She seems a little bloodthirsty right now.
“You might want to tell Sabrina that,” Laney says.
“Mama Fed titty eat Dodo Ono!” Bash suddenly shrieks.
Theo disappears like a magician while Emma pulls away and looks down the hallway like she can see the cat playing with her chicken.
“Drop the chicken, Fred,” Theo orders.
Yolko Ono bagocks pathetically.
Emma squeezes her eyes shut and sighs, and Laney moves in and takes over hug duty.
I feel fucking useless.
And Ihatefeeling fucking useless.
I can take her to New Hampshire. Plenty of security there.
“When the reporters came for Theo, they left after about a week,” Laney tells me. “I have no idea if we collectively learned as a town to chase reporters away more efficiently or if you’re a big enough name that we’re fucked.”
New Hampshire is definitely the route to go.
If Emmawantsto go.
Her chickens are here. Bash’s daycare—which may or may not be an option now—is here. Her job is here.
She doesn’t have to work for money—I will absolutely make sure of that—but I know she likes having a role in the community. That’s the need her job fills for her.
Belonging. Participating.
Normalcy.
And I’ve been fooling myself to think that this day wouldn’t come.
Emma pulls back from Laney’s hug. “I’m okay,” she says. “I’m okay. They can’t hurt us. I mean, theycan, but they can’t…destroy us.”
She gulps.
And I have never,everfelt more impotent in my entire life.
I can’t show her how to handle this fast enough. There’s no four-hour seminar for building mental and emotional resilience to what people say about you. No weekend retreat that’ll transform well-earned anxiety into self-confidence. She can’t walk through a magic door with legit worries and fears and come out on the other side a new kind of badass wearing that rubberwhatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to yousuit.
This is when I should ask her if she wants out.
But there is noout.
The only thing I can do for her now if she wants out is to deny I know her and deny that Bash is mine.
Which I will do.
If she wants me to.
It’ll cost me my entire heart and probably one of my lungs and definitely my happiness for the foreseeable future, but if that’s what she wants, that’s what I’ll do.
“Emma—” I start, but she turns a glare on me that cuts me off at my knees.
“Donoteven think about saying out loud what you’re about to say,” she says. “This is part of who you are. You’re willing to turn your entire life inside out and upside down and walk away fromeverythingfor us, and you don’t think I’d do the same for you? I don’t like people knowing who I am. I don’t like people knowing who Bash is. ButI chose thiswhen I kept him. AndI choose this now. I chooseyou. The good and the bad. So don’t go pulling a Mr. Sacrifice It All movie-hero move, okay? Just—justbe hereand show me how to get through it. Help me through it. Please?”
