She sounds angry now. “I know we lied to you, and I would do it again. But your life wasn’t a lie; your life was filled with so much love you wouldn’t need to walk because we would carry you. He searched for you the minute you left. He went to Casey, and well, not nice things were said, but he wouldn’t let him hide anything. They didn’t tell me all the details; they would just tell me you were safe. But …” She looks down and blocks the sob from her mouth with her hands. “The day you changed your name.” My mouth opens. “Casey told him, and he collapsed on his knees as if someone had shot him in the chest. He tried to be strong the whole time, but that day, it took something from him. It took a piece away from him.” She shakes her head. “That’s what leaving did to the man who gave up everything for you. He didn’t give you his blood, but he gave you his name, and to me, that is more than just donating DNA.”
“I never meant to hurt you guys,” I finally say. “I never meant to hurt you guys. But you have to see that I doubted everything. It made me doubt everything.”
“Then we didn’t do a good enough job,” Beau says, and I want to tell them that they did everything right. “Because if we had done a good enough job, you wouldn’t have to doubt who you were or who you are.”
“It wasn’t that easy,” I say, and he shakes his head. He’s about to say something else when Keith runs in, calling Beau.
“Dad!” he shouts. “Chelsea is going to take the truck home.”
They look at me, not wanting to walk away. “We can finish this at another time,” I tell them, and they walk away, leaving me by myself. Walking out of the barn, I avoid everyone this time. Billy sees me, and I just raise my hand, telling him I’m going. I don’t look for anyone else, and when I walk up the step to the house, I have to sit down. I feel like I’ve gone into a battlefield with no protection. My heart is torn into a million pieces. My mind is so scrambled that I have to close my eyes, and when I do that, the only face I see is hers. Her smile and her laughter as she looked at me as though I hung the moon and stars.
It happens so fast that I don’t have time to stop myself. I don’t have time to think about what it’s going to do. I have no time for anything. Because my body is on autopilot, and I have to see her.
I walk toward the house and see that no lights are on in the house. The stars are blinking in the sky, and I stand out here, and I’m about to knock when I hear her from behind me. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says, and I turn and see the hammock swinging side to side.
“I …” I run my hands over my face. “We need to talk.”
“We don’t need to do anything,” she tells me. “The only thing that needs to happen is you need to leave.” She walks past me, and I grab her arm, but she rips it from my grasp. “There is nothing you have to say that I want to hear.”
“I love you.” I repeat the three words that I said to her every single day since I left. She walks to me, and I don’t see it coming, but her hand hits my face.
“I hate you,” she says, turning and storming up the stairs. The door slams so hard it’s a wonder that the windows don’t shatter.
“I’m not leaving this time!” I shout, wondering if she even heard me.
Chapter Eleven
Emily
My hand shakes as I lock the door behind me, and I look down, staring at it. “Stop it.” I talk to myself.
“Emily!” I hear his voice as he shouts from the backyard. “Em.” When I hear him use my nickname, my hand isn’t the only part of me that’s shaking. My whole body is shaking now, and I put my back on the door and slowly slide to the floor. The tears fall without me even knowing, the sob comes out silently. “Em.” I hear his voice and know he’s right on the other side. “Em.”
The softness of his voice when he calls me that hurts more than it did when he left. Knowing he’s right there behind the door and I can run to him and wrap myself around him.
Closing my eyes, I try to block out his voice, block out all the memories that have suddenly escaped from the locked box I keep in my head.
“Em.” He called over to me as I walked away from him after getting mad for I don’t even know what.
I turned and looked at him. He stood there with his hands in his pockets. “What do you want, Ethan?”
“For you to come here so I can kiss you.” He smirked at me, which made me even madder at that moment.
“No.” I shook my head and crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t want to kiss you right now, Ethan.”
“What if I come to you?” he asked. I already knew that whatever I was mad about was not even a thought. He took a couple of steps my way. “What if I was the one who came to you?” He took the remainder of the steps until he was right in front of me.
“You made me madder than a wet hen,” I told him, and he just laughed as he put his forehead on mine.
“You make me a better person,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked, putting my hands on his hips as my fingers held on to the
