Never Say Never, Part Two (Second Chance Romance, Book 2) (9 page)

“What?”
Emily bit her lip. He was cold towards her, even worse than he’d been the day Janet had charged in and revealed her secret. One of them at least.
 

“About us not talking again. We shouldn’t be in contact.”
 

It knocked her backwards. She gripped the doorknob behind her and tried to catch her breath. “Chase,”
she gasped.
 

“Time for you to leave, Emily.”
 

“I won’t,”
she said, sticking her chin out. She’d been angry with him for so long, and now she’d finally let go and readied herself to forgive and forget, and he met her with this.
 

Was she right about him? Couldn’t she trust him?
 

“This is pointless. I want nothing to do with you.”
He stood and slammed his laptop shut.
 

“Where is this coming from? The other night you were all over me, stroking my cheek, kissing me,”
she choked up on the last part.
 

“The other night I was delusional.”

“Bullshit.”
 

He nodded at her. “Yeah I was. I was stuck in this weird psycho-fuck connection we have. Maybe it’s because we’re both broken. But two halves don’t make a whole. I don’t care for you anymore, and you need to leave now. Now.”

“Chase, you can’t be –”
 

“Get out.”
He swept up more of those cursed papers and whipped open a file. He took out his punch, ignoring her completely.
 

“What’s happened? You’re so cold.”
 

She’d come to help him out, but he didn’t want anything to do with her. It wasn’t right. This couldn’t be the end.
 

God, had she pushed him too hard the last time? She hadn’t rejected him as strongly as this.
 

“I know.”
 

“What do you mean?”
But a Titanic-sized ice block slid into her stomach. Or an iceberg the size of the one which took down the Titanic.
 

“Janet told me the truth about your crime, Emily.”
 

Oh shit. This couldn’t be happening.
 

“No, you have to let me explain this. You can’t take someone else’s word for this when I’m standing right here in front of you.”
 

Emily marched to his desk, but the pressure of her crime pulled her downwards. It was like slogging through a marsh and each step took her further from salvation and closer to his ire.
 

Chase didn’t flinch away. He met her gaze with cruel intensity. With a glare which froze her core and solidified the terror of losing him for good.
 

“You killed someone.”
 

An iron hand closed around her heart and throat, restricting her life blood. She floundered in the dark, trying to form words to tell him the truth.
 

“You killed someone.”
Chase repeated, and this time it was a spear through her back.
 

Janet and Brian. Amanda and Brian. These three had conspired to bring her down and destroy whatever she’d tried to build up.
 

“It’s not that simple,”
she managed.
 

“Oh, but it is. Answer me.”
 

He hadn’t asked a question, but he wanted the answer she couldn’t give. At least, not without an explanation. The scar of what she’d done and been through burst open, seeping the agony she’d patched over, again and again.
 

Her life was ruined. Their lives were ruined.
 

“You killed someone.”
 

“Please, stop, I can’t give you what you want. You have to let me explain or you’ll never see the truth. She’s poisoned you against me.”
Emily sobbed, hiccupping and gasping for air which wouldn’t soothe the pain.
 

“Answer me, Emily.”
Chase caught her in the snare of his glare. “You killed someone.”
 

“Yes.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Emily drove through the streets as if she’d forgotten the laws. She didn’t care anymore.

Chase was finished with her. He thought she was a monster, and this was the end of them. It was done.

“Done, done, done.”
She chanted it over and over again.
 

There was no one to turn to about this. Mama wouldn’t have anything worthwhile to say. She didn’t have any friends left except for Amanda, who hadn’t spoken to her since her drunken admission about Brian’s fear of more children.
 

Her kids. She needed to see them. To talk to them and know that she was on the right track, that losing Chase wasn’t the end of the world and she’d still prosper and achieve her goals.
 

Of course she would. She wasn’t a bad person.
 

Was she?
 

Emily steered left and entered Brian’s road. At least, the road where the massive house was situated. Hopefully he was still away on business, and if he wasn’t she wouldn’t put up with his shit.
 

She pulled up in front of the house and stopped the car. She gripped the steering wheel and breathed heavily. In, out, in, out. She couldn’t let this control her.
 

“Don’t let it conquer you, you’re stronger than this.”
Emily spoke to herself.
 

She’d been so stupid to let go of her anger and let the thought of Chase enter her mind again. So damn stupid.
 

The car died and she removed the key from the ignition.
 

She slammed the door behind her and dragged her feet up the garden path, glaring at the front of the house. There were the Bougainvillea’s she’d planted with the kids running around, Becci still in nappies and Jared toddling.
 

Those were the happy days. Except for Brian’s cold absences and the swift beatings he’d delivered to Jared whenever he set a foot wrong.
 

She stopped and picked one of the papery pink flowers, offering silent thanks to the plant.
 

The front door opened before she reached it.
 

“You need to leave.”
It was Amanda, and her face was a thundercloud.
 

“Hello to you too.”
She tucked the flower into the front pocket of her jeans and hopped up the three stairs and onto the porch.
 

“You heard me, Emily.”
Amanda let herself onto the porch and shut the door behind her, glancing from left to right.
 

“What’s wrong?”
 

“He’s inside.”
 

Brian was home. Screw him, she wanted to see her kids.
 

“Amanda, I don’t care if the pope is inside. Where are Becci and Jared? I want to see them.”
 

The curtain upstairs twitched and her daughter appeared for a moment, a broad smile lighting her features.
 

‘Told you,’
she mouthed up at her.

“He won’t allow it.”
Amanda folded her arms across her breasts. Frustration and angst oozed out of her pores. That was the effect Brian had on those he loved. Becci disappeared from the window.

“How would he know unless you told him?”
 

“Precisely. I tell my husband everything, Emily. Don’t get that twisted.”
 

“You tell him you went out to dinner with me?”
She shot the arrow without a second thought and Amanda didn’t take it well.
 

She stepped in and raised a finger. “Don’t even think about it.”
 

“I want to see the children.”
 

“And I told you, you can’t.”
 

Emily had lost patience with this. Brian had no right to keep her kids from her, and Amanda had even less.
 

“Then I’ll be pursuing legal action.”
She’d get a lawyer –
she had enough money now –
and talk to him about her rights. That would be that. She’d hoped to resolve this without having to turn to the law, but if she had to, she would. Anything for Becci and Jared.
 

“That’s exactly what Brian will do.”

“Come on, Amanda, you can’t tell me you enjoy that man.”
The sex video of Janet and Brian sprang to mind. “He’s overbearing, he’s never home, and he’s an egomaniac for God’s sake.”

She half expected Amanda to reply that he was ‘her egomaniac’.
 

“I can’t discuss my marriage with you.”
It came out pained. A pained tape recording of a woman in a trap. Where was the smug Amanda now? The skier off to the French Alps with her beloved husband.
 

Her congressman.
 

This disgusted Emily more than she’d express to her old friend.
 

“Amanda, come on, I’m your friend. I’m here if you need to talk to me about anything,”
she said, reaching out to touch her on the shoulder, “but you have to let me see my children. This isn’t right and you know it.”

“Right?”
Amanda asked, a bitter laugh spilling from her pink lips. “Right? You’re a convicted felon. You shouldn’t have the right to be around those children.”

It was Brian speaking with her mouth, Brian whispering words in her ears.

He’d poisoned Janet, who’d turned Chase against her.

Anger boiled inside her, building to climax. Yes! Yes, she had done something terrible. NO! She hadn’t done it on purpose.

Did that make her an unfit mother?
 

Did it make her an irredeemably bad human being?
 

No, no, no. She couldn’t believe that. That train of thought would be her ultimate destruction.
 

Emily sighed to relieve the tension but it stayed, ingrained, waiting to erupt at the right opportunity.

Her fault for drinking and letting this happen. But God, Brian…
he’d be her undoing.
 

Amanda watched her closely, glancing back at the house every few minutes. “Brian says you’re a bad influence on the children.”
She rubbed her arms, and Emily noticed three finger-sized bruises there.

“Has he been hurting you?”
 

It was his style. Grabbing and shaking.
 

“Shut up,”
Amanda barked, then shifted on the wood planks of the porch. They didn’t creak. “Brian is going to take out an interdict against you, so you can’t see the kids again.”

She almost doubled over from the shock of that. Mohammed Ali could’ve hit her in the stomach and it wouldn’t have hurt as much. If he took that out against her, she was done.
 

No children, no Emily.
 

They’d been her goal for so long, she couldn’t envision a future without them and she didn’t want to.
 

What mother would?

Finally, the rage had reached boiling point.

“Now,”
she began, leaning in and confronting Amanda head on, “you listen here, you bitch. I will NOT let my children go. They are my children and I will see them, no matter what you or that prick of a husband wants. You tell him that.”
 

Amanda was silent, red as a beet and shaking.
 

“You tell Brian that I’m coming. Emily is coming and she won’t back down.”
She let it out in a contained growl, when really she wanted to rip the woman’s hair out the way she’d done with Isis.
 

“I’ll never give them up. Don’t you ever forget that!”
 

She turned and stormed off, back to the car. She unlocked it, slipped in and started the engine. Up at the house, the door was open. Brian stood there, framed in it, glaring at her as Amanda gesticulated beside him, explaining her presence no doubt.

She took the grand liberty of flipping him off, before reversing out of the driveway and speeding off. The fire in her belly was back. There was a hole in her heart where Chase had been, but she’d fill it with anger if she had to. Scour away the pain so that she could survive.
 

Either way, she’d get her kids back.
 

She just had to figure out how.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Emily sat on top of a box, glaring at the clock on the wall. The movers were half an hour late and she was past ready to get the hell out of Chase’s apartment.