Page 95 of If This is Love

Emma had a long, stick-straight blonde ponytail, and she was dressed similarly to how she was for the previous meeting, wearing a sharp, slim black pantsuit with sharp, slim black heels. She had on a pair of limo-tinted shades and looked like either secret service for the President or a hot-shot detective. Basically, she was intimidating as fuck, especially given what I knew about her history. But she was also nursing whiskey on the rocks and smoking a cigarette while she rubbed her thumb over that scar dead-center on her forehead, looking a hell of a lot like how I felt about seventy-five percent of the time—you know, all that pointless time when I wasn’t with Ruth.

I approached the bar and pulled over a nearby stool, offering her a compulsory nod. “Emma.”

“Hey.” She held the cig between two fingers while pulling the shades off her face and held out her free hand like she wanted to shake. So I shook with her. She shook like a middle-aged man; firm, but quick, and then she waved the cigarette in the air. “Tell me if this bothers you. I don’t smoke. I quit smoking years ago. I just do it sometimes when I get stressed out, and I’m stressed out right now.”

“I’m actually slowly quitting.” What else was there to say to all that? I sat down and rested my elbows on the bar. “But you’re good.” I nodded at Missy as she approached. “How’re you doing, Ms. Missy?”

“I’m good,cher.” She reached to ruffle my short hair. “Black or gold?”

“I think I’ll go for the gold this afternoon, Ms. Missy.”

She tittered under her breath, turning and reaching under the counter before she tossed something to Gunner, and the old bastard caught it like he was a damn circus animal. “Hope it’s to celebrate your first date with Ruth.” She twirled a rag in the air, and I rolled my eyes way up to the ceiling and nearly to the back of my brain. “Get you some, Staff Sergeant, it’s beentoolong.”

I groaned into my palm, dropping my elbow on the bar. “These fucking people, I swear to fucking fuck—”

“Here.” Emma was wagging a pack of smokes in my line of sight. “One’s not going to knock you off the wagon.”

I took the pack and slipped one out, and she slid a lighter across the bar to me. “Spoken like a true addict,” I mumbled, cupping the cig while I lit it.

“AndI…” she inserted dramatically, “was atrueaddict.” She lifted her sweaty glass and tilted it at me. “I bet you didn’t know that about me.”

Hello, foot. Meet, mouth.

I eyed her, taking a long drag, and Missy set down my whiskey. “Nope.”

“Yeah, I was hooked on benzos and coke,” she said as casually as if she were discussing the weather, “and ultimately I wound up on a meth bender, and then I got atrueaddict’s intervention.” She flitted her wrist carelessly. “Austin was there. I tried to fight him, and I clawed his face like a feral cat.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Huh.”

“Yeah, if you look really closely, you can still see the scars.” She dropped her elbow to the bar and gave me a flat stare. “Because that was only five years ago. ThereasonI wound up on coke and meth and scratching my future husband’s face only happenedsixyears ago.” Emma shifted on her stool to face me directly, gesturing at herself emphatically with both hands, her brows high and pulling that scar into an oval. “I’mfucked up, Gabe.Me. Like, yeah, I set you off at the Rileys’ place, butweseteach otheroff at that last meeting. And fuckingAustinis like my perpetual trigger.” She paused and huffed loudly, twitching the ash on her cig above a little green glass dish. “I mean, I love him. Ilovehim. But he and I haveshit. I’m fucked up from what I went through, and he’s fucked up from watching what I went through with his hands tied and hopping on one leg. And we weren’t even on good termsbeforeall that.”

Emma paused to sip her drink, and I took a long drag, basically lost for words because I still didn’t really understand what we were doing here, and I definitely didn’t want to put my foot in my mouth again.

“Anyway, we lived through unbelievable shit, and we have issues,” she continued, “but like, he’s my guy. He just is, and we’re just in this life together. And situations like the one at the meeting just really get under my skin.” She turned to face forward, scoffing under her breath. “I just hate how basically everybody still looks at me with pity all the time. Five years of this is gettingreallyfuckingold. You know what I mean?”

I grunted, shifting to face forward as well. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Emma nudged the ashtray between us, and I flicked my cigarette in it. “My baby brother had to pick me up from Riley’s house that day, and then I made him fuckingcryon the drive home.”

“Ugh.” Emma dropped her head backward for a second. “Ihatewhen I make them fuckingcry.”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ salt in a festering wound.”

“Yeah,” she echoed. We settled into a brief silence laced with a few sips and drags, and then she tilted her glass toward me. “So, will you tell me about it now?”

I blinked, and chaos flashed behind my eyes. “Which part?”

“The part that makes you angry about the temple.”

I rubbed my eyes, and Gunner stood up to rest his head in my lap.

Emma turned to glance down at him. “You don’t have to if it’s going to make you hurt yourself. But maybe you want to hear about mine. Maybe if I tell you mine, yours might not seem as bad.”

I lifted my glass, swirling it in the air. “Think we’re gonna need a lot of this to swap war stories, Emma.”

“Well, I took acab.” She waved her drink. “So, buckle up,boyo, and make sure you let me know if I need to sugar coat any of it.”

I couldn’t help snorting and muttering sarcastically, “O-kay.”

“What,” she prompted, full of piss and vinegar and potentially a little tipsy already, “you don’t think anything I’ve seen is going to phase you?” She tilted her glass toward me. “Is that because I’m a woman or justnotmilitary—‘cuz you know you can’t call me a civilian. Civilians don’t spend time in the sandbox, so I’m not a civilian. So which is it?”

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