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Ei had a feeling that hitting that little box next to Emma’s name in the voting booth was going to be the easiest decision he made all day, and not just because Mrs. Gaither saw him walking up the path to Hart’s Ridge Elementary School and took the opportunity to clobber him with her purse again.
It was because it was the right thing to do.
Making decisions was easy, as far as Eli was concerned. Living with those decisions was a lot harder. He was of the opinion that it didn’t matter how long a person pondered something, unless he could see into the future there was no way of telling how that decision was going to work out. It was better to make the decision fast, and then get on with dealing with the consequences. Which meant Eli was fast to make decisions, but slow to say it was the right one.
This time, he knew it was the right decision the way he knew the sun would rise in the east and set in the west. Emma was the best for the job. That was just a fact. And she wanted to do the job, which he knew because she had told him so with her own mouth.
That was nice for a change.
So, yes. Voting for Emma was the easiest decision he made all day. Simple, direct, black and white.
After that things got a lot murkier.
Was it the right decision to ignore Emma’s text at noon, asking if he wanted her to pick up burritos from Cesar or just order pizza for dinner, and again at three? Maybe. Then again, maybe not.
Was it the right decision to turn onto Emma’s driveway at precisely six p.m., and then sit there where the asphalt turned to gravel, his truck still running, until he was an hour past when she expected him? Possibly. Who was to say, really?
Murky.
She was standing on the front porch when he finally pulled up, her keys in her hand. He was aware of her eyes on him, watching him put the truck in park, unbuckle, and slowly unfold himself from the driver’s seat and approach.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hey. Are you going somewhere?”
“To find you.” Her eyes searched his face. “I was starting to worry.”
“Sorry about that.”
Except he wasn’t sorry at all. Well, maybe a little bit. He hated to make her worry. She worried too much as it was, and he didn’t want to add to that. But at the same time, he liked that she cared enough about him to be concerned for his whereabouts. He liked it a lot. And the thought of her coming to find him...well, it made his dick get ideas. He wasn’t proud of that, but there it was. No one ever came to find him. People were more likely to hide from him, come to think of it.
It was disconcerting to realize that his deepest kink might just be a very dirty game of hide-and-seek.
She nodded as though his apology was enough, when he knew damn well it wasn’t. “I picked up a couple pizzas. It turns out my guests are super into this election and finding out if I’ll be mayor. It’s kind of sweet, really. They’re all inside, watching the news for the results.”
The words had barely left her lips when whoops and cheers erupted from inside the house.
They looked at each other.
“Congratulations, Mayor Andrews,” he said softly.
“We don’t know that.”
He laughed. “They’re not cheering for me.”
Their phones buzzed at the same time, and at the same time they saw the results.
“It’s official,” he said. “You won.”
She sat down on the step with a hard thunk. “I won.” She stared dazedly into space. “I won. I don’t believe it. How is that even possible?”
“The usual way, I’d imagine. More people voted for you than me.”
She looked at him. “Do you think they made a mistake? Maybe they should do a recount.”
He threw back his head with a roar of laughter. “Emma, you won. By a landslide. It wasn’t even close. You have to accept that, honey.”
Her jaw went slack. “A landslide? But...but why? People love you. You’re the one who puts criminals behind bars and I’m just a criminal’s daughter.”
“Hey, now.” He frowned. “You know I had nothing to do with that. But I have to admit, I think those posters actually helped you. People were furious that I would stoop so low. Old Mrs. Gaither hit me with her purse every time she saw me.” He smiled at the giggle-snort sound Emma made. “I’m not kidding. It was on sight with her. You have to understand, Emma, people love me, but they love you, too. They care. Your mom died. Your dad...well, he felt like his back was against a wall. He made a bad decision and that decision, yeah, it hurt people he didn’t mean to hurt. But people aren’t entirely unsympathetic to the situation that led him there.”
“I see.” She pressed her lips into a grim line. “They voted for me because they felt sorry for me.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, you doofus. They voted for you because for the past two months, you busted your ass for this town, and this whole week was a testament to that. Hart’s Ridge has never seen money pour in like this. Every business on Main Street made a killing, and it’s because of you. You’re the one who got Hart’s Ridge mentioned in the travel magazines. You’re the one who launched the social media campaign. You put this town on the map. People aren’t dumb. They voted for you because they knew Emma Andrews would be the best mayor Hart’s Ridge has ever seen.”
“Oh.” Her eyes looked suspiciously shiny. She blinked rapidly. “Oh my God.”
“You’re happy, right?” He knew she was, knew this was what she wanted, but he needed to hear her say it. Because it was ending now, and they had been here before. At the end of things. And that had been ugly. He didn’t want that. He wanted this time to be different. To end on a good note instead of broken hearts.
“I’m happy,” she said. “You know, my career choices have always been about survival. It’s not how it was for you, how you always knew you wanted to be a police officer. I wasn’t any good at waitressing. Delmy gave me that job out of pure pity. After that, I sort of fell into the food truck business because I had the truck and Cesar could make the food. Even now, with the B and B, it was just the best way to keep paying the mortgage. Everything I’ve done, it’s just because that’s what I could do with the resources at my disposal. I haven’t hated any of it. There’s been some good in every job I’ve had. But none of it was my passion. But being mayor felt right. You know?”
He nodded. “I know.”
She grimaced. “It’s just my luck that the career I’m passionate about is all work and no pay. But the B and B is booked up for rest of the summer. My dad will be out in a couple months, and he will help out a lot. I can make it work. I can do this. I want to do this.”
He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest. “Then you will do this. I would never bet against you, not when you’re all in.”
She grinned. “I have so many ideas. So many. Like an endowment fund. You know how fancy private colleges have donors that create funds for scholarships and things like that? Why couldn’t we do something like that for Hart’s Ridge, but instead of scholarships, zero percent interest business loans or stipends to do repairs on Main Street, and that sort of thing? We just have to find the right donors. I was thinking—”
She broke off suddenly and looked at him.
“What?” he asked. “You were thinking what?”
“I don’t know.” She looked around and then back at him. “I just...I love you, Eli.”
***
Emma hadn’t meant to say it.
That was the thing about love. Once you realized you were in it, really and truly in it, you had to say it. The words were impossible to hold back. She might as well have tried to hold back the Chattanooga River as keep those words from reaching Eli’s ears.
It was a relief to finally set those words free. She should have said it eight years ago. She should have said a lot of things eight years ago. Maybe all those things were tied together somehow, and now that she had said one, she could finally say the others.
And that was a relief, too. That she was finally coming clean after eight years of swimming through murkiness.
She suspected the relief was all hers, though, because Eli was looking at her with something like horror on his face. He still hadn’t said anything.
So she figured she might as well keep going.
“I love you,” she repeated. “I think maybe I always loved you, but I didn’t always know what to do with that. Now I do, and that’s apologize. I’m so sorry, Eli.”
His brow furrowed. “For what? What could you possibly have to feel sorry for?”
He didn’t say anything about the other part, she noticed. The part about her loving him. That didn’t make her feel great. But okay. So they weren’t going to have one of those magical moments like in the movies where those three little words could fix everything, and they would say them and melt into each other’s arms and screw their brains out.
They could still have that moment, just not now. Now they would have to put in the work to earn it.
She could do that. She would do that.
“I’m sorry because eight years ago, something terrible happened, and I let you take the blame for all of it. For your part. For my dad’s.” She swallowed hard. “For mine.”
He took a step back, shaking his head. “You don’t have to do this. It was a long time ago.”
“I do have to do this. I want to do this, because I want to be with you, and that’s never going to happen if we don’t put the past to rest.”
“Emma—”
“Please let me. Then you can say whatever it is you need to say.” She had a pretty good idea that she wasn’t going to like it, but she would hear him out. And then she would tell him how wrong he was. Because this thing with them, it could work. She knew it could. There was too much love for it not to work.
He nodded. “Okay.”
“It wasn’t fair, making it all your fault. I don’t have an excuse. I was a mess. I still am pretty messy, but I’m working to sort myself out now. I saw my dad today. And I told him...I told him about that night. I told him it was me. I was the one who told the police he had been cooking meth.”
“You told your best friend,” he corrected.
“Who happened to be a cop.” She grimaced. “I wasn’t unaware of your job, Eli. I knew what an awful position I was putting you in. I just refused to think about it. And then after...I kept on refusing. Because if I thought about it, then I might realize that I didn’t just hate you. I hated my dad. I hated myself. It didn’t occur to me that I didn’t have to hate anybody. That just because I was mad didn’t mean I had to stay mad for eight years. I didn’t have to carry all that anger inside me. I could have set that burden down and walked away from it.” She looked at him and her heart ached. She wished he wouldn’t stand so far away. “I should have.”
He leaned against the porch column, chin tucked low, eyes on the ground. She wished he would look at her. Give her some indication that he understood.
But he didn’t, and she plowed forward anyway. “I wanted so badly to be the perfect daughter. The daughter my dad wanted. The daughter my mother deserved. And I...I couldn’t face how spectacularly I had screwed up. At the time, I could see only one way forward: you. Now, of course, I want to kick myself. Why didn’t I go directly to my dad and tell him to stop? Why didn’t I at least try?”
“Emma, you—” He blew out a long breath and shook his head. “That might have worked, or it might not have. He might have stopped and maybe that would have gotten him killed. You don’t know. We can’t possibly know. But I do know that your dad loves you. None of us are perfect.”
“That’s what he said too, when I told him.”
“Well, there you go, then.”
She cocked her head. “Does that mean you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
“Fine. Does that mean you accept my apology, then?”
“Emma.” He looked at her, finally. “Of course I do.”
“Good. Because I love you.”
His expression changed, and she didn’t like it one bit. He didn’t look like a man who had just heard I love you and was going to say them back. No, he looked like a man gearing up to lecture a child on The Way Things Worked in the Real World.
“We had a deal,” he said kindly. Condescendingly. “Until the election, that’s it.”
She gritted her teeth. Of course he wasn’t going to make this easy. Because he was as big a coward as she was, only he hadn’t faced that yet.
“The deal was bullshit. You know that. I know that. It’s a stupid excuse. I don’t care that we made some agreement, because that’s what we had to tell ourselves to allow us to do what we wanted to do. It was fake. I’m over pretending things to myself, the good and the bad. I love you, and I want to be with you.”
“Right now you want to be with me. You only just now decided to heal a wound that’s been festering for eight years. What makes you think tomorrow it won’t open up again? What makes you think that tomorrow you won’t hate me?”
“Because I love you.” Her eyes burned, and she blinked rapidly. Dammit, she wasn’t going to cry. “Because you could stack all the hate I felt in those eight years and it wouldn’t hold a candle to all the love I feel for you in one millisecond. It’s a love worth facing my demons for. I would face a million more, if it meant being with you.”
“I don’t feel that way.”
All the breath left her in a gasp. It felt like being punched in the chest with a brick. “You don’t...you don’t love me?”
His jaw shifted and clenched, and she could tell he was struggling to find the right words. He never lied, but he had always said what she needed to hear. And when what she needed to hear wasn’t exactly the truth, he left a lot more unsaid.
She wondered, now, what he was going to leave unsaid. Because whatever next came out of his mouth, it wasn’t going to be the whole truth.
“There are lots of ways of loving, and of course I feel some of those ways for you,” he said. “But this...what you’re asking for...that’s not what this is. It’s not what we are. I can’t do this with you.”
“With me,” she repeated. So specific. Her heart was cracking open. She couldn’t breathe for pain.
“It’s better this way. You’ll see.”
She stood there, frozen, as he turned away and walked down the steps. Kept going down the sidewalk, farther away from her with each step, until he got into his truck. She kept thinking he would stop, that he would come back, that he would realize this was a mistake somehow.
But he didn’t. He drove away instead.
Grief poured through her. She was familiar with the feeling, but that was no comfort. She was tired of grieving the people she loved. Her mother. Her father. Eli.
It wasn’t better this way.
She didn’t think it could ever be better again.