Saving Emmy by Rayne Lewis
Chapter 20
Eli knocked on the solid oak door and let himself in. This house was as much home to him as the house he shared with his mom growing up. The Hayes’ were as much his family as were his brothers at Hellforce. He was looking for answers and the best answers always came from Pops. So, Eli found himself calling him on his way home from HQ, and as always, Pops was ready to lend an ear, dole out advice and steer him in the right direction.
Times like this had him wondering how it would have been if his father had never passed away. Would he have a close-knit relationship with the man who shared his bloodline? Would his father be the man he looked up to like the giant of a man Mitch had become to him? Would his father have accepted his choice to forego college and enlist in the military right after high school?
The morning after their “prom”, he’d sought Pops out for a man-to-man talk about his future. He told Pops he was forgoing the scholarship he’d just received, a four-year ride to the same college Ember was attending after graduation, and he was joining the Army. Pops listened with an open ear and an unjudging heart. Pops weighed out the pros and cons with him and said the choice was ultimately his. No one could make the decision but him, but he warned him not to make a rash decision. When Eli laid out his reasons, Pops listened with a heavy heart, and when he decided to forgo college, Mitch gave him his blessing, told him he was proud of his choice to serve his country, but told him he could always follow his feet home. Back to the Hayes family.
But, Eli couldn’t bear to spend the next four years pining and yearning for something that was so close, yet so far out of his reach.
Ember didn’t love him the way he loved her. She didn't need him to breathe. Didn’t need him to feel alive. No, Eli was just her friend, though her best friend. And, that's where he stayed all these years, loving from the shadows, pining from a distance, his heart never settling, because how could a heart settle where it wasn’t wanted?
“Hey, you made it.” Pops’ voice startled him back to the present. If Pops noticed him zoning, he didn't say anything.
“Mom around?” Eli looked around the room from the foyer but didn’t see her.
“In the kitchen. Watch out, she’s going to force-feed you. She just made a batch of those caramel-walnut-brownie cookies,” he patted his stomach, “gonna put me in the gym an extra three hours this week.”
Pops was fifty-seven but didn’t look a day over forty. He still had a rock hard physique, and the man could PT the living daylights out of any of the men at Hellforce. He was as solid as his character. If Eli could become half the man Mitch was, he’d be one lucky son of a bitch.
“Can we take this somewhere private?” Eli took in a heavy breath, wanting to get the burden off his chest and out in the open. He wanted to hear what Pops’ words of wisdom would entail.
“Sure. Take a walk.”
The pair walked through the kitchen where Susan had about three dozen paper plates laid out, each piled high with cookies. Eli took one from the plate closest to him and bit into the delectable sugary goodness. Divine.
“Mmmm, my God, Mom.” Eli spoke between bites and around the bits of gooeyness that were melting in his mouth. “These are amazing. Best cookies ever!”
“That’s because,” she eyed his toned body, “you never eat cookies. And, even when you do, I bet they are store-bought, processed, manufactured garbage.” She shoved another cookie into Eli’s hand and turned to pour him a full glass of milk.
“Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.” Eli popped the remaining bite of cookie in his mouth and drank the ice cold milk down in one swig.
“Mustache.” Susan wiped her finger across his upper lip, removing the milk left behind clinging to the hair of his actual mustache. “Never too old for Mom’s pampering.”
Mitch grabbed a cookie from the plate Eli had eaten from and Susan smacked his hand with a spatula so forcefully, Pops jerked it back and held it with his free hand.
“What was that for?”
“Those are Elijah’s.”
“But he has a whole plate full.”
“Those. Are. Elijah’s.” She enunciated every syllable of his name.
“Guess I’ll just take one of these.” He reached for the plate closest to himself and received another slap on the hand.
“What the—” He stopped himself from cursing a blue streak and looked at his wife.
“Those are for the fire station. Those will be going to the crew on shift tomorrow.”
“And these?” He pointed to one of the other dozen plates of cookies.
“Sheriff’s department.”
“These?”
“Police department.”
Pops knew it was a losing battle, but he continued to point at random plates set out on the granite countertop. All the while, Eli, continued to eat the brownie confections off the plate deemed his.
“Nursing home…library…church bazaar…ER hospital crew...Police & Fire 9-1-1 dispatchers…animal rescue shelter...”
Finally, he pointed to the last plate.
“Oh, that one’s for you.” Susan bust out in tears, laughing at the stunned look on Pops’ face. Eli had no choice but to laugh along. Pops squinted his eyes, giving her a glare that became primal as she continued to laugh, wiping her tears as they fell from her eyes. Pops straightened and his military alpha mode made an appearance. Predator-like, he walked up behind her and whispered something into her ear, making her back stiffen and her eyes widen. Eli couldn’t hear what Pops said, but he was getting a strong idea of what was being murmured. Mitch grazed his wife's ear as he whispered, and her breathing became erratic. Then with one last word in low tones, Susan’s eyes flared and her breath hitched. She cleared her throat and excused herself from the kitchen, scurrying up the banister stairwell.
Seeing Mitch’s satisfied look on his face, Eli stopped mid-chew. Suddenly the cookie didn’t taste as delectable as it did a minute ago.
“Did you just pleasure Mom with sexual banter?” The words could barely form in his mouth. He set his half-eaten cookie on the countertop.
“No. Pleasure’s all mine. Punishment is all hers.”
Oh, god, he was going to be sick. Blood-relation or not, he didn’t want to envision whatever sexcapades were going to be taking place after he left. Thoughts of pristine, pure, saintly Mom doing anything nasty was just blasphemy. Pure, unadulterated sainthood was where Susan Hayes’ pedestal stood.
Mitch smiled, grabbed a cookie from one of the forbidden plates, slapped him on the back, and headed towards the door that led out to the pastures behind the house.
Eli followed, though now, he was mentally sick.
* * *
They walked towards the nearest fence line, past the paddocks and the barn, over a rolling hill, and leaned against the white split rail fence. Neither spoke for a while as they watched the sun setting behind the farthest hill, dipping low to send parts of the world into slumber. The sky was ablaze with radiant light. Purples, yellows and the most brilliant blazes of red-orange, the exact shade of Ember’s hair, blessed the sky.
Is it a sign?
The thought caught Eli in the gut. Of course it wasn’t a sign. It was the wonders of nature, the same wonders that blazed orange and shone each evening. There were no signs casting into the universe tonight.
“How’d she get such blaze orange hair?” The question came out of nowhere. It wasn’t the question he was planning to ask, but somehow, it felt like the right way to start the conversation.
Mitch’s hair was black and Susan’s was more a lighter shade of strawberry-blond than the orangy-red of Ember’s locks and far from the crimson red of Rhys.
“Susan’s side of the family are Scots, who mixed with the Irish. Their hair is unnatural. No shade on earth matches the blaze of reds, coppers, and oranges that run in their bloodline. The color just plain doesn’t exist.”
Eli thought about that and it was true. No color did match the fiery tones in her hair. He always tried to pinpoint the exact color, but when he would find a dazzling shade of orange—fabrics, leaves, sunsets, nothing compared to the intensity of her locks.
“You came here to talk about hair?”
“No.”
“Lineage?”
Eli shook his head and answered in the negative.
“Come here to talk about my baby girl?”
Hearing Mitch refer to Ember as his baby girl put into perspective the fact he wasn’t going to let his daughter go to anyone he didn’t deem worthy. Someone who wouldn’t protect her and treasure her like the rare and precious gem she was.
Mitch waited in the quiet of the evening. Quiet that included cicadas, crickets, Chuck-Will’s and bullfrogs. All the sounds of a Texas summer night. Mitch let the quiet magic pull the truth from Eli.
“I’m ready to tell her.”
Those five words caught Mitch’s attention, though he nodded like he already knew.
The duo stood in silence, again letting the sun sink lower and the horizon disappear.
“You know what this could mean, right, son?”
Son. Pops had called him son for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t until after high school, specifically the day he left for basic, waiting to board the bus, after all the goodbyes were said, that Mitch leveled him in the eye and told him he’d never been prouder to have him as a son. DNA didn’t matter. He was seeing his boy go off to become a man. He was sending him out to a world that would break him, mold him, build him up to a man of honor, dignity and fortitude. Resilience would live in every bone of his body and valor would reside in his soul. He was most likely sending his boy to war, a hellish nightmare Mitch knew all too well. He would be boarding that bus barely a boy, but would return a man. Mitch would be even prouder to lay claim to him; His son.
The memory faded and Eli was once again grateful that Pops had taken him under his wing. “Will she run?”
The question hung like the hues in the sky. Barely there hints of colors that were there one minute and gone the next. If a metaphor was ever exact, this one was all-encompassing.
“Will you chase her?”
Mitch’s question stung, because Eli knew the answer would kill him.
“No.”
Bomb. Detonated.
Mitch turned his head, keeping his body against the rail, foot resting on the bottom slat, but said nothing. Eli kept his gaze ahead, willing the sickening feeling churning in his stomach to dissipate. He wasn’t a person to experience anxiety, but he could feel his chest constricting, tightening and forcing the air from his lungs.
He wouldn’t chase her. Each word stabbed his soul.
Eli lowered his head but didn’t turn to match Pops’ stare.
“You won’t chase her?” Mitch’s words hurt Eli just as much as the words echoing in his own soul.
“No.” Shuddering on his exhale, he continued. “I won’t chase something that’s not mine. If she stays, she’s mine. If she runs, I gotta let her find her dreams….even if they don’t include me.”
“Friends?”
It hit like thunder. “Nope.” The single word sliced his tongue. “I’ve been in the friend zone for so long, I can’t stay there any longer. I can’t stay here waiting and watch the day she pledges her vows to another man. I can’t stay here and witness her give birth to his children. The sight of her rounded with another man's child—” His voice broke and the lump in his throat wouldn’t go down. After a minute, he went on. “I’d die a thousand deaths if I had to see her, watch her from the bleachers, every time she set another milestone that I wasn’t setting with her.” The thought made bile rise in his throat. “I want her to be happy. Happier than anyone on earth. I love her. And will ’til the day I die. But, I can’t love her without leaving her. I’d die a little every day if she only wants a friend.”
The sun had disappeared below the horizon. The wisps of color, gone from the dusk sky. Blackness encroached upon the pasture as far as the eye could see. It was the same level of darkness that Eli felt in his soul. If he had to leave her, that darkness would never dissipate, would never blaze with the signs of the dawn of a new day. He would be desolate. Empty. A wasteland. Void. But, he’d withstand it if it meant she could find her dreams. Her happiness. Her someone who wasn't Eli.
A lone tear escaped his eye. It caught in his beard at the corner of his lip. The bitter taste of sorrow. It scared him to death to think that if she ran, this would be his reality. An island of one. Desolate. Alone. Empty. Emmy was his, but he may not be hers. He’d never love another. It was a solemn vow. How could he give his heart to another when his soul was stitched to hers?
“If you love something set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.” Mitch’s smooth timbre broke the air.
“Can’t force someone to love you.” Eli’s words were a whisper.
“She’d be a fool to run, son. An absolute fool. And, I don’t say that lightly, because she’s my daughter and I live for her happiness. But, if she’s blind to what’s in front of her, it’s going to tear me apart.”
Eli finally turned his gaze to Pops. The sight stopped him cold. The big, strapping, hulk of a man, the giant Eli knew, was crying. Tears coursed down his cheeks. Eli had never witnessed his hero shed a tear.
“You're my son, Eli. No matter what Ember decides, you are my son.” Pops wiped the wetness from his face with the shoulder of his t-shirt and sniffed back a few times. “If she doesn’t run, there’s no man I would want next to her other than you. You raise my baby girl up to heights no other man would ever raise her. I’ll be on my knees tonight begging the Lord to grant her wisdom and clarity, ’cuz only the Lord works miracles. And, I’m gonna need a damn miracle if she doesn’t seize the moment when you put yourself out there.”
Pops let the deafening silence lie, clapped a single hand on Eli’s shoulder, then turned and headed for the house. Eli didn’t follow. He stayed in the darkness as the constellations appeared in the void of the night sky. He followed a shooting star, closed his eyes and wished a prayer like he’d never prayed before. “My true love, let her be. Not meant to be, I’ll set her free.”