Light Unshaken (Unveiled #2) (19 page)

I shook my head and scrunched my lips to the side. “Thanks.”

A. J.’s grin tipped with relief. “What are friends for?” He strode to the door. “A new week’s waiting to be lived, Em.” Holding on to the trim, he looked over his shoulder with those eyes that never let me back down. “Word of advice, though? You might want to start it off with a shower.”

chapter twenty-seven

Shaken

The repetition of going through the motions dragged the end of November into December. I cut back my hours at the center. Partly because I had to borrow courage against my bankrupt supply each day I went. Partly because I had to make up for the classes I missed after the night we lost Dee. Any time left over, I dedicated to prepping for finals. It was easier that way. Studying kept me distanced from the parts of my life that still felt unhinged.

I sat back in my desk chair. An hour of staring at my economics textbook had robbed my eyes of all moisture. I shook out the pins and needles from my calves and headed to the kitchen for a caffeine replenishment.

On the couch, Jaycee had an oversized textbook spread open in her lap and an almost equally giant cup of coffee balanced on the armrest. I was about to suggest she bypass the mug altogether and drink straight out of the coffee pot when I noticed she was on the phone.

She shifted the receiver. “Did the nurse say anything when you called to make the appointment? . . . Okay, please call me right afterward. . . . I know. . . . Love you too. Bye.”

I leaned into the doorframe between the kitchen and living room, arms tucked into each other, concerned but not wanting to press.

She must’ve read the question on my face. “That was my dad. Mom’s been sick again. Her doctor wants to rule out possibilities, so she’s going in for tests on Monday.”

Tests
. The word evoked a flood of dark memories from when we’d first found out Dad had cancer. I shut my eyes, suppressed the wave.

Any number of things could’ve caused her mom’s health concerns. There was no justification for me to assume she had a terminal illness. But the pain of living through loss had confiscated what was left of the small part of me willing to hope life would ever be more than indifferent.

I understood the look of fear in Jaycee’s eyes. Same as I understood this was a moment she needed to borrow the faith and confidence of a friend.

I sat beside her. “It’s going to be okay.”

She nodded, gaze locked on the whitewashed wall.

The fissure of doubt coursing through me widened. I swallowed and wrenched it back together. “Waiting can be the most unnerving part. Believe me, I know it’s not easy, but try to keep your mind on something else.” I squeezed her hand. “We’ll cross the bridges as they come.”

Outside, the beginning of a storm shook the screen against the window.

She nodded again, still without making a reply.

Some seasons, nodding was all we could manage.

I returned one of the reassuring smiles she’d lent me on so many occasions and fled to the kitchen before she saw it fall. I clenched the oven handle and leaned my whole body against it.

Eyes closed, I could almost feel Riley’s hands rubbing my arms the way they had in this same spot the morning I’d cooked him breakfast. Warm. Safe. I grabbed my cell from the counter and scrolled to his number. The ache of all that had changed stretched into each ring.

He had listened to me fall apart on the phone for an hour when I told him about Dee. I couldn’t break down in front of him again.
It’s going to be okay.
I flipped the burner on under the teakettle, took a deep breath, and headed back to the living room.

Someone answered the line right as I reached the edge of the carpet.

“Hello?” a woman asked in a groggy voice.

I lifted the phone from my ear and stared at the screen. Had I called the wrong number?

She yawned. “Hello?”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to reach Riley Preston.”

The words that came out didn’t match the ones racing to answer the unvoiced questions blaring in my mind. Maybe he lost his phone and someone had found it. Or he was in a meeting and left his phone with the receptionist.

“He’s . . . occupied at the moment.” A hint of smug satisfaction tailed another sleep-heavy yawn.

Her voice grated, and I realized then I’d heard it before. In the background of Riley’s calls. Always there.
Jess.

I forced down a swallow. “I’ll wait.”

“Don’t bother.”

I gripped the top of the nearest chair. “Excuse me?”

“Considering he’s in the shower right now, I doubt he plans on taking your call.”

The shower?
Apprehension seared. Her words, her sleep-covered voice, her simpering tone. She’d slept over.

The realization balled into a fist, jabbed me low in the gut, and severed the tattered threads holding me together. My whole body folded in half. The phone banged against the floor and jutted into the teakettle’s high-pitched whistle. I grappled for breath.

“Em? What’s wrong? Who was that?”

The sound of Jaycee’s voice coming from the couch couldn’t pull my eyes away from the phone at my feet.
This can’t be happening.

Jaycee scooted forward and pushed her textbook aside. “Emma?”

I couldn’t answer her. Had to move. Needed air. My legs took over and funneled me through the entryway and down the staircase.

The exit door thrust me into winter’s grip. Every muscle constricted, but I couldn’t go back inside. Still no breath. I didn’t know what else to do but keep moving.

The storm’s harsh wind whipped along the building and tunneled straight through the gaping hole in my chest. I hugged my coatless arms to my body. Bitter air pinched the tips of my ears with its icy prongs. Numbness expanded but not enough to curtail the pain.

The cold air plunged questions deeper until they pulsed with each heartbeat. My mind shifted into overdrive. Why else would Jess answer Riley’s phone while he was in the shower? My insides curled in revulsion at the only logical answer.

I ran back her comment. “
I doubt he plans on taking your call.
” Because she’d convinced him not to? Opened his eyes to see
she
belonged in his life, not some played out song? Power of persuasion. No words necessary. The image nearly choked me in a clinch of jealousy, shredding strips of my heart away until my own naiveté burned through again.

Everything had changed for me last year. I thought I’d finally seen meaning and purpose in all I’d gone through. Was it all a lie? A glass mosaic waiting to shatter?

Question after question, emptiness settled into the place it’d never fully released.

My gaze dragged along the ground with my footsteps. Glimpses of brick buildings passed along my sides. The wind carried a faint sound of people ahead of me. Talking. Laughing. Sounds that didn’t fit in my world right then.

I raised my head just in time to see someone approaching me. Fast. He turned and caught my shoulder with his.

“Oh, sorry.” He backed up a few steps and shook his curly hair from his eyes.

I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t seen me. I felt smaller than the ball in his hands.

The guy who’d thrown the pass down the walkway snickered into his coat sleeve.

“Hey, you all right?” Curly-haired Guy asked. Honest concern colored his voice.

No telling what I must’ve looked like. Frayed. Distraught. Fragile. The wind slithered up my back and snaked around my neck. I closed my arms over my sides again and nodded.

“You sure?”

I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Other than I couldn’t keep standing there. I pushed past him without lifting my head to make eye contact with his friend.

Pavement stretched. A row of threadbare trees bordered my path. Leaves covered the sidewalk. Some were pasted onto the concrete in the gloss of an earlier rain. Others, brittle and withered, crunched underneath my footsteps. My heart felt trapped somewhere between the two.

The third time I heard the same cluster of girls talking by one of the buildings confirmed I must’ve been walking in circles.

Two steps out of his apartment, A. J. met my glance. He jogged over. “What are you doing out here without a coat?”

I couldn’t answer.

He stood in front of me, hair flattened from a recent shower, concern growing on his face. “What’s wrong?” He drew me close without needing a reply. “Em, you’re freezing.” He rubbed my arms as he towed me inside.

Though out of the wind, the ache held on. I stopped over the threshold. He looked behind him. The bitter air had stung my eyes, yet I hadn’t cried. Not once. But as soon as the darkness I carried clashed with the light streaming in from the safety of A. J.’s apartment, I came undone.

He held me tight. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.” He brushed back my hair and rested his cheek over my head. “I’ve got you.”

Thoughts swirled. I couldn’t shut them out. Tito. Dee. Dad. Jaycee’s mom. Jess. The helplessness. Was that all any of us were? Helpless? I clasped A. J.’s shirt. Too weary to talk, too weary to stand. Everything closed in. The hurt, the betrayal, the failure.

Falling in love was as easy as falling asleep. Holding on to that love was like trying to hold on to a dream. Even when it felt more real than life. Now, I’d lost both.

The look on A. J.’s face burrowed into the pain. I couldn’t lose his friendship too.

“I need to go.”

He caught me before I opened the door. “Wait.”

My grasp slid off the knob. Drawing in a breath, I turned and faced him. Everything trapped inside me rushed to my eyes.

“Please don’t do this. Don’t shut me out.” He lifted a hand to my cheek. “Please, Em. Let me love you.”

My shoulder blades pressed into the door. Nowhere to go. His heartbeat pounded under my palm with the same pace as mine. If he moved another centimeter and brushed my lips, we’d erase the lines I never meant to blur.

chapter twenty-eight

Pieces

Standing this close to A. J., I nearly crumbled under the weight of Austin’s words.
“It’s easy to give away pieces of your heart if you don’t guard it.”

Everything we’d walked through together had been connecting our hearts. All this time. Past lines we’d drawn. Past intentions. To a place of vulnerability. A place that now confined us in the pain of ties we never should have formed, even if Riley had already let me go.

My hand trembled over his chest. “Please . . . don’t.”

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead to mine. “Emma,” he whispered.

Soundless words were all I could give.

His arms fell to his sides.

He reached for my hand as I turned. The corner of my ring caught his finger. Hurt touched his face. He backed away—this time, letting me leave.

Once through the doorway, I didn’t hesitate. I ran. Hard and fast until the wind’s blade thrashed through my lungs.

At the edge of the creek, I leaned over my thighs and forced in breaths. Pain surged. I dropped to my knees and dug my fingers into the grass, grasping for anything to keep the ground from caving.

Above me, the moon dimmed behind a borderless cloud. I strained not to lose sight of the stars. “Dad, please don’t leave me too.”

Minutes stretched. The cold soaked through again but only found numbness. The night drifted away, clouds following. Starlight pierced through and shimmered over the pavement with the memory of Dad’s voice.
“Nothing can overpower them. Not even the darkest backdrop.”

An inner strength lifted me to my feet right as Jaycee approached from the opposite end of the sidewalk. She stopped in front of me, hands on her knees. Puffs of breath collected in the air. “Jeez, girl, you been running a marathon around campus? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

The scene from the apartment replayed over the one right in front of me. I’d left without even saying anything to her. No wonder she was worried.

“Riley asked me to find you.” Straightening, she held out my cell. “Sorry. I couldn’t take hearing it ring one more time, so I answered.” She snatched her hand back and brandished one of her stern teacher-looks. “If Tramp Girl ever gets on the line again, you better tell me. No way homegirl’s hanging up without getting an earful from me next time.” She muttered a series of names as she handed over my phone.

I couldn’t help grinning. “Thanks for looking out.” A peek at the screen showed a string of missed calls. I pocketed the phone, not ready to deal with that.

Jaycee shimmied an envelope out of one pocket and my keys from the other. “Riley also asked me to check if this came in the mail yet.”

A sliver of light from the lamppost rested over the return address. Without thinking, I ripped into it. Riley’s handwriting seared the exposed nerve endings with a jolt of fresh pain.

Em, I missed you even more than usual today. We recorded “Unveiled.” No one else has any idea what I went through when I wrote that song last year. But all I could think about was playing it for you that night on your uncle’s deck. Hearing you say you’d marry me made it all worth it.

I wish you were here. In the middle of a run with Jake, the clouds broke and uncovered this amazing view of the sky. I stopped dead in my tracks. Poor Jake. I mean, I knew I was still in Nashville. But for a second, I almost believed I was back on the sports field with you in my arms. I tried calling. Hoped if we looked at the sky at the same time, you wouldn’t feel so far away.

I miss you, Em. God, I miss you. I’m counting the days until I get to hold you again. Every day I have to tell myself, ‘You’re braver than you think you are.’ And so are you. We’re almost through this. I love you, Emma Matthews. Always.

Riley

Always. The word melded into the tears landing on the letter shaking in my hands. I didn’t understand. How could he say that when he’d chosen Jess?

Jaycee set a hand on my arm. I flinched at her touch and backed up. I couldn’t stay there. Head down, I turned to run in the opposite direction.

Someone jogging up the walkway rammed into me. “Whoa.” Trevor’s expression morphed from surprise to mischief to concern, all in a matter of seconds.

The look on his face collided with a landmine of already-wired emotions. I rushed past him and didn’t slow until I reached the front of my apartment. The cold speared into the grip constricting across my chest. I needed an escape.

I bolted up the flight of stairs. Inside, I snagged Jaycee’s keys from the hook beside the door. Regardless if it didn’t make sense, I couldn’t handle driving Riley’s Civic right then.

The door to her Fiat shut behind me seconds later. I revved the engine and tore off toward the highway. I didn’t know where I was going. It didn’t matter. I just drove, clinging to hope that speed could free me from pain’s grasp.

Blood pounded in my ears. Mile blockers passed one after the other, each post another reminder that I couldn’t outrun fear. Same way I couldn’t outrun time.

A raindrop beat onto the windshield. Then a second and third. In an avalanche of sound, a solid blanket of water sheeted the glass. I fumbled around the edge of the steering wheel and flipped various levers until I found the wipers. Forced to slow, I glided over to the shoulder.

The streaks of rain cascading over the window ignited my own internal downpour. How many more fires could I walk through? I jerked the gearshift into park, slammed my fist into the steering wheel, and released a shriek.

My hands dropped to my lap. The rain’s consistent patter softened into a steady backdrop and drained the tension in my muscles like water irrigating a wound.

For the first time since I’d gotten in the car, I noticed music coming from the stereo. The orchestra’s intro to one of Jaycee’s and my favorite songs “Pieces” wove into the rain’s soft percussion. Note by note, the song on the CD collected each broken piece of the shattered song inside me.

Time stilled. Memories of the way Dad used to place my hand over my heart slowly fused the shards back together. And right there, in the midst of the storm, I sensed a father’s arms holding me close.

I turned the volume knob down with one hand, held my phone in the other, and scrolled to a number I hadn’t called in weeks.

“’Sup, Fire Starter,” Austin said with a laugh so much like Dad’s.

The quake of missing him held back any words.

“Em? Everything all right?”

“Yeah, just needed to hear your voice. How are you?” I picked at a coffee stain in the cup holder.

“Fine. You wanna tell me what—?”

“Things going well at work?”

“Ye-ah.” Austin stretched out the word. “But I doubt you called to hear how many key frames I rendered at work today. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

No point in hiding it. Not from him. “I miss Dad.” So much it hurt. “I need him here, Aust. I need him to tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

I tucked one foot under my leg in the seat. The piano on the stereo filled the quiet space.

“I know I’m not Dad,” Austin said. “But I’m here, if you want to talk.”

If I could figure out where to start.

“Does this have something to do with those blurred lines we talked about the other day?”

Of course he’d already know.

“They used to be so clear,” I said. “Now, I don’t even know which direction I’m moving. I don’t know what I feel anymore. . . .”

“You can’t always trust your feelings, Em. Sometimes you have to
lead
your heart instead of following it.”

“Said just like Dad.”

“Yeah, well, as many times as I heard it, it better have sunk in.” His laugh tapered into the quiet again. “He knew we’d flounder,” he said slowly. “That’s why he left all those life lessons with us. To help us find our way.”

Raindrops bounced in the puddles in front of the headlights’ beams. I closed my eyes and listened for any hint of Dad’s voice still there to guide me.

Austin must’ve sensed my doubt. “I’m not saying it’s easy. Just that he’d want us to trust what he taught us. Even when we can’t see how.”

Trust.
Dee believed me when I told him he needed to trust the stars were there even when he couldn’t see them. Where was my faith? I turned the wipers down. “It’s easier to be brave for someone else.”

Austin grunted. “Tell me about it. And trust me, I wish I could give you an easy answer as much as you do. But this is something you’re going to have to answer on your own.”

He really didn’t know how much like Dad he was, did he? I straightened in my seat. “Love you, Aust.”

“You too. And, Em?” An audible assurance filled his pause. “It’s going to be okay.”

Except he didn’t know what I still had to face. “Thanks.”

Ending the call brought the tiny voicemail icon on my cell into view. If fire tempered steel, I should’ve been strong enough by then to take another blow.

The panic in Riley’s voice escalated from one unanswered message to the next. “Hey, it’s me. When I got on the phone, I heard you and Jaycee in the background, but then the line went dead. Is everything all right? Call me.”

“Jess told me what she said. I know how that must’ve sounded. And believe me, we’re gonna have words. But listen, the whole band pulled an all-nighter at the studio. She crashed on the couch beside my phone. I was in the bathroom getting ready when you called. I’d never . . . Call me, please.”

“Em, this is killing me. I know this has been rough on us both, but it hasn’t changed my commitment to you. I love you, Emma. Please tell me you haven’t lost sight of that.”

But I had. Enough to believe he’d cheat on me. I chucked the phone on the seat. Guilt struck, anger right behind it. How could I have mistrusted him? Been so quick to jump to conclusions? And Jess . . . Who did she think she was?

My knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. A glance at my reflection in the rearview mirror drained my emotions dry. I had no one to blame but myself.

I picked up my cell again and stared at the dark screen, wishing I could start over with a blank slate. Unmarred.

The phone trembled against my ear.

Riley answered on the first ring. “Emma, thank God.” A slow exhale oozed with relief. “Did Jaycee find you? Did she tell you what happened?”

I fiddled with the keys in the ignition. “Yeah.”

“So, then you know I—”

“I know. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

Another fatigued exhale filtered through the line. “And I’m sorry I ever gave you a reason to doubt.” A loud clatter sounded in the background as if he’d knocked something over. “I hate this, Em. I hate what being apart has done to us. What
I’ve
done to us—”

“Stop it.” I sat up in my seat. “We
both
made choices. For better or worse.”

The silence on both ends of the call pulsed with words neither of us had.

Riley swallowed. “Does your choice still include me?”

His voice held the same urgency it had the day he flew to Nashville when he made me promise to trust in his love. Could we still trust in something so shaken?

“Sometimes you have to
lead
your heart instead of following it.”

Borrowing Dad’s assurance, I looked out the windshield toward the road still ahead of us. “Always.”