Utterly Forgettable | MM Romance | Complete

Thirty-One: Emery: Nigh Unbearable

"Minion won't tell me what you did. Spill."

Emery clutched his mouse almost hard enough to break it. If he'd felt uncomfortable the last time Emma had asked him to 'spill,' he was left wishing a chasm would open up beneath his office chair and swallow him whole now. He spared a moment's gratefulness for Josh's discretion, wondering if there was any conceivable way of finishing this conversation without seeing disappointment at him settle deeper than it ever had in his sister's shaky irises. There was no flattering light with which to paint his offer — at least none which wouldn't cause him to disclose the one thing he'd promised himself he'd never reveal, even to Emma.

He inhaled to steady himself, fingers slow to let go of their unreasonable grip. "I behaved abominably with Josh, though I had the best of intentions. I'd prefer not to discuss it."

The hard set of her jaw faded away, and the slant in her eyebrows spoke more of concern than fury. "Kid," she admonished, "don't complicate. Tell me what you did. Apologize. Fix it."

A wounded sound escaped him before being ruthlessly suppressed. 'Fix it,' she demanded, as if it could ever be fixed. As if Josh looked at him with anything other than utter contempt these days. Nothing in Josh's behavior had led Emery to believe he'd be so profoundly offended, but the hurt was dealt, the damage done. "Would that I could, Emma. I am not complicating anything. This one is truly simple: it's beyond fixing."

"Tell me."

"Emma, please." He turned his monitors off, their glare bothering him as he tried to face her. "You've always been able to wring from me whatever information you've desired. Please let me keep this one to myself."

After over four decades of having Emma as a sister, Emery thought she could no longer surprise him; in truth, he should have known better than to underestimate her in any way. She didn't try to pry the actual events from him, for once in her life. "Don't tell me, then. Just fix it. Nothing's beyond fixing. Except death. Take care of it."

Emery felt an invisible fist clench around his heart and squeeze. 'Except death,' she said, mercilessly alluding to hers. The weight of everything that was unfixable in his life was nigh unbearable. "Please don't say things like that."

"Have to, kid." Her voice was gentler than her words. "Can't let you hide behind me anymore. Fix it."

"Am I not allowed to make decisions concerning my own life without you reminding me I am to lose you as well?" His own voice, on the other hand, had no gentleness left in it, the hurt too great to contain. "Why must you push this hard, Emma? I cannot recall the last conversation we had in which you didn't bring up Josh. Why? Do you imagine a lover would ever be a substitute for a sister? Or am I that incapable, in your eyes, of finding love without your assistance?"

"Incapable? No. Unwilling. I've been your excuse for years. Not to move on from Simon. Simon's dead. Minion's alive. Minion's worth moving on for."

Emery's eyes widened as he realized the conclusion she'd leapt to — the conclusion he couldn't disabuse her of without revealing the rest of it. That he'd started rebuilding, slowly but surely, after his fiancé's funeral. That it hadn't been Simon's death but Vincent's life that had destroyed the fragile peace Emery had conquered for himself. "Emma, I'm not—"

"—Using me to hide? Yes. You are. Stop that."

"I've been done grieving Simon for years now. What happened with Josh... I misread a situation so completely that there's nothing left to salvage. Please." His eyes burned and he swallowed convulsively. "If I promise to do my utmost not to ruin any chance I may have with the next man I fall in love with, will you let it go? I'm begging you, Emma. All this conversation is achieving is to hurt me. Let it go."

He endured her scrutiny with as much stoicism as a man with wet cheeks could. What she saw in his eyes seemed to satisfy and sadden her in equal measure. She opened her arms and he was out of his office chair and in her comforting embrace the next second, thankful he'd succeeded in getting her to relent.

"Okay. Have it your way, kid." She ruffled his hair and kissed his temple. "Letting go. Going swimming tomorrow. Tomorrow," she repeated. "Saturday. Don't work the whole day."

He nodded, arms still around her frame, but she wasn't appeased. "Promise. No working all day."

"I promise." If it was important enough for her to extract a promise from him, it was important enough to acquiesce.