“Okay, yes, you can call me then, but I reserve the right to not answer if I’m still busy.”
“Jesus, Em, how long are you planning to be busy for on your day off? Wait.” She gasped loudly, straight into the speaker and into my ear. “Are you going on a date?”
“Okay, Ol. I’m officially shutting down this conversation. I love you. Bye.”
She was laughing the entire way through her response, even as I hung up on her. I loved Olivia with my entire heart and soul, but she could be a lot sometimes.
The stairs were much easier to navigate without a very drunk Star attached to my hip, leaning and falling against the railing every five seconds or so. I shifted my coffee and to-go box back into one hand and knocked on Moon’s door. There wasn’t an immediate response, leaving me out in the rain, alone, for another few minutes. I was already soaking wet—what was a little longer?
When he finally came to the door, he opened it just enough to look at me through the crack. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
I held up the bag. “Hello to you, too. I have gifts. And I’m soaking wet. Can I come in?”
I waited for another prickly response, or maybe even a complete refusal on his end, but Moon shocked me once more as he pulled the door open entirely. “Come on. Just stand in front of the door in here, and I’ll get a towel.”
Probably a good idea. For the second time, I walked into Moon’s apartment, this time bringing what felt like an entire man-made lake in with me. My shoes squeaked against the hardwood floor, harmonizing with the ringing in my ears.
I did exactly as he’d told me to, planting my feet right in front of the door and not moving a muscle. Moon was already gone by the time the door closed behind me, so I let myself drip onto his floor in silence until he came back with a towel.
“Here, dry off.” He handed it to me, then pointed at the bag in my hand. “What’s that?”
“Lemon poppy seed muffin, made just for you from your favorite bakery.” I looked around for a place to set it, giving it to him when he held his hand out.
He untied the bag slowly, looking almost wary. “What for? You never told me why you were here.”
I dragged the towel over my body, wiping off any excess water I could. I was trying not to stare at him, the tattoos hehad back on display in his white tank top, or what looked to be prominent nipple rings poking just beneath said tank top. The color made the black and gray ink on his skin pop out even more, enticing me further. I wanted to look. I shouldn’t look, but I wanted to. “I ran into your brother. He asked if I’d heard from you. I told him I hadn’t since I’d left here. It was a gut decision.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “A gut decision?”
“Yeah. I had a gut feeling about you not answering the most important people in your life. Me, I understand. Your brothers? Not a chance in hell. So, I came to check on you, and I told Crescent I’d let him know you were safe.”
“Why?”
I let my arm drop, the towel going with it, hanging by my side. His confusion hurt, but it didn’t hurt because of his distrust in me—it hurt because it meant he’d been failed by someone. At some point, he must’ve been failed by someone so badly that he no longer believed someone like me could show up with an act of genuine kindness. That I couldn’t care about him in the most basic, human way.
So the real question here wasn’t why but who had hurt his heart and soul so much that his eyes spoke to me in distant echoes? Echoes from a cavern it seemed no one had tried to explore before.
Chapter Eight
Emerson stood there,dripping rainwater onto my hardwood floors, with a damp towel hanging by his side. I couldn’t wrap my head around him or his motives. I’d called him out of desperation to help Star, and never expected that in doing so, he’d be showing up at my apartment not once, but twice within the same twelve-hour period.
He confused me. I genuinely couldn’t understand what he was doing, or why. There was no such thing as genuine empathy, especially from someone who knew so little about me. I’d lost hope in humanity many years ago, deciding I had to be the one who showed up for everyone, just to make sure they knew I still existed. That someone in the world still had a heart, though it felt like mine was hardened into stone more often than not.
“I’m not sure what you’re asking me about, Moon. I already told you. I can see the exhaustion in your eyes. I can see your struggle, despite how hard you’re trying to hide it. You may be good at hiding the severity from your family, but I can see it. You don’t know me well enough to hide from me.”
There he went again, seeing straight into my soul or some shit. It fucked with me—how easily he could see past a facade he’s never known the difference to. Emerson didn’t know me before the incident.
Shaking my head, I turned on my heels with the bag in my hand. “You’re right. I don’t know you well enough, and, again, I must reiterate that you also don’t know me well enough. It’s almost creepy, Officer Blake.”
He groaned from behind me. “Don’t pull my title into this. I’m off the clock. When I’m off the clock, I’m just me. I’m just Emerson Blake, and right now, Emerson Blake gives a shit about Moon Miller, no matter what he thinks. No matter what excuses he can make. There doesn’t have to be a deeper reason.”
“No, I think there does have to be. What’s your motive here, huh?”
“Motive? What motive? What could I possibly gain from pestering you over and over, other than making sure you’re okay and making sure you have someone to talk to when you’re not?”
“Sure.”
“No, not ‘sure’. I’m being serious here. It’s okay to not be okay. What’s not okay is not having support.”
