all week long.”
“You know how much I love the beach.” Sarah jumped up and down. “Count me in.”
“Me, too,” Emily agreed. “As long as you’re cool with us crashing part of your vacation.”
“The house I rented has three bedrooms, so there’s plenty of room.” Emme stared up at me with wide eyes. “But only if Corby is okay with you guys joining us for part of the trip.”
As long as I got to spend time with Emme, I didn’t mind if her best friends hijacked her plans. “It seems only fair that Emily and Sarah join us since I would’ve come along if you three did a girls’ trip instead.”
“Woohoo! This is awesome.” Emily did a fist pump to celebrate.
“I need to buy some new swimsuits before we leave.” Sarah pointed at Emme and asked, “When do we leave?”
“The reservation is for two days from now. Corby and I have something we need to do tomorrow before we leave.”
Emme was full of surprises today. “We do?”
She gripped my biceps and went up on her toes. Whispering near my ear, she added, “I thought we could go see your dad before we head to California.”
“Shit, Emme.” I pulled her close and buried my face in her neck. Although the hockey season had been over for a little more than two months, I still hadn’t made the drive up to the prison to see my dad. Emme and I hadn’t really talked about it again since the day I told her about what happened when my mom died, but somehow, she must have known the decision had been weighing on my mind all this time. It took me a moment to pull myself together enough to say, “I’d really fucking love to take you to meet my dad, baby. Thank you for giving me the nudge I needed to finally go up there.”
The following morning, Emme and I hit the road in her BMW. Luckily, she was okay with me driving because concentrating on the road kept me from freaking out during the five-hour trip to the prison. Going through prison security with her at my side was uncomfortable and humbling, but she hadn’t complained about a single step of the process. As we entered the lobby area to wait for my name to be called, Emme tugged on my arm and pointed at a kiosk in a corner on the opposite side of the room. “From what the guard said, we should have enough time to add some money to your dad’s commissary account.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”
She tugged me across the room and pressed some buttons on the screen before holding her hand out. “I need your license.”
I pulled out my wallet and handed it to her. She held it under a scanner and gave it back before she explained, “I did some research into prison life, and everything I read said you can help your family member be more comfortable by adding money to their commissary account. As long as we’re here, I thought we could take care of that for your dad.”
Yet again, my girlfriend’s kindness blew me away. She didn’t care that my dad was in prison for killing a man. The only thing that mattered to her was that I loved him. “Shit, I only have a couple of twenties.”
“No worries, I hit up the ATM yesterday.” She pulled a stack of bills out of her purse. “It said online that some prisons have a limit to how much you can add. If this place doesn’t, I wanted to make sure your dad could buy anything he needs since he’s been on his own in here for so long.”
Emme’s money had never been a problem for me, probably because she’d never made an issue of it. She spent what she wanted on the things important to her, but she didn’t throw her money around to impress other people. But I never wanted her to doubt that I was with her because of who she was and not what she could buy. Wrapping my fingers around her wrist before she could insert bills into the machine, I rasped, “You know I love you and not your money, right?”
“You love me?” she gasped, her eyes going wide.
This wasn’t the romantic setting where I’d planned on telling her about my feelings, but visiting my dad in prison was significant to me and somehow made this the perfect moment. Cupping her face in my hands,