“Well, good.” Her hands left her hips. “Put some clothes on and I’ll make some breakfast.”
Em twirled on her chunky heel and left to make a mess in the kitchen. Pretty sure I didn’t want anything she could make. I preferred my breakfast edible. Besides, I wasn’t hungry. No amount of food could fill the gaping wound in my torso hearing my real name on Oakley’s lips, accompanied by the lip curl that could only mean one thing: she wanted nothing to do with me now.
I threw back the covers and slid on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. My hands twitched with the impulse to flick apart the blinds and check on Oakley’s house. I’d kept tabs on her condition yesterday while she was at the hospital by texting Sheriff Locke repeatedly until he’d told me he’d fire me if I so much as looked at my phone again. When her father had brought her home hours later, the sight of her torn pant leg and lopsided gait had torn a hole in my already aching heart.
She was injured because of me.
Plain and simple. No use sugarcoating it or trying to convince myself otherwise. She was my partner, and I let her down. And then I’d let her down again by being outed right in front of her. To add insult to injury, I couldn’t even be there for her while she got looked over at the hospital.
She never should have found out about my family that way. I should have told her over a candlelit dinner where I could have told her the truth and begged her to look beyond all those crazy years. Who I’d been then, a drug-addicted rich boy with no responsibilities and a broken moral compass, was no reflection on who I was today. I’d worked hard to turn my back on everything I’d been back then. How many other people would legally change their last name and refuse their trust funds so they could work a nine-to-five in one of the most deadly careers there was?
I found Em in the kitchen, pouring cereal in a bowl and handing it to me with a shoulder shrug. “Turns out I burned your last two eggs.”
I gave her a weak smile and had a seat at the tiny table I’d found at Ikea for mere pennies compared to the furniture Mom bought. “Cereal’s fine. Thanks.”
She sat across from me and eyed me as I ate. The silence dragged out, my crunching the only sound in my house, but I didn’t care. Just more time for me to stew on all my mistakes and what I was going to do going forward.
“I have a confession!” Em blurted out when I laid my spoon down after the last bite of cereal.
“Okay.”
Em stuck her finger in her mouth, biting her cuticles, which was highly unlike her. She was a manicure-every-fourteen-days kind of girl. Then again, maybe she’d changed while I was gone.
“Spit it out, Em. I have stuff to do today.”
She slammed her palms on the table, rattling the bowl. “I told a few people about you being in the sheriff’s department.”
A thundering noise took up inside my skull. “When, exactly, did you tell a few people, Emmeline?”
Her thumb tapped out a rhythm on the table. “Um, yesterday morning?”
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath to keep from shouting at her. I knew how our old circle of friends worked. You tell something juicy to one person, and before an hour had gone by, that person had told a hundred others.
My own sister had caused those paparazzi to show up at the crime scene and ruin everything between Oakley and me.
“Emmeline.” The tone was not kind, but it was the safest thing I could say to her at this moment. My fingers tingled with the need to beat something. Even the tips of my hair were incensed.
“I know!” She hopped up out of her chair. “I’m sorry! I’m just so proud of you, and I wanted my friends to know the kind of man my brother had become. But then I started getting texts, and I saw the pictures taken at that barn and they were all over the internet. They were saying you had a new name, which is insane because wouldn’t I know my own brother’s name? As much as I’m mad at you, I also know all the craziness online was because of me. I know I screwed up.”
“They shot Oakley, Em,” I thundered.
She sat down with a plop and a gasp. “What? Is she okay?”
“I think so, but I don’t know for sure because she isn’t talking to me any longer.” I stared at her with all the fury I felt showing in my eyes. I knew it wasn’t all her fault, but I couldn’t seem to keep the rage bottled up. “I hadn’t told her who I was yet, and she found out from a coke head and some paparazzi trespassing on a crime scene.”
“Oh, no.” Emmeline put her hand to her mouth, her eyes shining with tears.
“Oh, yes,” I sighed, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning back in the chair. Honestly, it didn’t even matter how it had happened or my sister’s involvement in it. I was the one to blame here. I knew it, just like I knew Oakley wouldn’t forgive me for it.
“Can you apologize?” Em asked in a small voice.
I shook my head and stared at the ceiling like it might provide the answers. “I don’t think that’s going to work this time. A mistake that big needs more than flimsy words.”
“Do you love her, Wyatt?”
I looked down
