The Edge of Heaven (33 page)

"But I haven't seen a one last more than two months," Rachel said.

"So, he has a short attention span. Or he just likes variety."

"Maybe. Or maybe he really doesn't care about any of them."

* * *

It was a long year. Emma just worked and worked. She came home for Memorial Day, at which time Rye barely even looked at her. She was mad enough by Labor Day that when she came home for her grandfather's annual cookout, she wore the tiniest excuse for a bikini she could find.

The family gathered at a small, sandy beach on the river for a cookout, swimming, sunning themselves, and fireworks.

Emma had the bikini on underneath her T-shirt and cutoffs. Her cousin Becky gawked at her when she finally worked up her nerve to pull off the T-shirt. "Gee, wonder who you're trying to impress."

"I've given up on impressing him," Emma said. "But he's not going to ignore me today."

The tiny string bikini was a flaming red, shimmering, reflective material that would not be overlooked, and the top was made of the narrowest triangles of material. She didn't have anything to write home about in the way of breasts, but this sure made the most of them.

"Chickening out?" Becky asked.

"No way."

Rye was playing volleyball, him and all the guys and some woman he'd brought with him. Not Meg. He seemed as happy as could be.

He was shirtless—God help her—and sweating, his muscles and all that glorious sun-browned skin gleaming. He attacked the ball and the net the entire game, and she had to admit, he looked perfectly at ease here and happy in a way that she didn't think she'd seen him before.

Maybe he'd finally settled in, figured out that he was a part of them, that he always would be. He just wouldn't be hers.

Emma took her beach towel and spread it out in the sand near the volleyball court, sat down, slipped off her shorts, and stretched out facedown on her towel. She was working up her nerve to reach behind her back and untie her top when Sam came along.

He nudged her with his toe. "Did you lose something?"

"No," she insisted, turning her head to look up at him.

"Emma, I've got socks with more material than that swimsuit. Tell me you don't normally go out in public in that thing."

"Only when I'm working on my tan."

"Very funny," he said.

"Sam, I'll be twenty-one in five months."

"You think I won't tell you what you can and can't do when you're twenty-one?"

"You don't do that now," she reminded him. He trusted her, little Miss Responsible. He'd never really played outraged father, except with her and Rye.

Emma wondered if he knew this was about that—her and Rye. She wondered suddenly if everyone knew, wondered if they just looked at her and everything she did or said when he was around, and knew.

She groaned and buried her head in her beach towel.

"You've made your point," she told Sam.

A glance out of the corner of her eye told her he'd accepted that and moved on. She flipped over onto her back and then her side, so she could look out at the family members and friends gathered here. Did they pity her? For everything she felt for a man who simply didn't feel the same way about her.

She was sick just thinking about it. This really had to stop. It had been more than a year and a half. How long was she going to hang on to any hope that he felt something for her?

Emma sat up, pulling on her shorts and grabbing the towel and her shirt. She shook the sand off her towel and draped it over one shoulder, had the shirt in her hand as she took off for the trees that lined the edge of the beach. She'd just made it into the trees when she heard someone coming after her. Turning around, she saw Rye glaring at her.

"What the hell are you doing, Emma?"

"Enjoying the picnic," she claimed, though from the way she'd snarled at him, there was no doubt that was a lie.

"In that?" He nodded toward her practically nonexistent top.

She stuck her nose in the air, not about to back down from him on anything today. "You have a problem with it? It's what all the little girls are wearing this year."

"Emma, don't." He was breathing hard, sweat making little paths down the muscles of his chest, and he looked like he wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her.

Well, he didn't have the right.

"Don't you dare think you have the right to tell me what to do. You're nothing to me, right? And I'm nothing to you. Isn't that what you wanted?"

She thought he was going to grab her for a minute, and maybe she thought he was going to deny it. That's what she really wanted—to goad him into a reaction. But he didn't do either of those things. He held his temper somehow and held back anything he might have said, turned, and walked away.

Story of her life. He was leaving once again, and she'd made herself look like a fool.

* * *

Christmas was quiet that year, New Year's the same. Rye was polite, a bit distant with her, like she was nothing more than someone he saw on major holidays and didn't give a second thought to otherwise.

She no longer looked for little hidden signs that he cared, no longer read things into every glance, every word. She was done. It was over.

She came home for her twenty-first birthday in February in a bittersweet mood. Twenty-one was one of those landmarks. No one could say she wasn't an adult. The summers she'd spent at school and the extra courses she'd taken throughout the years were going to pay off in May, when she graduated after three years instead of the usual four. She'd be on her own then, get an apartment, get a job.

Get a life. She'd promised herself. It was long past time.

She wandered into the kitchen as Rachel was putting candles on her cake. It was grape colored, the icing looking a little rough, the orange and green roses a bit lopsided.

"Grace?" she guessed.

Rachel nodded. "She takes food coloring very seriously."

Emma started to cry then. She couldn't help it.

Rachel put down the cake and pulled Emma into her arms. "Oh, honey. I'm so sorry. Did Becky say something to you?"

"About what?"

"About Rye and Laine Wilson."

"What about Rye and Laine Wilson?" Emma asked.

"Oh, honey. I thought... Well, what is it?"

"Never mind what it is. Tell me about Rye. What? He's engaged to Laine Wilson?" Emma had baby-sat her kids, too, dammit.

"Becky said she's been in every jewelry store in town, looking at rings. But nobody's seen Rye in one, and he hasn't said anything to me. I've been helping him with ideas for his kitchen, some special design touches."

"Special for her? For when they get married?" Emma asked. God, she hadn't forgotten him. She hadn't forgotten anything.

"She drops by all the time, and she sure is interested in how the house is going to be finished out. But he's doing what he wants there. He asks me as often as he asks her about what should be done."

"But she's picking out a ring?"

"Maybe," Rachel admitted. "I don't know."

Emma shook her head miserably, telling herself it was bound to happen sooner or later. Just because he didn't care about her, that didn't mean he wouldn't ever come to love someone someday.

"I feel like such a fool. I actually thought that maybe now... I'm not eighteen anymore. I'm twenty-one. I actually thought that might matter to him."

"I'm sorry," Rachel said, hugging her close.

"Me, too."

Chapter 16

He didn't even come to her twenty-first birthday party.

She could have screamed at him, just for that, stupid girl that she was.

Everybody else came, tons of family members and half a dozen or so friends from high school, who happened to be home for the long weekend.

She hadn't seen some of them in years, including Brian Evans. She'd had something of a crush on him in tenth grade, and he still looked really cute. Not much different than he had then, actually.

"We're going to a little party later," he said. "A friend of mine—Todd Myers—remember him?"

"Two years behind us in school, right?"

"Yeah, that's him. We've got an apartment over on Seventh Street. Why don't you come over there with me? This is way too tame a party for anybody who's turning twenty-one."

Emma suddenly thought it was. What was she going to do anyway? Go back to school and hide in her room, feeling sorry for herself and picturing Rye and Laine together?

She really didn't need to do that.

Not anymore.

She thanked Sam and Rachel for the party, told Rachel she thought she'd head back to school that night, that Brian had offered to take her. It was one of the few lies she'd ever told either of them.

Brian had a cooler full of beer on ice in his truck and pulled out one for her. Emma wasn't much of a drinker. Her birth father was an alcoholic, and while she wasn't one to excuse his behavior because of it, she knew it took his out-of-control personality up another notch into the danger zone. From what little she'd experienced of it, alcohol deadened her sense of self-control, and after the childhood she'd had, Emma placed a great deal of value on control in any situation.

But she was twenty-one, dammit. Rye hadn't even come to her party. He hardly knew she was alive, and he was probably going to marry Laine. She was going to give up on him, once and for all.

If there was ever a night to get drunk, this was it.

She took the beer and tried not to grimace at the taste.

"You're not really a beer drinker, are you?" Brian said.

"Not really."

He stopped at a liquor store along the way and came out with a bottle of champagne. "We'll try this. It's your birthday, after all."

She finished the beer anyway, and by the time they got to his friend's house, her head was spinning. She was determined to enjoy it. Images of Rye were fading. It didn't quite hurt as much to think of him. Maybe she could simply make her heart numb.

The party was a small one. Her and Brian, Todd and some girl Emma didn't know, and one other couple. They were crawling all over each other in one corner of the sofa.

"Hey." Todd nudged the guy. "Get a room, why don't you."

The guy grinned. "You've got one, right?"

"Yeah, sure." He nodded back toward what had to be the bedroom. "Make yourself at home."

That was that.

Emma caught Brian looking at her with a little smile that she knew probably should have made her nervous, but she really didn't care at the moment. He opened the champagne, which was sweet and bubbly, definitely much better than the beer. She had two glasses, and when she tried to stand up, she swayed on her feet.

"Careful." Brian slipped an arm around her waist. "We don't want you to fall down. You might want to hang on to me."

She might as well.

He steered her down the dark hallway, into what she finally realized was a bedroom. He closed the door, didn't turn on the lights, and then he kissed her.

Emma closed her eyes and tried to make herself feel something, anything.

The champagne helped. The darkness helped.

He put his hand on her breast. She thought about that, how it felt to have him touch her. It felt good, didn't it? She was a perfectly normal woman, a twenty-one-year-old woman, and she had the same basic need to be touched and kissed that any woman had.

It didn't have to be about love, did it? It didn't have to be about forever.

Why not just let him...

He worked on the buttons on her blouse, fumbling one and maybe snapping it off, but he got his hand inside, closing around her bare flesh.

Go ahead,
she told herself.
Let go.
Let it happen. Let him do whatever he wants.

"Come on, Emma," he said.

It wasn't so bad like this. She wasn't sure if she was crazy about the way he kissed, and he sure seemed a bit impatient. She tensed up a bit and willed herself to relax, to feel, to like it.