Page 112 of Worth the Fall

“Nothing. Never mind.” The first tear finally slips over as she runs a hand over her hair, and the chaos of her emotions hit her.

I just stare at her like a deer in the headlights. I can handle hysterical victims, I can manage crazy suspects, but give me Emerson’s big green eyes full of tears and have her plead for me to give her answers I can’t give her, and I’m a guy fucked in so many ways I’ve lost count.

“Talk to me.”

“I’m so confused,” she says. “It’s you.”

“Me?” What did I do?

“No. That’s not what I mean.” She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and shakes her head. “I just—I don’t want to know anything else.”

“What are you talking about?”

She heaves in a breath that hitches as I reach out—needing to touch her—and use my thumb to wipe a tear off her cheek. The simple touch is nowhere near enough, the connection not strong enough, so I lean forward and brush my lips against hers, my hand on the back of her neck, our foreheads touching.

I stay like that for a few moments, caught between the push and pull of needing her to stay and never wanting her to feel pain again. Crushed by the realization that somehow I’m the one causing the discord in her life.

“I don’t trust myself, Grant. I don’t trust my memory. I don’t trust that what I thought happened actually happened⁠—”

“You didn’t make it up, Em,” I say, hating the defeat reflected in everything about her—eyes, posture, tone. I don’t understand why she’s so upset over this. “They were silly rocks.”

“It’s not just the rocks. It’s everything else.” The desperation in the way she says the words twists my heart.

I’d give anything to take her pain away, and for the briefest of moments, I consider telling her I have proof that her abuse happened. That I have the evidence to erase the doubt from her mind. Maybe if she had the choice to know the details, it would be helpful to her and make her feel more in control.

My eyes flash over the table stacked with blue and green file folders and know hers is somewhere in there. I’ve yet to open it, but I know it holds the detailed history of her abuse.

And as soon as I have the thought, I reject the horrible idea.

“I still don’t trust myself,” she whispers, the heat of her words warming my lips.

“I trust you,” I say, scrambling for anything to take the pain from her voice. I’m far from qualified to give her the answers she needs, but hell, I’d walk through fucking fire if it meant I could make this right by her . . . whatever right is.

“It isn’t the same.”

“People trust you with their lives every day. Every damn day, they jump out of airplanes and put their lives in your hands, trusting that you’ll get them back to the ground safely. How can you say they don’t trust you?”

“They trust the name on the building. They trust the certificates lining the wall. They trust the reputation that’s been around for fifty years. They don’t know a damn thing about the woman behind the desk in the flight suit.”

She looks lost, eyes wild, body language unreadable besides anything other than scattered, and I hate seeing her like this.

“It’s going to be okay, Em. We’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”

She pushes up off the couch, agitated and restless. “It isn’t going to be okay, Grant. It will never be okay, and it will never go away. Fucking hell, I’ve gone twelve years without doing this, and now I have and what does that say about me? That I’m not strong anymore? That I’m no longer coping? That I’m just as fucked up as everyone would expect me to be?” She screams leaving me completely lost in regards to what she is referring to.

“Twelve years?”

“This!” She shouts throwing her arms out so the angry red marks on the inside of her right arm scream out to me. “This, Grant. I spent years cutting myself to cope. Years hurting myself because the pain I caused myself overshadowed the pain he caused me. It made me feel in control of something. I was the one responsible. I was the one who knew the ugly on the outside matched the ugly on the inside.” Her voice breaks again, breaking my heart right along with it.

I’m out of my seat in an instant and by her side. “Em.” I don’t even recognize the grief in my own voice.

“You once asked me how I coped. This, Grant. This was how I coped.”

“Emerson.” My God. How did I not see this? I expect her to fight when I slip my arms around her, I assume she will resist, but she does everything but. Her arms are around my waist, and her head is buried in my chest as we hold on to each other and weather the torrent of emotion that is raging inside both of us.

“Emerson.” I say her name again, needing to see her eyes, to know she is okay, maybe to know that I’m going to be okay knowing this, too. Fuck if I know. She tilts her chin and looks at me with red-rimmed eyes full of shame and sorrow before leaning forward and pressing her lips to mine. It’s the last thing I expect, but the kiss is slow and hesitant—a woman trying to find her way through the power of the storm swirling around her.

I kiss her back. Gentle and tender. Giving her whatever she needs from me and promising that I’m going to do everything in my power to help her.