’re a government trained super spy assassin.”
Her tone was light, but a heaviness of truth countered it. So she’d arrived at the conclusion I was something else, something not quite the same as the rest of them. One of these things is not like the other . . .
It should have been the first clue that I needed to do a better job of blending in or else perform a full scale disappearing act in order to keep the truth of what I was under wraps. Instead, I found myself relieved she’d concluded of her own volition I was something different.
“But you have to promise me, promise me promise me,” she said, arching a brow, “that you’ll never do that again. Ty and his family don’t take well to being humiliated and have something of a reputation for making people’s lives hell if someone crosses them. No matter what he says or does, you have to just walk away the next time,” she said, while I bit my tongue to stay quiet. “Don’t ruin everything you’ve worked for.”
“Yeah, I’m not going to be able to make that promise,” I said, rolling my neck side to side.
“Promise,” she said, not about to concede.
I could convince most any woman of just about anything. Why, when I’d found the one, was that priceless gift taking a hiatus? “Okay, how ‘bout this? I’ll promise I’ll try—”
“Promise,” she said, grabbing my shirt and tugging. If she kept that up, I’d promise anything she wanted.
“Fine,” I grumbled, feeling like the worst kind of pushover. “And for the record, it doesn’t take a pro to beat a few stumbling drunk guys,” I said with a big deal face. “Speaking of Mr. Wonderful . . . remind me again why you’re with him?”
She wasn’t expecting this abrupt turn in conversation, that was evident from every stiffening of her body possible. The peaceful face evaporated into the wind, making my heart ache something fierce. I would give anything to have that face back, but not before I made her see reason that life with Ty was a one way street to the town of dismal.
Her lips locked in silence, her eyes narrowing to a spot just behind me.
“Come on, Emma. He’s got possessive, future abusive husband written all over his elitist, smug-faced file.”
That was the tipping point. I was expecting a slap, but what she hit me with was worse. She snapped free of my arms and was off the trampoline and jogging across the lawn before I could miss the heat of her body beside mine.
So I wanted her to see reason, but this wasn’t the way I wanted to end the night. “Emma!” I called after her. “Wait. Come on, wait up.” I lengthened my stride to catch her, grabbing her by the arm and twisting her towards me.