I don’t remember what happened to Laura’s copy. I left all her things. I couldn’t deal with any of it. I wanted to move on. I wanted to start my plan of revenge against my father. It took years, but I got it eventually.
“It’s me, Emmanuel. I’m telling you my mother’s house is covered in pictures of me. This one is in her living room. I haven’t been there in years, but I know my mother had an obsession with my looks. She loved displaying her beautiful daughter all over her house. I doubt that would have changed now,” she says.
“How?”How could her mother have a photograph of Laura? Why would she have it?
“I don’t know,” Evie says.
“I’m sorry. I should have told you. I didn’t want to scare you away. I can’t lose you, Evie. I know this looks bad. Fuck, I get it. But I need you. Don’t take the one thing in the world that I actually love.” I’m begging her. I really can’t lose her.
“You don’t love me, E. You love her,” she says.
“No.” I shake my head. I reach out and pick up her hands. “I love you. It’s you, not her.”
“I can’t spend my entire life wondering if, when you’re looking at me, you’re thinking about her.”
“I don’t. The only thing I think about is you, Evie. You. I think about us, our future. I will never let anyone come between us, especially not a fucking ghost,” I growl. “I didn’t love her. I thought I did, but I didn’t know what love was until I met you.”
“You’ve been following me since I was sixteen,” she says.
“Only a few photos,” I clarify.
“It’s still creepy.”
“I would never hurt you, Evie.” I might have had the thought once, but I have not wanted her to die for a really fucking long time.
“I know,” she says. “I need to go and see my mother.”
“You want me to take you to the woman’s housewho sat back and watched you get abused for years?” I don’t know if I can do that.
“I need to know who she is.” Evie looks at the picture of Laura again.
“She was a foster care kid, a street kid. She grew up in and out of homes, Evie. She didn’t have family. She had me and the guys. She was an addict,” I explain.
“You don’t need to come with me, but I am going to go and speak to my mother.” Evie pushes to her feet. She’s wearing one of my dress shirts. “And after that, if you still want to marry me, you can take me to Milan.”
“There is noif, Evie. I am marrying you.” I stand and pull her into my arms.
“I’m not going to lie, E. It hurts. Knowing you’ve known about me all these years and you didn’t even say hello? Not even a DM.Like, hey, BTW, we’re soul mates. Just thought you should know,” she says.
“I was an idiot. I thought I could keep you in a box. You were safe there.”
“I feel safest right here, in your arms,” she whispers, holding me tighter.
I don’t know what I did to get this woman to love me so unconditionally, but I am not going to fuck this up.
Chapter Forty-Nine
My mind is a mess. The only thing I know for sure is that I love Emmanuel. It hurts, knowing that he watched me, collected photos of me. That he lived in some alternate reality where his girlfriend didn’t die at sixteen. I honestly don’t know how to process it. I do know that I can’t make any rash decisions based on being hurt. I knew that he loved her. I knew he grieved her loss. And I also knew Ilook like her.
I thought we had similarities. But I didn’t think we looked exactly alike.
Emmanuel keeps eyeing me, as if I’m going to break down or run. Either is a possibility, but I’m not going to. Once I decided I was going to visit my mother, I went and got dressed. Did my hair and makeup to perfection and straightened my crown, so to speak.
I’ve spent all of my adult life pretending to be okay, when I was far from it. I can do it now too. He knows, though. When Emmanuel looks at me with concern, it’s because he knows I’m not okay. He’s literally the only person who has ever seen through my façade. The only person who stops and looks hard enough to see all the broken pieces inside.
It’s not that my friends don’t care. It’s just that I don’t like showing them the ugly parts of me. I don’t want to be a burden. I glance back at Emmanuel and give him a smile. The kind that usually eases people’s worries.
“Don’t do that,” he says.
