Page 59 of Higher Ground
She supposed maybe it was. It felt like her life was beginning and ending all at once, right when it was just starting to getgoodagain.
“I should have known that falling into bed with Byron was going to end like this.”
“Who said it’s ending?”
“Ah, the interview? The fact that I need to move to the city to get the job of my dreams? The fact that I can’t stay here, even though it breaks my heart to acknowledge that.”
All her resolve from the day before had crumbled. Yes, she loved Byron and didn’t want to leave him. But she couldn’t see any way in which the two of them could be together. He loved the farm, he loved the town, and she didn’t. They were too different, no matter how perfectly their bodies fit together. Whatever it was that floated between them was always going to be finite. She knew that going in, she’d just let herself get too swept away by it to care.
Her heart had fallen, utterly and completely, into the deepest murky waters of the flood. And now she was left, crying on the kitchen floor because achieving her dreams was going to break it.
She had to, though. She had to break her heart, and Byron’s. He’d be okay, eventually. He had Tucker here, and now Jaxon was back in town, Byron had a chance to make things right between them again. She wasn’t going to be the thing that kept them apart any more than she already had been.
“Can I ask you something?” Mya’s voice was tender, and she nudged her toe against Emory’s leg.
Emory didn’t think she had the stamina for words. Not when everything was falling to pieces around her. She looked up, placing her mug of cooling tea on the floor. Her cheeks were wet again, but this time she let the tears spread. Everything else was a mess, her face might as well join the crowd.
“Does Byron feel this way, too?”
Of course he did. Emory hugged herself, wanting to believe it. He’d said as much, hadn’t he? Sure, it had been in a fit of protective rage, and he’d said it to Jaxon, not to her, but it still meant the same. Didn’t it?
Oh, God, she wasn’t sure. What if his words had been a lot more general than she had interpreted them? What if he simply meant that he cared for her, the same way he cared for Clayton? Not that heloveloved her. She had to believe all the times he said he didn’t want her to go, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised that all of those things had always been said in the heat of a very lust-filled moment.
Neither of them had said as much when they were fully clothed. Emory wondered why that was. Why Byron was hiding his true feelings behind their wild sexual encounters. Why she was.
“I think,” Mya answered when Emory didn’t, “that if you don’t know the answer to that question easily, you need to give this interview everything you’ve got. Get all your options clear and on the table, and maybe then, the right choice will become more obvious.”
Yeah, Emory could hope so. But with her back-and-forth emotions over the past week, she just wasn’t sure. It was as though every time Byron was near, desire flooded her body faster than the water had flooded the fields. It took over every part of her until there was no room for anything else. She couldn’t think straight in this house.
It didn’t matter how far Clayton’s toys had spread, or that his television shows were constantly streaming nursery rhymes through the house. It didn’t matter that she’d taken over the study or that she had her own bedroom, even though she hadn’t slept in that bed for a week now. It was still Byron’s house, and he was everywhere even when he wasn’t.
Picking up her tea, she gulped down the now lukewarm drink. It did little to ease the scratching in her throat, and nothing to reduce the pressure on her chest.
“I don’t think there is a right choice,” she admitted when her mug was empty. “At least not one that can be made whileI’m staying here. Any time I come even close to realising that I should still work on my dreams, Byron swoops in and makes us breakfast or stands up for me or fucks me senseless. All the rational thoughts leave my brain until all that’s left is this never-ending need for him.”
Clayton’s clapping at the end of a song echoed through to the kitchen. Maybe she should take him back to the cottage. Take the couple of weeks left on the lease to properly pack away all the furniture and try to return to something that resembled normal life. Although she had no idea what normal looked like anymore.
Her phone pinged in her lap. The email from Ashleigh, already. The firm’s eagerness was exhilarating, and surely a good sign.
The tips of Emory’s fingers tingled as she opened the email and read through the invite. The first two paragraphs outlined the position, and that Ashleigh was the hiring manager and graduate coordinator. Most of the information was exactly what Emory had expected. The job was, on paper, made for her and her dreams. She wouldn’t just be some lackey of a graduate, making coffee and taking minutes. Sydscape gave their newest employees a small portfolio of clients, and they were mentored through the year as they managed everything in the account. It was the proper chance at utilising her marketing degree that she’d been hoping for all along.
It just really sucked that it would cost Emory her heart.
Chapter 30
Byron
An odd silence ran through the house when Byron slid open the back door. He froze, half inside, waiting.
“Get in, it stinks out here.” Tucker shoved him from behind.
Still, Byron hesitated. Something was missing. Stepping in, he moved to the side, trying to catalogue what had changed since he left to work on the farm that morning. Nursery rhymes still chimed from the TV, granted, they were far more upbeat at this time of the afternoon. But even so, the space was too quiet. Clayton wasn’t singing along or banging toys together like makeshift cymbals. Emory wasn’t shuffling about, tidying after her son, or tapping away on her keyboard and humming from the study. And neither of them had greeted him at the door.
He hadn’t realised just how used to their presence he had gotten. It worried him, but not as much as their absence did. A sour taste lined his tongue that had nothing to do with the stench of the flood outside. He tried to swallow it away, but it came back ten times stronger with each dry gulp.
Where were they? Wasn’t Mya supposed to be here too?
He didn’t dare call out in case Clayton was sleeping. That would explain the young boy’s absence, at least.
