American Made (Against the Tides #2) (22 page)

When I finally psych myself up enough to push myself out the door I almost trip over Gentry’s body. He’s sprawled out across the porch with his arms folded under the back of his head. Cracking one eye open when he hears the door, the corner of his mouth perks up.

“Mornin’, gorgeous.”

I shake my head, turning away so he can’t see my face. I hate that even though he’s broken my heart, his sleepy greeting can still get to me for half a second. It doesn’t help that Wyatt put the thought in my head that I might have overreacted, but he saw my point. The difference between our secrets was the reason for keeping them. Yes, I should have told him about Sam, just like he should have told me about what happened with Envy, Rush, and him. But it doesn’t change the fact that we kept them to protect the same person. Him.

“You look good like that,” he continues.

Stepping over him, I grab my ankles one by one and stretch my legs out. “Shouldn’t you be gone by now?”

“Not leavin’ ‘til we work this out,” he reminds me.

I nod once before putting my earbuds in and jogging away from him, yelling over my shoulder and the sound of the music in my ears that he just needs to give up.

Every mile of pavement my feet eat up relieves a little bit of the tension built up inside of me. At least on the run out, anyway. When I turn around to head home every issue I know is waiting for me slams into my chest. Gentry, Wyatt, my parents, Knox and Ariana, Envy and Rush. Just thinking about everything that has gotten messed up over the past few days makes me want to run away from it all. I know I messed up big time with Knox and Ari and there’s no taking back what I put out there with them. I just hope it didn’t cause too much damage. I hope can push off dealing with Rush until I have to go back to work. Maybe by then I can think up an explanation as to why I acted like such an asshole when I know he didn’t do anything to hurt me.

My biggest issue is going to be getting Gentry off my porch and my parents back out of town. They’re persistent and I know my father will refuse to leave until he gets what they came for. Rounding the corner, I don’t even bother slowing down as I mount the stairs and jump over Gentry’s legs. Shoving through the door, I slam it behind me and rip my phone from the pocket of my shorts before furiously typing out a text to my mother. The sooner I get that situation out of the way, the sooner I can tackle the rest of my fucked up to-do list.

“OK, let’s get it out of the way,” I say, sliding my hands into my back pocket as soon as the door closes behind my father.

“That’s not very polite!” Gentry yells through the door with a laugh.

“Neither is
squatting
on someone’s porch,” I angrily remind him through the hole in the glass that I really need to get fixed.

My father stares at me but I can’t tell what he’s thinking because as always he keeps his face void of emotion. Always the hard ass. Even though his face looks like he is made of stone, there’s something lurking in his eyes that I’ve never seen before. His hand rests on my mother’s back as he helps her onto the barstool. As I watch them it hits me that I don’t believe I’ve seen them touch each other in… years. Since Sam died, actually.

“Why is there a man squatting on your porch, Emerson?” my father grumbles.

“Because I love your daughter, Sir,” Gentry yells again, cutting me off. 

I add kicking his ass to the mental list I have going. Instead of saying anything back I walk around them and slide up onto the counter by the stove. It’s something that used to drive my mother insane and based on the twitch in her lip, it still is. I wait for her to say something so I can remind them that this is my house and if they don’t like what I do in it, they can leave. When she doesn’t say anything my father points toward the door with his thumb.

“Explain.”

“It’s nothing.” I shrug. “Just someone who can’t seem to get a grip on reality.”

“Need someone to take care of it?” he asks with concern filling his voice. At least I think that’s what the tone is. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard it before. Shaking his head, he answers himself before I have a chance to. “What am I saying? You obviously don’t need anyone to take care of your problems for you. You never have.”

“What’s that mean, Dad?”

“Just that you’ve never needed us.”

I watch him carefully as he tugs on the sleeves of his crisp button-down shirt so he can avoid looking at me. As usual when my father is in our presence, my mother stays quiet and lets him do the talking. I try my hardest to gauge why they’re here but haven’t started yelling at me about family secrets yet. They aren’t normally the small-talk type so I’m beginning to question why they are here.

Taking a breath, I force myself to not jump down their throats and ask what they want. “You raised me to be someone that didn’t need to rely on anyone else,” I remind him as nicely as I can.

“Well, you’ve definitely proved that you don’t lately.” I drop my head back against the cupboard and sigh. When I don’t respond, because I can’t figure out what he wants me to say, he continues, “We didn’t even know you were home. Do you know what it’s like to find out you’re only daughter is back from deployment and didn’t bother to let you know? I had to find out from a former colleague. But they didn’t just call to chat about your homecoming. They called to tell me how proud of you they were for once again overcoming the odds.”

“Ahh yes, the odds I’m constantly faced with thanks to being born with a vagina,” I quip and it earns me an unamused scowl that makes me snap my mouth shut. I swear if he taught people how to do that, yelling would no longer be needed in the military. One look would weed out anyone weak faster than anything.

“The odds of being shot and making a comeback,” he snaps.

“Oh, those odds!” I say sarcastically, knowing I’m pushing him and shouldn’t.

“You’re playing with fire,” my mother speaks up for the first time, warning me of something I already know about.

“I wonder if the flames are as hot as the bullets I got shot with were,” I continue with a shrug. “You know what they say… If you can’t stand the heat—”

“Emerson!” my father barks, making both my mother and I jump. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “We didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“Then
please
just tell me why you’re here because I don’t like playin’ the guessing game in my head. I know it’s gotta be more than me not callin’ you to tell you I was back.”

“You didn’t tell us you were back. You somehow made sure that no one notified us that you had been hurt. Then you didn’t tell us about your new job. We had to find what was going on in our own daughter’s life from someone else because they saw you on a video in the damn internet!”

“It was all gonna be in the heartwarming story I was writin’ for the family Christmas letter.” I know my sarcastic responses are uncalled for but it’s the only thing keeping me from yelling at them and walking out of my own house. It’s a coping mechanism that works
for
me just as much as it works
against
me.

Choosing to just ignore my outlandish response, he continues, “Do you know what it’s like to have no response when someone asks you how long it took your daughter to recover from being shot? Or how hard it was for her to get back behind a gun for her new position. But do you know what the worst thing was? It was learning that our daughter hated us through a damn video that someone else had to tell us about.”

“I don’t hate you,” I whisper. “But you never seemed to care about what I was doin’ before. How was I to know you’d wanna start now?”

“We’ve always cared, Emerson,” he counters. “I know I haven’t always been the best at showing how proud of you I am, but you won’t find a prouder parent.”

What? Is he on crack?

“You fought me on every single thing I have ever done. You tried everything you could to keep me joinin’ the military. Since when is tellin’ someone they aren’t good enough to do something being a proud parent?”

Sliding to the floor, I cross my arms over my chest. I have no idea where he’s going with this but for some reason I feel like I need to do something to protect myself. When he finally raises his head and his eyes connect with mine the fact that they are brimming with tears floors me.

“I fought you because I knew what could’ve happened to you. It was never that I didn’t think you could do it. It was just the opposite. I said those things because I wanted to keep you safe.”

“The things you said back then killed me!” I yell, finally breaking under his intense emotion-filled stare. “I pushed myself harder than everyone else because I wanted to prove to you that I was better than you thought I was. I spent my life feelin’ like I was never good enough for you! How did makin’ me feel like I wasn’t good enough keep me safe?”

“Because!” he shouts back and I expect him to keep going but he doesn’t.

“Because is not an answer!”

Oh shit, I think I just became my mother.

My father has never been someone to talk about his feelings. He’s closed off, tight-lipped, and hot-headed. It’s where I get it from. Most of who I am is because of him and I know that. I’ve never once seen him look like he could break but right now he looks like one more word could shatter him like glass.

“Because I thought if I could make you believe you couldn’t do it, that you wouldn’t try.”

“How’d that theory work out for you, Dad?” I ask, well aware that I sound petty.

“About as well as thinking that if we pretended that Sam didn’t exist, him not being there wouldn’t hurt as much,” he admits, quickly wiping his face so I don’t see the tears roll down his cheeks. “I didn’t want you to enlist. I didn’t want to have to be afraid that something was going to happen to you. I had already lost Sam, I wouldn’t have been able to handle losing you too.”

Throughout his entire spiel I hold onto the anger I feel toward him. I think about everything he’s ever said that hurt me and the fact that he forced me to live like Sam never existed, but the second his voice cracks I lose it right along with him. Everything could have been so much different if he had said these things years ago. Maybe if we had healed as a family and didn’t brush what happened under the rug, I would have been able to talk to them about what I was going through and I might not hate myself as much as I do. Maybe I’d know to work through my problems rather than pretend they didn’t exist. Maybe I’d know what to do about Gentry…

“Do you know what I realized when I got that phone call and watched the video of you with that kid?” he asks, stepping around the island to stand in front of me. Reaching up, he grabs both sides of my face and wipes away my tears. It’s the first time he’s touched me since I was twelve and I’m not quite sure how to react so I just stand there and wait for him to finish. “I realized that by doing the things I did as an attempt to keep from losing you, I lost you anyway.”

“I’m right here,” I whisper through my tears. I try to drop my head because the emotion in his eyes is killing me, but his grip tightens and he doesn’t let me.

“I lost you in an entirely different way than Sam. I lost you because I never told you how proud I was even though I followed everything you did. I lost you because I never told you how much I love you. While I was busy faking how strong I was after Sam died, you slipped through my fingers.”

“I didn’t need you to be strong for me, I just needed you to be there with me,” I cry. “I needed you to tell me that I was gonna be OK, not that I needed to forget what happened. I was hurting and I needed you and you weren’t there.”

He finally drops his hands but it’s only so he can pull me against his chest. I bury my face in his neck and try to calm myself down but nothing works. I’ve never been emotional and it hits me that it all started when I started dating Gentry. If being an emotional mess is what love is, I don’t want any part of it.

“I know, baby.” He sniffles against the side of my head. “I went home after watching the video and talked with your mother and we both realized how much we should’ve done differently. But there’s no way to ever make up for it.”

Two hours. That’s how long I’ve been sitting on this damn porch listening to the woman I love cry on the other side of the closed door. It’s how long I’ve had to force myself from busting the door down and doing everything in my power to take the pain away. It’s also how long ago her parents left.

Not holding her in my arms and telling her everything will be all right is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

There are seventy-two hundred seconds in two hours. I never actually knew that until I had to count my way through the time to stay seated.

When she opened the door to say goodbye to her parents she was a mess. I didn’t think she could look any more miserable than she did the other night when I found her crying on the couch, but she proved me wrong today. On their way down the stairs Emerson’s mother stooped down next to me and told me not to give up. I hadn’t planned on it, but having her mother say that solidified my choice.

The door opens behind me so I spin around to see her. Emerson steps out with her sunglasses already dropped down over her eyes. They stop any chance I have at seeing her eyes and finding out exactly how she’s doing since she is still refusing to talk to me. She stumbles when she sees me, almost as if she forgot I was here.

“You can’t stay there forever,” she mumbles her reminder as she steps over my legs and heads down the walkway.

“I don’t plan on it bein’ forever, Emerson. Just until we work this out and I’ve got plenty of vacation time saved up.”

With nothing but a shake of her head, she jumps into her truck and leaves. Since I don’t know where she’s going, I don’t know when she’ll be back, but I’ve been staring at the broken pane of glass in her door all night and it needs to be fixed. 

After digging through the toolbox in my truck, I get the measurements I need and text Rush to see if he can bring me everything I need. When I told her I wasn’t leaving, I wasn’t lying.