Page 28 of Stolen Dreams

“Wait until the Christmas fair comes to town, and then we have the Santa Claus parade down Main Street.”I smile at her.“It’s my favorite time.What’s your favorite holiday?”

“Christmas,” she answers softly.“It was mine and my mom’s.”

I reach over and squeeze her hand in mine, and she gives me a small smile.“Okay, I got two of everything,” Emmett announces, holding two trays in his hands.“I didn’t know what you wanted.”I get on my knees to grab the tray from him, and his eyes go to me kneeling, and I can see his jaw getting tight.

“Are you okay?”I ask, taking the tray from him and slowly putting it on the middle of the blanket.I see he got two of everything: burgers, hot dogs, corn, fries, and chips.I reach up for the second tray, but he bends and places it in the middle, and I see it’s filled with water bottles and condiments.“Here are the napkins.”He pulls them out of his back pocket before sitting at the other end of the blanket.“What do you want to eat, Lucy?”he asks first, and I have to say he’s giving this his everything.He’s such a good dad even though I know he thinks he’s not doing that good of a job.

“Can I have a burger?”she asks, and he hands her a burger with a napkin.

“Do you want ketchup on it?”he asks, and she shakes her head at him.“What about you, Lilah?”

“I’ll have whatever you don’t want,” I tell him.“I’ll take the hot dog.”I pick up the hot dog and leave the burger for him.

The three of us eat together, and I do most of the talking while the father and daughter answer with one word.I get up when we are finished, and Emmett cleans up the blanket.As I’m going to fold it up, a family comes over and asks if they can have it.

We walk around the schoolyard, seeing the games being played.“Look, a dunking tank.”I point out to the side to see the older kids trying to get one of the teachers in the water.“We should get that for the barn,” I tease and look over at Emmett, “and you should sit down, and we should try to dunk you.”The idea makes Lucy laugh.

“You think you could actually knock me off?”He side-eyes me, and I shake my head.

“Nope,” I tell him, “but I have no problem with running and smacking that white bull’s-eye with my hand.”Lucy and I both laugh as he grumbles.“Are you going to show me what you’ve been working on?”I ask Lucy, who looks at me and nods.“Lead the way.”For the past week, she’s been coming into the barn after school and doing her homework beside me.I usually stay late doing my own things while she sits there.She’s starting to come out of her shell if only a bit, but it’s better than the way it started.

She pulls open the brown door.Emmett holds his hand up to secure the door, so I have to walk past him.I can smell his musky cologne, and all I want to do is plaster myself to him and get the smell on me.The T-shirt he kissed me in last week has been on my chair.His smell is almost gone, but the memories still lurk in my head.Which then, most nights, leads me to touching myself with his smell all around me.I look down at my feet to make sure no one sees my face turning beet red.It doesn’t help that we walk side by side, following Lucy down the corridor past the open doors and people walking in and out of them.

I spot a couple of the classrooms with fall decorations and some early Halloween decorations inside them when we finally get to Lucy’s classroom.“Here it is,” she says, walking into the dimly lit room, her teacher smiling at her when she spots her, and her smile gets bigger when she sees Emmett.

I almost roll my eyes at her.“Hello, Lucy,” she says, tucking her hair behind one ear.“Mr.,” she says shyly, “Emmett,” she corrects herself, then she looks at me.“Hi, I’m Ms.Summer.”

“I’m Lilah.”I hold up my hand, but then look back down at Lucy.“Okay, let me guess which one is yours.”I look around the room.The desks are lined up in three rows, and each desk has a different Halloween project on it.Some of the desks have Mason jars decorated and some have flowerpots planted, but then we get to the desk with what looks like branches all glued together with a hole in the middle and a cotton ball with a plastic spider in the center.“This is it.”I look at it and then look at Lucy, whose eyes go big.“This is yours.”

“How did you know?”she asks.I feel Emmett standing at my back, the heat from his body seeping into me.

“We walked in the forest the other day, and you stopped and collected a bunch of branches,” I remind her.“Never would I think you would do this.”I point at the desk and look over my shoulder at Emmett.“Isn’t it cool?”

“It is,” he agrees with me, then leans in even closer, his mouth coming to my ear, my pulse speeding up.“What is it?”I put my hand to my mouth to stop the laugh that wants to escape, and lucky for us, one of Lucy’s classmates comes in and calls her over.She walks to her, and the two of them walk out of the classroom, leaving us alone.

I turn my head to the side and come almost nose to nose with him.“It’s a…” I feel his hand go to my hip, the words escaping my mind.Everything escapes me when I feel his touch on me.“It’s a—” I lick my lips because my mouth is suddenly dry.His eyes lust over when I lick my lips, and I wonder if he’s feeling the effect of me like I feel about him.“It’s a spiderweb wreath,” I say with my voice cracking at the end, and I have to clear my throat.

“Huh,” he grunts and then looks at the desk but doesn’t move away from me.I grab the pencil on the desk with the sheet beside it and see three other people bid on it.I put my name down and place a bid of one hundred dollars before putting the pencil down.He lets go of my hip, but only to reach for the pencil beside me.Instead of going around me, he stays at my back, reaching around me.His other hand comes up to my side, his middle fingers touching the skin that is exposed from the T-shirt riding up on that side.I close my eyes for a second to get my bearings, and when I open them, he’s writing down his name and then placing a bid for five hundred dollars.

“Emmett,” I whisper-hiss at him when he finishes and tosses down the pencil.The hand at my side drops at the same time.

“I’m not going to be outbid,” he declares.I turn to face him but stop halfway when I realize we’ll lose that connection, so I stop with my shoulder in the middle of his chest.“That’s my daughter’s art.”He looks down at me.“It’s coming home with me.”

“My, my,” Ms.Summer says, coming to us and looking down at the sheet, “that’s very generous of you.”

“It is,” I agree with her.“I’m going to look around.”I avoid looking at the two of them before walking away from him.“I’ll see if I can find Lucy.”Walking away from him, I still feel his hand on my hip.I exit the classroom and turn right toward the darkness of the hallway instead of walking toward the light, needing a minute by myself.The yellow tape tells everyone they shouldn’t come down here, but I duck under it for a second.

Turning the corner away from the noise, I lean my back against the wall and close my eyes and put my head back on the concrete wall, trying to get my breathing under control, when I hear my name.“Lilah,” he says softly, stepping into the dark corridor with me, ducking under the same yellow tape, “what are you doing?”

ChapterSeventeen

EMMETT

Iturn to the side and watch her walk away from me, my body missing the heat from her.My fingers reflexively move, wanting to grab her hand before she rushed out of here.

“You don’t have to bid so much,” Ms.Summer tells me.“We usually just end up giving it to the parents’ top bid.”

I look down at the paper, seeing Lilah’s name and then my name.“No worries.”I turn to her.“Excuse me, I’m going to go and make sure Lilah found Lucy.”I turn to walk out of the classroom, looking to the side and seeing she isn’t walking down the corridor, so it means she went the other way.

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