Page 108 of Cuffed (Everyday Heroes 1)
“I didn’t remember, Grant. I didn’t remember the rocks until I had a dream about them the other night.” I can sense the hysterical confusion in her voice despite how muted it is. “You’ve mentioned them a few times, and I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought, but I just kind of let it go because it didn’t make sense. Then I saw you with Keely and then that night I dreamed of the rocks. Of our rocks. The zombie rocks. And the ones you’d leave there for me to find when I’d come out to escape from my house and—” She loses a huge, heaving sob of a sound, her fingers grip into the fabric of my T-shirt, and her body shakes as she fights with every part of her to keep from breaking down.
“Don’t be sad. It’s a good memory. It was the only way I knew how to let you know I was there for you. It seems cheesy now, but we were eight.”
“Not cheesy,” she murmurs. “I looked forward to seeing if there was a new one every day.”
“I didn’t know what was going on inside your house, Em, but I knew it made you sad.” I smooth my hand over the back of her hair and just pull her tighter against me, hating myself for doing this to her. “I’m sorry I brought you to the call. I didn’t mean for it to upset you.”
“You don’t understand.” She pulls away, her eyes red but not a single tear has fallen.
“Then make me understand.” The confusion in her expression kills me. The vulnerability in it even more so.
“If I didn’t remember that, then what else do I not remember?”
“It was rocks, Em. That’s it. I’m sure there are a million things you remember about what we did or where we played that I don’t. It’s no big deal.”
“It’s not—you don’t—you’re here and I can’t stop them,” she says, flustered and visibly anxious.
“You can’t stop what?”
“Nothing. Never mind.” The first tear finally slips over as she runs a hand over her hair, and the chaos of her emotions hit her.
I just stare at her like a deer in the headlights. I can handle hysterical victims, I can manage crazy suspects, but give me Emerson’s big green eyes full of tears and have her plead for me to give her answers I can’t give her, and I’m a guy fucked in so many ways I’ve lost count.
“Talk to me.”
“I’m so confused,” she says. “It’s you.”
“Me?” What did I do?
“No. That’s not what I mean.” She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and shakes her head. “I just—I don’t want to know anything else.”
“What are you talking about?”
She heaves in a breath that hitches as I reach out—needing to touch her—and use my thumb to wipe a tear off her cheek. The simple touch is nowhere near enough, the connection not strong enough, so I lean forward and brush my lips against hers, my hand on the back of her neck, our foreheads touching.
I stay like that for a few moments, caught between the push and pull of needing her to stay and never wanting her to feel pain again. Crushed by the realization that somehow I’m the one causing the discord in her life.
“I don’t trust myself, Grant. I don’t trust my memory. I don’t trust that what I thought happened actually happened—”
“You didn’t make it up, Em,” I say, hating the defeat reflected in everything about her—eyes, posture, tone. I don’t understand why she’s so upset over this. “They were silly rocks.”
“It’s not just the rocks. It’s everything else.” The desperation in the way she says the words twists my heart.
I’d give anything to take her pain away, and for the briefest of moments, I consider telling her I have proof that her abuse happened. That I have the evidence to erase the doubt from her mind. Maybe if she had the choice to know the details, it would be helpful to her and make her feel more in control.
My eyes flash over the table stacked with blue and green file folders and know hers is somewhere in there. I’ve yet to open it, but I know it holds the detailed history of her abuse.
And as soon as I have the thought, I reject the horrible idea.
“I still don’t trust myself,” she whispers, the heat of her words warming my lips.
“I trust you,” I say, scrambling for anything to take the pain from her voice. I’m far from qualified to give her the answers she needs, but hell, I’d walk through fucking fire if it meant I could make this right by her . . . whatever right is.
“It isn’t the same.”
“People trust you with their lives every day. Every damn day, they jump out of airplanes and put their lives in your hands, trusting that you’ll get them back to the ground safely. How can you say they don’t trust you?”
“They trust the name on the building. They trust the certificates lining the wall. They trust the reputation that’s been around for fifty years. They don’t know a damn thing about the woman behind the desk in the flight suit.”
