“Pinky swear?” Emmaline moved her pinky toward Annie.
Annie looped her pinky with Emmaline’s. “Swear.”
Then she crawled backward out of the tube, leaving Emmaline alone, in a cocktail dress, in her backyard, sorta freezing.
Funny thing about being wedged in a tube like this—it gave a girl some time to think.
Time to process. Time to ponder.
Time to plan.
Chapter Thirty
EMMALINE
Family waswhat they made it, and Em was on her way to figuring things out about who she was and who she wanted to be. Emmaline, Ethan, Annie, and Fiona could have a makeshift family and it wouldn’t be perfect, but that’s what would make it wonderful. She wouldn’t settle for scraps, but she wouldn’t expect Ethan to, either. Or Annie or Fiona, for that matter.
She wasn’t ready to marry the guy, but maybe she was ready to think about for-real dating, and not run as fast as she could away from a potential forever with him. Ethan deserved the benefit of the doubt that he really was different than the other famous people in her life.
“Em?” Ethan called.
“In here,” she called back, still from the inside of the tube. Time was a funny thing when a girl was stuck in playground equipment. She had no idea how long she’d been there, but it felt like forever. She’d tried a few more times to remove herself from the plastic cocoon, but it was a no go. “You’re with Annie?”
“Annie’s okay. She’s with Cress,” he said from the vicinity of the playhouse. “Annie says you’re stuck.”
“How stuck are you?” Mom yelled, louder than entirely necessary. Emmaline could hear them just fine.Thankyouverymuch.
“Pretty stuck.” Emmaline didn’t attempt to extract herself again, seeing as it only wedged her deeper into the tube.
Someone climbed up the ladder into the playhouse, thethunkof their footfalls coming her direction. She hoped it was Ethan, or her mom, because her dress had hiked itself up around her thighs during the didn’t-help maneuvers.
“My hips don’t fit in here.” This was obvious but still required saying.
“Ethan here,” he said, as a hand trailed up the inside of her calf. “I’m gonna pull you out.”
“Maybe put my dress down first?” She let her head fall to the inside of the tube because she seriously couldn’t believe she got stuck. She lifted her head and hit it again.
Stuck a-freaking-gain.
And this time she was wearing a cocktail dress!
A rough, male-sized hand she hoped was Ethan’s gently tugged the fabric back over her legs.
“Still me,” he said.
He gripped one ankle. Then he gripped the other, and he pulled.
She made a groaning sound that was not very attractive. At all.
Also, okay. Ouch.
There was something happening as he pulled that involved science and physics, but it wasn’t enough. She didn’t budge.
“James?” Ethan said, footfalls moving away. “You want to help me, mate?”
James tried as well, but still Emmaline did not budge.
“She’s really stuck,” Mom said, and a smaller hand patted Emmaline’s ankle.
