“Unless she throws your phone in the ocean. Or a pool.” She grinned. “Maybe the shower.”
Caleb clamped her close for a kiss. Not one but two. “She won’t. I’ll call you.”
She walked with him to his truck, and at the driver’s side door, Caleb had one last thing to say.
“Em, I’m not trying to recapture some teen fantasy from our summer together. We both have bittersweet memories from that year.”
“We do.”
“But is it possible we metthenfornow? Sixteen years later, we’re back to where we started. Only now we can say yes to love.” At his truck, he raised her face to his. “You stole my heart a long time ago. Either give it back or love it. Love me.”
“If I keep your heart, then I’ll give you mine.” She peered up at him. “But for this moment, can my kisses be enough?”
27
EMERY
The light of her phone lit the dark room, and Emery slapped her hand against the night table, fumbling for it, yanking it off the charger. “Hello?”
From the corner, the old digital clock read 5:05.
It was too early to be Caleb. He’d arrived in Mobile late last night and booked a room for himself and Bentley. Cassidy remained locked away.
“It’s a dive,but clean. Bent has anunoccupied bathroom.”
“Hello?” Head still planted on her pillow, she waited for an answer, holding onto the depths of sleep where she was free, no longer the center of a royal scandal.
“Em, you got to come.” It was Ava, her voice soft and frantic.
Emery sat up, snapping awake. “Why? What happened? Is it Jamie? If he broke up with you—”
“No, no, we’re good. It’s, um, Mom. Joanna. Dad’s beside himself.”
“Mom?” She pictured her mom, small and pale, wheezing the death rattle in her hospice bed. “I mean, Joanna? Is she all right?” Emery threw off the covers and stumbled against the antique chest of drawers.
“She was standing in the café office and—” She began to weep, and a voice sounded in the background.
“Em, it’s me, Jamie. Can you come? Doug and the girls are struggling. I know family is not your thing—”
“I’m on my way.”
“Are you sure?”
“I said I’m on my way.”
* * *
She’d never been in a hospital. Once she and Dad returned from Sea Blue Beach with a weakened Mom, hospice came to their house to care for her. Walking the white hall with brown doors toward Joanna’s room—after fifteen hours on the road with a gallon of coffee and a gallon of Diet Coke—she was spacey and jittery, not braced for what awaited on the other side of the door.
Nevertheless, she peered into the room through the dim lights to see Dad perched by the bed, his hand locked with Joanna’s, his expression drawn—a look she knew well. A look that defined her anxiety every minute on the road, no matter how loud she played the radio. No matter how loud she sang along. Nothing conquered her real and surprising fear of losing Joanna.
Ava rose first, her brown eyes tired but bright. She gripped Emery close. “Thank goodness you’re here. We need you.”
“You do?” she whispered. Really? Even with Dad and the sisters here? And Jamie?
“You’re our rock.” Elianna moved Ava aside to hug Emery. Blakely piled on, stretching her long arms around them.
“We’re all here now,” Ava said. “Though I’d rather stage this family reunion at my wedding, not in Mom’s hospital room.”
