Page 112 of Blitzing Emily

She was numb. She was torn between screaming in pain and wanting to kill him with a dull fork. She felt like a block of ice: freezing cold, nobody could touch her.

Emily walked back into the living room with Amy’s cell in her hand. Amy shut the TV off.

“Watch the game,” Emily said. “I know you want to see it.”

“To hell with the game.” Amy patted the place next to her on the couch. “Let’s have some food, Em.”

“Not hungry.”

Amy ate pizza, drank beer, and the sisters talked about anything else but Brandon, Anastasia, and their daughter. Emily couldn’t bring herself to take a bite.

“I can stay,” Amy said. Emily handed her a foil-wrapped package of leftover pizza to take home.

“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Just don’t answer the phone.”

Emily’s home phone and her cell rang almost continuously throughout the evening. She unplugged the cordless in the living room, but it still rang in her room. “I won’t.”

Amy threw her arms around Emily. “Call me if you need me.”

“I will.”

“Liar.” She grinned. “I love you.”

“Love you, too. Thanks for coming over.”

Amy put her hand on the doorknob and then turned to Emily once more. “Give him a chance. There has to be another explanation. You met Anastasia. She’s awful.”

“He still wanted to sleep with her, didn’t he?”

Then he had slept with Emily. She swallowed hard. Maybe she wasn’t his type after all and he still preferred rail-thin supermodels. He said he loved her, but maybe she never was what he really wanted in the first place.

Maybe they were all wrong for each other.

“He’s not James.” Her sister grabbed Emily’s chin in her hand. “You never loved James, Em.”

She pulled away from Amy. “I’ll—I’ll be fine.”

EMILY CHANGED INTOan old, comfortable flannel nightgown and lay in bed, reading. Allegedly. She was too distracted to concentrate, or see the words on the page. She dropped the book on the nightstand and shut off the lamp. She tossed and turned for hours as she planned and plotted what to say to Brandon.

She would be strong. She was not letting this happen to her again. She would come out of this wiser and more resilient. The team’s plane wouldn’t arrive until very late and she expected Brandon to call and say he wasn’t coming over.

Instead she awoke in the dark to his murmured, “I’m home.” She’d forgotten he still had a key.

Brandon got into her bed fully dressed and tugged her into his arms. She jerked away from him.

“Come here.” He reached out for her.

“No. No, I don’t want to.”

Emily got out of bed and stood, trembling, next to it. The helpless, numb feeling she had earlier that evening was now white-hot fury. Against every outward indication, she had trusted him. She had believed in him. He had used it against her. How many times would she have to learn that maybe thingswereexactly as they seemed? To quote an old cliché, tigers didn’t change their stripes. And ladies’ men didn’t become one-woman guys, either.

She was an idiot. She wanted to hurt him as deeply as he’d hurt her, but there was nothing she could say or do that would accomplish this. She wrapped her arms around herself.

He took a deep breath.

“Sugar, I know you probably think I’m nuts, but I don’t understand how this happened.”

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