Page 61 of All I Need (Hearts of the South)
She nodded and slipped from the truck. “I’ll see you later, right?”
“Yeah, of course.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair and smiled. “I’ll be there for you.”
Chapter Twelve
“So, you slept with her, but you’re riding to Valdosta with me?” Even behind his sunglasses, Clark’s intense frown was obvious.
“Yes.” Emmett slumped in the seat, balancing a half-cup of lukewarm coffee on his thigh. For once, his leg wasn’t bothering him. Instead, his head and throat hurt. And maybe his heart, although he was pretty certain that wasn’t a physical ache. It only felt like one. “You already asked me that.”
“I’m trying to wrap my mind around it.”
“There is nothing to wrap your mind around.” Irritable, he stretched. He should have simply driven his own vehicle. “I need some time and space to think.”
“You can’t do that when she’s around?”
“No.” Not clearly, anyway. Not the kind that counted. All she’d had to say was “I want you”, and all his good intentions about waiting until he was more sure of her went out the window.
Silence descended for a couple of miles. Emmett closed his eyes and waited.
“Em, you are going to have to break this down for me.”
“What is there to break down?” He grimaced over a swill of tepid brew. “You know how I feel about her, and now I’ve gone to bed with her.”
“And you’re over there feeling all committed and everything. Am I right?”
“Pretty much.” He set the cup in the console. Resting his elbow on the windowsill, he gazed out at the rolling countryside of Brooks County—green pastures, pine forests, swampy wetlands, all meshed together.
“That’s weird.” Clark rubbed a knuckle over the end of his nose. “Because you’re usually Mr. She’s-Great-and-All-But-Neither-of-Us-Wants-Anything-Serious. This is so not that. I’m not sure…wow.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t think about it, you know, during, because—”
“Who would?”
“But after…it’s like all I could think about was that if things were different, she wouldn’t even be there with me. I’m not the guy.” He rubbed a hand down his thigh. “I’m never going to be that guy.”
Clark glanced his way, opened his mouth, closed it, and shook his head. His silence was answer enough. He got it.
They crossed the line into Lowndes County, the Withlacoochee River lazing under the bridge. A state trooper sat in the median on the other side, and Clark lowered his speed a couple of miles per hour.
“So you’re brooding or thinking?”
“Thinking.” Maybe a little of both, but damned if he’d admit it. “I have to decide if I can live with that—can I be committed, knowing she doesn’t love me and that there’s always someone she wants more than me.”
“Man, you need to be having this conversation with her, not me.”
“I tell her I love her and she’s gone.” He passed a hand over his jaw. Hell, big-ass chickens were coming home to roost, from every time he’d chastised his mother about her relationship with his dad. In his arrogant teenage anger, he’d thought he had all the answers. “This is how Mama felt all those years.”
“Maybe.” The speed limit dropped at the far outskirts of Valdosta, and Clark slowed. “This isn’t quite the same thing as your dad not being able to keep it in his pants and your mama deciding to stay around. You’re not the guy, but you could betheguy eventually.”
“What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means that she might not love you now, but she might love you later. People do that, you know—fall for someone else after a loss. Your problem is you go hyperaware on certain details and then you lose the big picture. Take care of the details with her, and maybe the big picture will take care of itself.”
* * * * *
The old panic wanted to take up residence in Savannah’s chest. Standing with Rob and Amy as the pastor took them through the questions preceding Hamilton’s baptism into their church family, Savannah tried to put the pressure and inability to breathe down to the fact two years had elapsed since she’d been in this church…in any church for that matter. She was angry at God, He knew she was angry at Him, and she knew He would be waiting when she came out on the other side of that anger.
Even so, she simply wasn’t there yet.
