Chapter 2
Why Yes, I Am Emotionally Unstable At The Moment
When my hand didn’t curl around my keys in my bag, I quickly realized in the bitter cold that I didn’t have them. How could I, when they’d been left back at school before being shipped back home, where they were probably sitting up in my room? I was sure my parents wouldn’t mind me waking them up so early to open the door. They would just be excited to see me.
Dragging my luggage up the steps and stopping at the door, I lifted my finger and pressed down on the doorbell. The chiming sounded through the door and it took a few moments before I finally heard someone walking down the stairs inside. Maybe I hadn’t woken them up since I was expecting to wait a little longer than I did.
I was looking down at my feet when the door swung open, but when I lifted my head, I saw Mom standing there in her red bathrobe, staring at me with wide eyes.
“Emmy? Sweetie, what are you doing here?” she laughed, reaching forward to pull me inside and into her arms. “Oh, honey, you don’t know how much we’ve missed you around here.”
“I missed you so much,” I whispered, burying my face into her shoulder.
“What are we doing, standing here with the door wide open? Let’s get inside,” she grinned, oblivious to the tears that had welled in my eyes. She passed me to grab one of my bags, dragging it inside, and I quickly wiped under my eyes to get rid of the evidence and got the other.
“So where’s Dad?” I asked, following her to the kitchen once we put my bags at the foot of the stairs. “He’s usually up this early, not you.”
“He’s been on a business trip for the past two and a half weeks. The Louvre, actually. He’s coming back this morning. His plan just landed actually, so he should be here within the hour,” she smiled as she started making coffee. I pulled out one of the chairs by the counter and sat, resting my elbows on it and propping my head in one hand. “He’s going to be so excited to see you. And Jason. He’ll probably be sleeping until noon, but he will be, too. And, of course, Drake will also. We’ve all missed you around here. We just keep pretending that you’re back at school…though you would have called when you were there.”
I grimaced, realizing that I hadn’t called like I said I would. I was a little too preoccupied, though, so hopefully I wasn’t in too much trouble. “Sorry, we had…a lot going on.”
“Do I even want to know?” she asked, raising an eyebrow teasingly in my direction. “I probably don’t…since I could have sworn it was you in a picture that they showed on the news all the time since the attack at the White House a few days ago.” Unlike a normal parent, she gave me a sly smile. “Beautiful dress, by the way.”
I laughed for the first time in what felt like years. Leave it to my crazy mother… “It was, wasn’t it? Stella picked it out.”
“How is Stella?” she asked, taking the seat beside me. She was letting that little side subject go, though I could see just how much it was taking her to hold her questions in.
I grimaced, looking down at the counter and started tracing patterns.
At the wedding reception, I’d acted as normally as I could under the circumstances. I hadn’t told her or Ren about my leaving, though I was sure Ren figured after our conversation a few nights before. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Stella was completely pissed at me for not telling her goodbye. She was one of my best friends and if our situations were reversed, I would have definitely been.
“She’s probably mad at me now.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I didn’t tell any of them I was leaving.”
Her silence made me look up at her. Her eyebrows were pulled together slightly, head cocked to the side. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged and I could feel the tears welling up again. If I didn’t stop this soon, I was going to dry up like a sponge. “Well, I only told a few people, John, his sister Elena, and a friend of their family, Ed. Ed was the one to help me get everything arranged without anyone knowing. I just…I just needed a clean break from it all. You see, yesterday was Elena’s wedding to her fiancé, Grant. She’s like a big sister to me, Mom, so I had to tell her what I was doing after the reception. I hated ruining her big day, but I couldn’t not tell her goodbye, you know?”
“And John?” she asked, reaching forward with one hand to take hold of mine and up with the other to wipe away my tears. “What about that handsome man of yours?”
I closed my eyes, biting the inside of my lip to keep myself from breaking down. Too bad that didn’t work. “I…I broke his heart,” I cried.
It was like the floodgates opened and I was crying twice as hard as I had when I was telling him goodbye. At the time, I had to be strong, for him and myself. But now, with it being just me and my mom, I could just let all my emotions out.
And I did. Gut-wrenching sobs came out of my chest, accompanied by tears and hiccups and a runny nose. The whole thing. It wasn’t one of those pretty crying episodes that you saw in movies either. I didn’t even need a mirror to know it was ugly.
But Mom just sat there and held me, rubbing my back in circular motions and telling me it was all going to be okay as I cried against her shoulder. She didn’t let me go until I was the one to pull back, though my tears weren’t anywhere close to being dried up.
“Sweetie,” she said, reaching up to wipe my cheeks with her fingers. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
I shook my head. “I know it will, hope it will anyway, but I want it to be alright now. And it’s not. John…God, I’m an idiot for even leaving, no matter how much I wanted to come home. I broke him, Mom. If you saw his face when I was telling him goodbye…it’s all I can see when I close my eyes.”
Mom smiled slightly, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Then why did you come home?”
I just stared at her. I came home…because it was all I could do other than my other option at the time. I decided to come home instead of going with Juliet and Ryan. I decided not to betray everyone I loved, even though I knew I wouldn’t be betraying them at all, as it is. Not when Ed had been in on Juliet’s plan for me.
“Because I needed to.”
She started shaking her head then, her smile still in place. “As much as I missed you and wanted you back home, I got to thinking about something. You’ve grown up, Em, and you’ve become a beautiful woman right before our eyes. And since you have grown up, it’s time that you choose your own future. Sure, we thought that college would come first, but that kind of all changed back in May, right?” She laughed, making me smile. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think everything that happened was good for you. He was good for you. I’d never seen you act the way you had, but it was sure something to see.”
I leaned forward, hugging her again. “But what do I do now?”
“Give it a little time,” she suggested. “A few weeks at least. Then we’ll see what we can do from there. But if it were me, I’d go back as soon as I could.”
That made me laugh. “You’d approve of me moving across the Atlantic to live with my boyfriend?”
“Sure,” she said, laughing also as she leaned back. “But, of course, I expect you to go to school. I’m sure Oxford or Cambridge would let you in, since they did want you before. Then after you graduate, that’s when the wedding and my grandbabies can come into the picture.”
I practically choked on my next breath. “Mom!”
She was still laughing, though now at my horrified expression. “What? My grandsons are going to be so handsome when their dad looks the way he does. Oh, and my beautiful granddaughters are going to look just like their mother…”
“You do realize that I’m only eighteen, right?” I asked. I was beginning to question her sanity also. My mother was not supposed to be thinking about her daughter getting married or having babies at this point.
“Yes, but you’ll be nineteen in just a few weeks,” she grinned.
“Now I’m really questioning your sanity. Have you taken a fall recently? Or maybe took something you shouldn’t have?”
All she did was laugh.
The sound of the front door opening made us turn our heads.
“Holly?” Dad’s voice called from the foyer. His footsteps sounded down the hall as headed for the kitchen. “Is there a reason there are suitcases by the stairs or…?”
Both of us looked up when he appeared in the doorway, eyes glancing at Mom before they landed on me, widening.
“Emmy?” he said, almost like he didn’t believe that I was sitting there in our kitchen instead of running around the world like I had been for the past few weeks.
“Hey, Dad,” I smiled, hopping up off my seat and walking toward him. I wrapped my arms around his waist and it took him a moment to wrap his around my shoulders, almost like he couldn’t believe that I was actually there.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, hugging me tighter and kissing the top of my head. “Not that I’m not happy that you are here, but still.”
I laughed slightly. “I know. I should have called, but I thought this would be a nice surprise. I’m home now, though.”
He hugged me for a few moments longer, before pulling back with a smile. That smile wavered and then turned into a frown when he saw my red, puffy eyes. “What’s wrong? Have you been crying?”
I shrugged, though nodded. “Yeah. It’s just…coming back home was a hard decision, but I needed it.”
He looked at Mom over the top of my head. I didn’t need to see her face to know that she was silently telling him that she’d tell him what was going on with me later. I was secretly happy about that, too, because I didn’t want another breakdown so close to the first.
“So you’ve been on a business trip?” I asked, changing the subject. “Where did you go?”
His grin was back in place. “Paris, actually. The Louvre, to be exact. We’re trying to work out a deal to bring one of their exhibits over to the museum. We got it, though, and it’ll be here in about two weeks.”
“Sounds interesting. Do you think I can come with you to the museum when they arrive? I love it when you guys get new pieces.”
He nodded. “Definitely.”
I smiled again, raising an eyebrow. “You know, we were both in Paris at the same time then. We could have met up.”
“Do I even want to ask? Especially since, while I was there, someone broke into the Élysée Palace?”
My grin was a knowing one. “Well, maybe not.”
...
“Alright, Em, it’s time to spill,” Jason grinned at me.
I raised an eyebrow, sipping my water. “Spill what? My drink?”
I didn’t even have to look over at Drake, who was sitting next to me in the booth, to know that he rolled his eyes just like Jason had. “Good ol’ Em. We missed you and your sarcasm around here.”
I grinned, bumping my shoulder with his. “Who wouldn’t?”
It was just the three of us, sitting in the same diner that we had all those months ago when I’d come to New York with John, right after we broke into the Met.
When Jason had finally come downstairs after waking up around eleven that morning, he did a double take when he saw me coming into the kitchen after unpacking all of my stuff, including everything that had been sent back after I left school. Apparently, all the noise I was making in my room didn’t give him a hint that I was home, even though his room was right beside mine.
A few hours later, we decided to meet up with Drake. When he saw me walking into the diner, I was immediately crushed by him as he wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me pretty much as tight as he could. I was seeing stars before he let go.
Being with the two of them, laughing and talking, it almost made me feel normal again. But I knew that once we were back home and I was alone in my room, everything would come crashing down on me again, cueing another breakdown. I needed to get used to it, though, because it was going to be a while before I went back to my other normal.
“Seriously, Em,” Jason continued. “What exactly happened while you were gone? Were you doing the same thing as you did the last time? Did you break into more museums?”
Drake snorted. “Jase, you know that’s probably not what she did…especially when all they seemed to be playing over the past two months while she was gone were news reports of a group breaking into government buildings around the world.”
Jason looked at me with wide eyes. “Was that you?”
I grinned, taking another sip of my water. “Maybe…”
He whistled low, leaning back against the back of the seat and put his hands on the top of his head. “Badass Emmy strikes again!” he grinned, reaching forward for a high-five.
“Oh, yeah,” I laughed, slapping his hand with mine.
“Please tell me you didn’t get shot this time, though,” Drake said.
“Shot at, sure, but not actually hit,” I said, still grinning. “Though we were almost caught at a few places…and I did get kidnapped by the guys we were running from…and we did get caught by Secret Service and the military on the last one…and did I mention I got to meet the president at the Pentagon, even though I was named a suspected terrorist?”
I knew that to anyone else hearing me, what I was saying would have sounded insane. I wasn’t worried about anyone hearing me, though, because there was only one other person in the diner with us besides the cook and one waitress. To Drake and Jason, I was pretty sure that they would have thought I’d be kidding, waiting for me to start laughing and saying, “Gotcha!” But did I? No.
And after a few moments of silence, they finally got it.
“Jason’s right,” Drake said. “Badass Em does strike again.”
“Though she’s even more badass!” Jason grinned. “God, Em, where has this version of you been all these years?”
I shrugged my shoulders, knowing the answer to that, even though I wasn’t going to say it. John was the one who brought out that Emmy, made her feel fearless and invincible with him by her side. Talking about it all…it almost made me feel like it was all a dream.
We spent the next fifteen minutes eating and talking about the two of them and how the past few months had been going. I was laughing at a story Jason was telling me about one of the projects he had to do for his history class when the bell over the door into the diner chimed. I didn’t think anything about until Jason, whose eyes, I noticed, were going to the person every few moments, said something about them.
“Um, Em? The guy who walked in a few minutes ago hasn’t stopped looking over here at you,” he said in a hushed voice, leaning down so that whoever it was, didn’t hear him.
“What are you…?” I started, turning around to peek over at the person at the exact same moment Drake did.
“Do you know him?” Drake asked, still looking.
I clenched my teeth, anger boiling up inside me. “Yeah, I do,” I growled. “Let me out, Drake.”
Both of them looked at me, worried. “Are you sure…?” Drake started, but I cut him off.
“Let me out.”
When he finally did, I stalked over to Ryan, who was sitting in one of the first booths in the dinner. He was smiling smugly and all it made me want to do was slap him.
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, glaring at him from across the table. “I told you…”
“I came to talk some sense into you,” Ryan said. “You shouldn’t have just left like that, but listened to what my aunt had to say.”
“I told her, and I’m sure you heard also, that I couldn’t do what she wanted me to. I can’t hurt my family like that…or John.”
His eyes narrowed just slightly at the mention of John’s name. “Do you know what you coming with us would do for everyone, though? Not just us, not just the Brotherhood, but everyone?”
“I don’t care,” I said through my teeth.
One eyebrow rose. “You sure about that? You seemed like you cared when you decided to come with us in the first place.”
“That was before I realized just what it would do to everyone when you guys wanted to fake my death. Do you know what their reactions would be? What John’s would be? You realize that he would probably hunt you down, right? He already has reason enough to want to kill you.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed even more, so much he looked menacing. “I can take care of myself when it comes to that asshole.”
I couldn’t help but snort. “Funny. He calls you the same thing.”
He grumbled something, leaning back in the booth. “Well, I’ve come to give you a warning anyway. Juliet says that we’re going to get you to come with us no matter what. You know, she’s already talked to Ed, telling him that you skipped out. He said that he knew that you would probably do something like that and to give you time. But see, we don’t have that much time.”
“And if I’m correct, I don’t really care anymore. I’m not going to be a part of this.”
He snorted. “You’re John’s girl,” he said, leaning forward. “As long as you’re with him, you’ll always be a part of this.” I could see the grimace as he said it, like he didn’t approve. Too bad for him, that fact was never going to change.
I stood, making sure I was going to have the last word no matter what. “I will always be John’s. And you’re wrong. I’ll be a part of the Brotherhood, but not the Knights. They’re my family, not you.”
This time, he started grinning. “Well, in a sense, we’re all family. The Brotherhood and the Knights will always be connected, always have been. There’s really not a way you can distance yourself from us while you’re with them.”
I turned on my heel and started walking back toward the booth where Drake and Jason were waiting for me, overcurious looks on their faces. “We’ll see about that.”
***Is it weird that it's weird for me to write Emmy's normal life with her family? I'd better get used to it...for later at least. ;D
Anyway, I love her parents and Jason and Drake. They're all so good for her. What did you guys think about them?
100 votes and 20 comments before the next upload? I told you, I'm keeping up with this one and not letting it lag behind like I did with GD. :D
And don't forget to vote for Beautiful Heist in the Watty Awards! Your vote is definitely appreciated!
Comment and vote!!!1***