Light Unshaken (Unveiled #2) Page 21

  “I can’t do this anymore.” He took my hand and pulled me toward him until we were standing inches apart in the middle of the deserted street. “I know I told you last year that I would let you go. And I tried, Em. I swear, I tried. But I can’t.”

  His unmasked vulnerability crashed into my own. “A. J.—”

  “I can’t keep pretending.” He set my palm above his heart and tapped his hand over mine. “This is real.” He lifted my chin. “This,” he said again, touching his thumb to the skin around my eye, “. . . is real. You can’t hide what I see.”

  “You’re one of my closest friends. You know you hold a piece of my heart.”

  He angled my face toward his. “I want you to look at me and tell me that’s all it is.” His chest rose and fell in rapid movements under my hand.

  My shoulders sank with the weight of knowing the connection we’d formed through all we’d shared was real. And the very reason we had to let it go.

  An ache of regret speared through me.

  My lashes lifted toward his. The gaze searching mine reflected everything racing to my eyes—the hurt, the tenderness, the loss.

  His hand drifted down my back. “Emma.”

  Swallowing the tears, I hugged him for the last time. “You asked me to let you love me. Please.” I set my chin on his shoulder and faced the stars. “Please, let me do the same for you.”

  He held me tight, breath against my skin.

  I stepped back. “Goodbye, A. J.”

  At Riley’s car, my fingers burned around the cold door handle.

  “I’ll wait for you,” he said from behind me.

  The words we’d shared last year branded a mark in my heart that would always leave a scar. With my back toward him, I struggled to steady my voice. “Don’t.”

  I sank into the driver’s seat. The keys rattled against the ignition until the right one slipped into place. Still without permitting any tears to come, I stared down the road I had to take.

  A quarter mile passed before I faced the rearview mirror. A. J. hadn’t moved. He stood in the middle of the street, watching me drive away.

  Neither of us could deny my heart had already fractured. But as we both eyed the fragments left behind, I knew we were waiting for two very separate things. I waited with hope that the pieces would one day fuse back together. A. J. waited with hope that they never would.

  chapter thirty-One

  Daybreak

  Same as every day that’d passed since Riley left, a new morning came as promised. Pink-dusted clouds heralded the sunrise and painted over the shadows left from last night.

  Alongside the creek, early morning dew hovered on the grass underneath my fingertips. Sunshine kissed the back of my neck and expanded into a full embrace across my shoulders. With my eyes closed, memories from the beach in August warded off the cold December air around me now.

  I breathed in the moment a little longer. The serenity. The peace. The evidence that Dad’s legacy of love had never stopped guiding my life, not once.

  Seated on the grass, I opened my journal.

  Dad, you’ve been my star all along, haven’t you? Your light, unshaken. Always leading me. This whole time, I’ve been trying to figure out how to love. So afraid of risking what I’d lose or gain. When, really, you’ve been trying to show me how to open my heart regardless of either. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to sort it all out, but I think I get it now. Part of being courageous means leading my heart, even when life tests everything you’ve taught me.

  I turned my eyes skyward. “Thank you,” I whispered. “For not letting go.”

  A few minutes longer, I basked in the assurance of what I was finally ready to do.

  On the other side of our front door, I just about smacked right into Jaycee. She spun in a half circle and lifted up two giant coffee mugs as if an increased height would prevent them from spilling onto the carpet.

  Trevor sat on the far end of the couch, flashing a boyish grin that managed to slow down whatever wisecrack was about to escape his lips.

  Jaycee glanced at my face and continued walking. “Need a ride to the airport?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Wait a sec,” Trevor said, unable to contain his sarcasm any longer. “You two have been communicating clairvoyantly for the last three and a half years, and you’re asking her how she knew what you were thinking?” He feigned a look of perplexity while strolling toward me.

  I sighed. “We’ll be fifty years old, and you’ll still be amused over that joke, won’t you?”

  Patronizing as ever, he threw his brawny arm over my shoulders. “Only as long as you keep giving me that same look each time.”

  I rolled my eyes on principle but couldn’t deny how much I loved him, mischievousness and all. I squeezed his side. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.”

  “Hey, hey. None of that mushy stuff.” He rubbed the top of my hair. “Listen, give me the details of the flight you need. I have a friend who works at the airport.”

  Jaycee and I exchanged fleeting glances. “Of course you do,” we said at the same time.

  The living room shook with Trevor’s laughter. Our synchronization apparently was as amusing to him as his random connections were to us.

  But as usual, his networking skills proved to be a lifesaver. Trevor’d made all the arrangements by the time my last class ended. His miracle-working friend managed to let me fly standby. On a Friday night, no less.

  I hadn’t thought about how I’d pay for the flight. Just that I needed to see him.

  The energy from rushing all evening succumbed to a level of exhaustion I didn’t bother trying to resist. On board, I tilted my seat back and stared out the window. Cloud glaciers drifted by, taking any chance of falling asleep with them. No position helped. Nothing shut out the thoughts keeping me awake, hour after hour. Would I be too late?

  The pilot’s voice broke into the silent cabin to announce our descent. My stomach dropped, more from nervous anticipation than from the change in air pressure.

  Between my lack of sleep and the gravity of what lay ahead, I was thankful to make it down the ramp without collapsing. I jostled my backpack strap up to the top of my shoulder while the rest of the plane’s occupants whirled past me on their way to the luggage carousel.

  My single bag felt heavier than it should have. I shuffled in circles. Lights and sounds pulled my focus in every direction until it stopped on the one sign I was looking for. Taxis.

  I filed into the foot traffic hustling toward the exit. A seamless river of canary yellow vehicles glistened under streetlights lining the curb.

  I slid into the backseat of the nearest cab.

  A middle-aged man with a slightly cratered face leaned over his shoulder from the driver’s seat.

  I withdrew a wrinkled envelope from my pocket. “Um, fifteenth and Mason,” I read.

  A smirk of discolored teeth beamed in the rearview mirror.

  At least he seemed to recognize the address.

  He turned on the heat. A faint trace of stale cigarettes and some kind of leftover fast food trailed into my seat. Breathing against the window, I watched the murky remnant of an earlier snowfall follow alongside the edge of the road.

  The peacefulness of the engine’s hum lulled me the longer we drove. I clamped my bag in my lap and gambled with the odds of closing my eyes without falling asleep.

  Some gamble. I flinched awake at the creak of glass sliding open.

  With his arm across the seatback, the driver announced the taxi fare.

  I pretended to pass off my gasp as a cough. Fifty bucks? No wonder he smiled the moment I gave him the address.

  The taxi’s rear wheels stirred up a cloud of exhaust before my door shut all the way.

  I hadn’t exactly expected chivalry from a complete and admittedly questionable stranger, but didn’t people have manners? Who left a girl deserted on a street at four in the morning without making sure she reached her destination sa
fely?

  He’d better at least have had enough integrity to take me to the right address.

  A lighted neighborhood sign on the corner shined a halo into the darkness.

  My breathing evened as I followed a lamp-lit sidewalk winding through the complex. Unlike the apartment buildings back home, these one-story condos resembled townhouses, each with an individual front door.

  I passed row after row, glancing at the envelope in my hands, until I found the number matching the return address.

  Despite the chill blowing off a lake across the street, my body flushed with heat. I stood at the foot of the curb in front of a slender walkway leading to Riley’s apartment. A long exhale expanded into the cold air.

  One delayed step at a time, I approached a maroon door lit by a porch light. The tremor in my arm weakened the force of my knock. I backed up, waited.

  After another three unanswered knocks, I dropped to the stoop beside my bag. My jeans clung to the frost-covered concrete. I curled my arms around my boots and pulled my legs in to block the wind and the weariness blustering with it.

  He was probably at a late rehearsal or a party. He had no idea I was coming. Even if he was here, I still didn’t know what I was going to say. Why didn’t I think this through? Maybe I shouldn’t have come at all.

  Through the curtains of hair falling over my face, I saw someone approaching. Riley stopped short on the sidewalk with Jake flanking his right side. The same paralysis that seemed to hold him in place kept me grounded in mine. Everything else dissolved behind the sight of the one who still held my heart.

  He dropped the leash. Jake stopped midway to me and yelped. He looked between us as if caught in the same suspense.

  Riley lowered his royal blue sweatshirt hood, exposing the sheen of a long run left on his forehead and a depth of love that hadn’t faded.

  I traced every feature until I found his eyes. It didn’t matter if I’d seen them a hundred times in my dreams. It made no difference how much time had passed since I saw them in person. They still anchored me. I couldn’t look away.

  Riley inched two steps closer at the same time I rose to my feet. Behind him, light crested the treetops as the stars gave way to the sunrise. His gaze swam over my face with the warmth of the sun. “Emma?” He rushed the rest of the distance.

  I wanted to stop him. Tell him why I came before I melted under the feeling of his touch, but it was too late. His hands trailed the sides of my cheeks. The sensation collided with memories and sparked life back to my frozen body.

  “Em.” A mixture of relief and elation swept through his voice.

  Before I could convince my lungs to fill with air and vocalize the faintest sound resembling words, he had me lost beneath his lips, every movement as tender and earnest as his promise to love me always.

  Everything outside this one moment paled behind feelings I never had, nor ever would, experience with someone else. No length of time in his arms would be enough.

  His hand warmed the back of my neck, the place it was formed to fit perfectly. “I can’t believe I thought I could be apart from you.” He kept me close. “I’m so sorry, Em. For how hard things got. It never stopped. Never slowed down. It was killing me.”

  His heart beat under my cheek with my song. The one I wanted to fall asleep to every night. It felt too soon to speak. Too soon to let go.

  He lifted me back. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you. How much I’ve been dying for January to get here.”

  My lashes folded. “Aren’t you wondering why I showed up now?”

  Without the slightest hesitation, Riley’s embrace eliminated the need of any question. “It only matters that you’re here.” He curled me to his side and drew me toward his apartment. “Let’s get out of the cold.”

  He pulled his keys from the lock and pushed open the front door to his condo with his foot. Jake bolted straight for his water bowl in the kitchen.

  Riley nudged a dog bed out of the entryway and set my bag on a narrow table lining the sidewall. He snagged a shirt and jacket up from the couch arm. “Sorry about the mess. I’m not used to having people here.”

  Not used to having me here, in a world I’d been afraid I didn’t belong.

  My stomach clenched. The corners of his furnished apartment closed in with the pressures we’d faced. The distance that’d separated us. The time lost. Images of him sharing his life here with Jess. Things that could’ve happened between A. J. and me. The look in Tito’s eyes bleeding into the memory of the way Dee’s searched mine for courage.

  All of it pressed in, shut everything else out, and cornered me into the couch.

  Riley caught my elbow and steadied me. “I think you’re a little overdue on sleep.”

  Not as much as I was overdue giving him every part of me. I didn’t want to hold anything back from him. Not anymore. He was worth all I had to give.

  I drew his mouth to mine and pulled tighter, wanting nothing between us. No space. No air. Nothing but right now. This was real. All of it. The fear. The desire. The vulnerability.

  His body tensed. Five seconds of hesitation surrendered to longing that had intensified after all we’d gone through.

  He dropped the clothes in his hands and backed me against the wall, crushing closer with the same heat coursing through me. Both trying to negate what we’d lost. Both releasing the pent-up tension of being apart. I gripped his hair, wanting to erase every doubt that’d wedged itself between us.

  Desire pulsed with each heartbeat. His mouth sloped to the hollow above my collarbone. I balled his shirt in my fingers, unable to pull him close enough. I lifted on my toes, muscles taut. Everything I felt for him brimmed with tears I couldn’t explain or stop.

  “I want you, Riley.” No one else.

  His lips stalled over my ear.

  The stress building over the last several months erupted. “When Tito had me pinned against that wall, all I could think about was what he could steal from me. From us. Everything I wanted to give you. Then when I thought you and Jess . . .”

  I ran my hands up the planes of his back, holding on. “I want you to have every part of me.” Every fear, desire. Every broken piece. All the love in me. Even if it wasn’t enough.

  He flexed his palms on the wall on either side of my head. “Not like this,” he said, breath hard and sharp against my skin. “Not like this.”

  He rested his forehead to mine and slipped both hands into my hair behind my ears. His pulse beat through his fingertips with the same fervency teeming in the way he looked at me. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  My chin trembled.

  “I love you, Em. Nothing’s going to change that.” He kissed me so tenderly, the promise siphoned the venom of fear from an unseen wound inside me.

  “Your heart’s been through enough.” His hands held my cheeks, his breath still raspy. “Please . . .” His forehead found mine again. “Let me protect what’s left.”

  My hand slid down his shirt and dropped to my side. I yearned for a way to give him all my love. He, once again, showed me how. His selflessness burned with the reason I’d come.

  Pulse still hammering, I slipped back outside where the wind could drop my temperature. Riley followed, Jake right behind.

  An inhale of snow-damp air relaxed my shoulders. But inside or out, I couldn’t hide the ache in my heart. Not from him.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” His signature certainty wavered under a quiver of concern. “You’re not still worried about Jess, are you? You didn’t come because—”

  “I should’ve trusted you.” I looked away. “Should’ve done so much differently.”

  He drew me close. His thumb smoothed over my cheek, his lips over my ear. Though his eyes already told me he loved me, he whispered it anyway.

  My fingers lost their grip on his sleeve. I clutched my arms over my body. “When we said goodbye at the airport in August, do you remember what you asked me? You made me promise to trust your love above anythin
g else.”

  I turned to the lake, fumbling over things I still didn’t know how to say. “I didn’t understand. I knew being apart was going to be hard, but I never expected . . .”

  Riley eased closer. “I’m sorry—”

  I lifted a hand to stop him. “Please. Please don’t.”

  His gaze locked on to the tears filling mine. Perception flickered. He backed up. Jake lunged from the grass and nudged his snout under Riley’s hand.

  I looked away, squeezed back the tears, and faced him again. “I had to come. I had to see you. So much has happened.”

  He didn’t move. A glance swept from my face to my hand as though begging to find my engagement ring still there.

  “At the beginning of the year, I told Austin I wasn’t afraid anymore. But that’s all I’ve been since you first told me you were moving. Afraid. Terrified of what it’d mean for us, for me. I worried I’d lose you if you realized I didn’t measure up to what you’d find here.”

  My arms came undone. “I thought I was being brave by letting you go. Thought I was proving I was ready for marriage. That I could be all you needed from me. But the truth is, there was so much I had to learn about love. About myself. Life. Things I wouldn’t have learned if I hadn’t stayed at Reed.”

  Every experience I’d walked through this semester screened through my mind until one truth rose from the ashes. Flames didn’t only temper gold. They purified it. As hard as that process was, love wouldn’t survive without it. I knew that now.

  Would that truth meet me here? Through one more fire?

  The drum in my chest overpowered every other sound. I balled my coat cuffs in my hands. “With all that was going on, I didn’t realize how vulnerable my heart was. I shouldn’t have turned to others instead of to you.”

  Comprehension tore across Riley’s face. “Other people. As in A. J.”

  “Riley, I’m sorry. I—”

  “I never should’ve left you.” Apprehension stole the stability I’d always found in his eyes.

  I wanted to reach for him, but the question coursing off him rooted me in place.