A sense of relief fills me to overflowing. I sit down suddenly, sagging against the chair.
“I came as soon as I got your message.” Finn takes the chair next to me. Gabe and Zack take the ones across the aisle.
“How is he doing?” Gabe asks.
“I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything.” My voice cracks slightly.
Finn’s hand lands on my shoulder. “He’s going to be okay. He’s too cranky to die. Isn’t it only the good who die young?”
I know he’s trying to make me feel better but his words just work on the guilt I’m already feeling. “I was yelling at him. I told him he was a bastard who would die alone.”
“It’s not your fault.”
I look up at Zack’s voice. Gabe and Finn look over at him, too. He speaks so rarely that it’s always something of a shock.
Gabe grins at us. “Yeah, he comes out to play sometimes.”
“Shut up, Gabe,” Zack responds, but there’s a wealth of history behind it. It reminds me of how I fight with Finn. “All I’m saying is, it’s not your fault. Any one of us could have been there when it happened. Hell, I yelled at him when I saw him, too.” He runs his hands over his shaved head. The intricate designs tattooed on his scalp stand out in stark relief against his pale skin.
I glance over to see Finn watching me. “You guys were getting along better. There’s got to be more to this story. What happened?”
Strangely enough, I have somehow pushed the conversation about Emma to the back of my mind. “It was about Emma. He hired her.”
I stand up. I just can’t sit in these stupid beige chairs any longer pretending like everything in my life isn’t completely screwed up. The one person I thought of as normal, perfect and untouched has been a part of this screwed up business from the beginning.
“He hired her?”
“According to Mr. Boyd. But Dad confirmed it.” I give a bitter laugh. “He paid her to convince me to agree to his terms.”
Finn blows out a breath. “Damn. That’s pretty cold.”
“He said that he wasn’t trying to cause trouble but I can’t trust anything that comes out of his mouth. I’m not sure what’s really going on but we should probably all be on guard. He has his motives for bringing us back into his life.”
“Tank! Finn! I got up here as soon as I could.”
For a brief moment, my heart lifts at the sound of her voice. I guess it hasn’t gotten the memo yet that she’s not really ours. She’s not really mine.
Finn turns apologetic eyes to me. “She was in the shower when I got your call. I told her to meet us here.” He glances over to Gabe and Zack. “We’ll go get some coffee.”
Emma looks between us uncertainly. She can surely feel the difference in the way Finn is treating her. He doesn’t even look at her on the way out.
“How is he?”
“Are you asking for my sake or your sake?”
She looks puzzled. “Both. I want him to be okay, too.”
“So he can pay your salary?”
She freezes and her eyes lock on mine. “No. It has nothing to do with that.”
I am so fucking wrecked over this girl. It kills me that she still has secrets. But I’d only known her a month before we started hanging out. The fact that she occupies most of my waking thoughts doesn't make me an expert either.
“I know about the money. Jonathan Boyd told me all about it. That’s what caused the argument that gave my father a heart attack. We were fighting over you.”
She flinches as if each word pierces her through and through. Even though I know she’s a liar, I want to pull her close and shield her from pain. Because this hurts. This really fucking hurts.
“I told him that I didn’t want the money. That I just wanted you. You’ve had so much loss in your life. I didn’t want that again for you.”
“Loss? Yeah I’ve known loss but that doesn’t mean I didn’t believe what we had could last. I know that not everyone is like my dad. My mom stuck around and she took the best care of us that she could. My daddy issues don’t blind me to reality. Plenty of people find a person to give a damn about that manages to stick around. This isn’t about my family. It’s about me and you.”
She pales. “I know. It’s about how I screwed up. That’s why I didn’t want us to get involved. But I just couldn’t stay away from you. Every time I wanted to move away, you just pulled me back in.”
“You know, I told myself not to fall for you because it was too soon and the risk was too high. These kinds of whirlwind things never last. But somehow, with you, I thought it was a risk worth taking. I thought we would be the exception.”
In the sudden silence, I glance around. The other people in the waiting room are watching us with wide eyes and open mouths.
I grab her by the arm and pull her into the stairwell. “Tell me the truth. All of it.”
“When your dad offered me all this money just to ask you to meet with him, I thought it was the answer to my prayers. We’re friends, I didn’t lie about that. I thought he was just a sad old man who wanted to reconnect with his family.”
“That’s why you suddenly wanted to go out. For the money.”
She looks up at me, her eyes swimming with tears. Her face is a mask of guilt and confusion. But I can’t think about whether she’s sorry yet when I’m still not clear about what she’s done. If we’re going to rip the wound open, I’d rather do it all at once.