for the news to start. Was he in the studio, putting on his mic?
Calm down. He’s not there. The station would never hire him back. If they were going to change their minds, they’d hire me. I was better at the job than he was.
That was what she told herself until the news came on, anyway.
But then, there he was.
“You motherfucker!” she yelled.
“Is everything okay, dear?”
The first blast of the TV, before she’d turned it down, must’ve awakened Aiyana. Or Emery’s alarm going off in her room had been louder than she’d thought. The older woman was standing behind the couch in her nightgown and robe, but Emery hadn’t heard her coming. She’d been too highly focused, too engrossed in the questions swimming around in her mind and her own torment at the possible answers to those questions.
“He’s back!” She pointed at the screen. “He’s sitting right there, reading the news as if nothing ever happened. After what he did to me. He...he can’t get away with it. He’s destroyed my life. My dignity. My...my sense of worth and decency!”
Before she knew it, she wasn’t just telling Aiyana these things, she was screaming them, and yelling about what a bastard Ethan was and she couldn’t believe Heidi would let him get away with ruining her life.
A little voice in her head told her she needed to calm down. She never acted this way. It wasn’t right to do this to Aiyana, who’d been kind enough to take her in.
But once she let go of the monster inside her, there was no way to cage it again. She got so upset that she was afraid she might start throwing things or punching the wall, so she pivoted abruptly to leave the room—and knocked into a lamp.
It crashed to the floor, pelting her legs with glass, but she could scarcely feel it. Mortified that she’d been so thoughtless and clumsy, she dropped to her knees and grabbed a fistful of glass with the intention of cleaning it up so that no one would get hurt—and ended up cutting her hand.
“Don’t!” As Aiyana started toward her, Emery stood to search for the closest trash can. God, look what she’d done! The mess on the floor mirrored the mess of her life. Everything she’d suffered was coming to a head in that moment, tearing her apart, ruining all her hopes and dreams as well as tarnishing everything she’d accomplished in the past. And there was nothing she could do about it, not without inviting even more humiliation by trying to pursue justice.
She didn’t hear Dallas come up the stairs behind her, so she didn’t have any idea when he joined them—not until she found herself caught in his arms and held so tightly she couldn’t move.
Then all she could do was drop the glass she’d been trying to clean up, watch the blood drip off her fingers and sob.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” Emery cried. “I’ll leave now. Let me go. I’ll pay for the lamp and then I’ll be gone.”
Dallas could feel her body trembling against his. He could also see streaks of tears as he turned her around and she gulped for the breath to speak. When he’d been awakened by the screaming and cursing, he’d jumped out of bed and jammed his legs into a pair of jeans, but he hadn’t even taken the time to button them, let alone don a shirt before climbing the stairs two at a time to reach the living room.
“It’s okay.” Aiyana came around the couch to reach them. “Calm down. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not okay.” She turned her face into his chest rather than look at Aiyana. “It’s not right that I would take what’s happening out on you. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. I’ll replace the lamp.”
Aiyana stroked her hair. “I’m not worried about the lamp. I don’t care about things—I care about people. I care about you, and you’re in a safe place here with us. You can stay as long as you’d like. Maybe you needed to let out all that emotion. But with time, you’ll heal. You have to trust me on that. I’ve seen plenty of broken people put themselves back together again. Dallas is one of them.”
Emery seemed to have regained control, but Dallas still wasn’t sure whether it was safe to let her go. When he’d grabbed her, she was trying to pick up shards of glass without a care for getting cut, and