He glanced at her haltingly as if afraid of what he might find in her eyes or perhaps to hide the shame in his. It struck Amelia then, though not for the first time, how viciously his time in the Moriartys warped his reality. She cupped his cheeks to force his gaze.
“Emory, taking a life is no small thing. You hesitated because it’s not easy for you nor should it be, even with someone as deserving of death as Ivan.”
“I know. I let him get under my skin. It’s just…” Emory shook his head. “It’s more than that, though.”
“Tell me.”
“Ivan thinks there’s something kindred between us, a bond deeper than brotherhood. It’s like he knows how to convince me of it. The hatred I feel for him is diabolical. That same hatred, that same darkness, it’s in him too.”
Another wave of worry besieged Emory as if she might see echoes of Ivan in him. Amelia tucked a strand of Emory’s hair behind his ear and kissed his cheek.
“There’s nothing kindred between you and Ivan,” she whispered. “You don’t have to inherit what he says as the truth. You get to decide who you are, not him.”
Emory nodded and, in another distraction, unspooled a bit of medical tape and affixed a gauze pad to her shoulder.
“We’ll need to keep an eye on this,” he said and kissed the bandage.
The “Royal We” comforted with endearing solidarity. Amelia burrowed into it like down bedding, another layer to keep her safe. Up close and in the light, she inspected the lesion reddening his cheek. It’d surely mature into a nasty bruise, so she fetched the ice pack and held it there.
At the contact, Emory closed his eyes. “Feels good.”
His lips parted with long, peaceful breaths, the kind that precede sleep. Amelia removed the pack and pressed her lips to his cold cheek then his mouth. She minded the cut there with kisses that still tasted faintly of blood.
“And that feels even better,” he said with a smile as his fingertips grazed her spine. “Amelia, there are things I need to tell you, things that will probably be hard to hear.”
She stiffened, and her heart picked up its beat. She couldn’t take much more bad news, and whatever Emory meant to say, he looked primed to deliver it gently. His eyes softened and so too did his words, as much as his deep voice would allow.
“Your dad isn’t in Portland anymore.”
Amelia shook her head, though she had no grounds to reject it. Richard had already delivered the news. Then again, she couldn’t discern the dividing line between Richard’s truths and lies.
“Are you sure?” she asked, faintly hopeful Richard had gotten it all wrong. Emory wouldn’t bring that to her unless he was certain, though.
“Yes, I’m sure. I wanted to tell you,meantto tell you tonight. He’s heading south. I don’t know where. California maybe.”
“If your brother is after him…”
Amelia ushered out the thought before it squatted in her mind and refused to leave. Instead, she wanted to plead with Emory and ask the unthinkable, to bring her father there and make him understand.
“He did the right thing. It’s better that he left. I do know he’s alive, and I have someone looking out for him.”
“One of your men?”
“No, but someone I trust, a good man.”
“Oh,” was all Amelia could manage as guilt bubbled up from strange depths.
Not so long ago, she’d been all too eager to blaze a path away from her father. Instead, she’d destroyed the road behind her, no home to return to. Rotten irony would say, “You got what you wanted.” She never wanted it to come like that, though.
Over his shoulder, Emory fixed his eyes to the window where a lonely moon illuminated the sky and streamed cold light through the pane.
“We’re not safe here anymore either, are we?” Amelia asked, but tears occluded her vision and not because the bite mark stung or her back ached from slamming into the cinder block wall. It wasn’t the phantom feeling of Ivan’s fingers clamping around her wrists or his palm running up her thigh. He’d marked her as his own and would come again; for her, for Emory, for everyone she loved.
Emory licked a bead of blood from his bottom lip. “No, we’re not. You and I are leaving for California tomorrow.”
“Leaving,” Amelia repeated and shifted in his lap.
She glanced at the table where they’d played cards and sipped sweet wine in the golden hour. If anyone asked, she’d say it was there in their sanctuary where they fell in love and found a shred of peace.
