Page 24 of All I Need (Hearts of the South)
A white Ford F-150 sat crosswise behind Emmett’s own truck. Rob Bennett slammed the driver’s side door and strode around the hood. Savannah shoved open her car door and left it standing wide open. She ran into Bennett’s arms.
He caught her to him in a close embrace, enfolded tightly against him. He lowered his head, mouth near her ear, and Savannah pressed closer, arms about his neck.
Son of a bitch.
Emmett couldn’t quite process what he was seeing, but the basics were plain enough. Savannah was wrapped up with another guy, anothermarriedguy at that. They stood in a long embrace, Bennett stroking his hands over her hair, her back, and back up again.
With Bennett’s arm around her, Savannah’s arm about his waist, the pair turned and walked toward Savannah’s apartment, close enough that her hip bumped against his. Bennett lowered his head to brush his mouth across her forehead. Emmett let the blind slat fall into place and stepped back. Fury detonated in his chest, sending heat up his neck and across his shoulders.
He really didn’t need this shit in his life.
Her door closed with a quiet thump, and silence reigned. His imagination did a dandy job of creating scenarios of what was happening next door, Savannah touching Bennett the way she had Emmett, Bennett carrying out what Emmett had called to a halt. The mental images only served to fuel his anger.
The silence beat against his ears.
This time, he wasdone.
* * * * *
Somehow, Savannah held it mostly together until Rob left. Oh, sure, she’d cried on his shoulder, but she held the maelstrom inside until the door closed behind him and his truck rumbled away. Once she was finally, completely, safely alone, she leaned against the door and let the emotions have their way.
The grief and anger slammed over her in a tsunami of memories. She neededsomethingto supplant the images, to get the overwhelming smell of blood out of her nostrils. Although she knew the scent wasn’t really on her hands, it remained all she could smell. She flattened her palms against the door and pushed away from the steel-core slab to stagger down the hall to her bedroom.
She smeared tears from her face, nose running, and swung the closet door open. In the dimness, she crouched on the floor and tugged her phone from her pocket. She let it fall to the carpet and pawed through the small stack of storage boxes. She drew the blue floral box onto her lap and removed the lid. With sobs tearing at her chest and throat, she ran her fingertips across the plastic bag and the black T-shirt folded inside it. She lifted the bag and held it close to her chest. Eyes closed, she tried to pull up an image of Gates’s face. In her mind, it blurred and shifted, the sharpness of memory dulled by time and pain.
Still weeping, she peeled apart the zipper strip sealing the bag and lifted it to her face. Nothing, only the sharp aroma of plastic. Panic seared her throat and bloomed into deeper sobs.
Why couldn’t she smell him?
She dragged the shirt free of its plastic casing. That night, the shirt had waited for her, tossed carelessly on the foot of their bed where Gates had discarded it. She’d been able to smell him everywhere then—on their pillows, in their sheets, on this shirt. Desperate to preserve the sensory memory, she’d sealed the shirt away, only taking it out when the grief got too strong.
And now she couldn’t catch any hint of his aroma at all.
Another scent wafted to her, a distinct male note blended with soap.
Emmett.
Wiping fresh tears from her cheeks, she glanced around, gaze falling on her discarded black dress, crumpled on the floor next to the wall where she’d kicked it off the other night. She lifted it for a moment, Emmett’s smell filling her nostrils. Fury charged through her and she flung the garment out of the closet, onto the bedroom floor. Lifting Gates’s shirt to her face, she moaned into the well-worn fabric. Huge, gulping sobs shook her, her chest so tight she couldn’t breathe beyond the heaving.
Some part of her recognized the anger as irrational, but having Emmett’s sensory imprint present when she couldn’t find Gates’s any longer infuriated her. She didn’t want to examine the implications too closely, any more than she wanted to entertain Amy’s assertion that she and Emmett were already in a relationship.
Because they weren’t. They never would be.
She fumbled for her phone. Through tear-blurred eyes, she scrolled through her saved voicemails until she found the last one that mattered.
“Hey, baby. Looking forward to seeing you tonight.” She listened to Gates’s voice, clutching the shirt that no longer smelled like him. She didn’t bother to wipe away the tears, letting them drip onto her scrubs. “I love you so much, Savannah. I cannot wait for Saturday.”
Voices in the background, a radio call.
The last radio call.
“Listen, baby, I’ve got to go. I’ll see you.”
She buried her face in soft fabric and found no trace of him.
Somehow Emmett’s clean scent lingered in the closet, and she hardened her heart. She would not let him take Gates’s place. No one could do that.
Just as she’d planned, she’d keep him in his designated slot in her life. Friendly company. Sex. That was it.
