Her First, His Last Read online

  "Are you okay?" Sarah asked.

  I shook my head then I heard a voice that made the tears roll.

  "Em, baby, I'm clean. The only thing I have craved for the last five years is you. I miss you so much. Baby, I'm a huge, screwed-up mess. I manage holding it together in front of a crowd, but when the show's over, my mind goes back to you. I've cried enough tears to fill a thousand rivers. I still love you. I would give it all up to be able to hold you again. Let me come home." Myles’s voice filled the arena then I heard another beat I was familiar with. The first song he ever sang to me. They were doing a cover of I want you to want me, by Cheap Trick. Hearing Myles’s deep southern drawl slid over the words caused the gaping, aching hole in my chest to grow. The room started spinning. For the very first time in five long, excruciating years, I felt the stirrings of feelings deep down in the pit of my stomach.

  Sarah gripped my arm and started bouncing and squealing like a 12-year-old little girl. "Can you imagine being the person he is talking to? How cool, would that be?"

  Part of me died at that moment. It wasn't cool. I was just one of many. I was the innocent one, the one who reminded him of his childhood—the part of him that was innocent too.

  "I've got to go. I'll get a cab or something." My heart felt as though it would explode.

  "Emma, what's going on?" Sarah asked.

  I took off running, fighting my way through the crowd, trying my damnedest to run away from the pain, to run away from Myles O’Conner forever. I ran for what seemed like hours.

  Outside, the skies had opened, and the rain poured down, washing the tears from my face. It hurt everywhere. The dull ache of my breaking heart ate away at me. I found myself running in circles to avoid the past, avoid the present. I had to see him.

  The closer I got to the band's buses, the quicker my pace became. The rain fell from the heavens washing away all traces of the memories we shared. The void was overwhelming. I was desperate to see him. He needed to look at me, so I could see what I meant to him. I had to tell him one more time that he was the only thing that mattered in life.

  I paused outside the main bus, startled by the deafening quietness. It was as if I had walked into a ghost town, not the backstage of a Manuscript concert.

  Suddenly struck with the most dreadful thought, I cringed—he was not there at all. A nightmare played in my mind. He was with some dealer, one who might be the love of his life.

  Pain shot through me; it was indescribable. I was nauseous—jealousy smacked me in the gut. I hated it. It stirred the part of me that I had spent the last few years trying to hide. The only good in my life had moved on without me. I wasn't the only one running. I had lost him forever. I would never get to hold his hand, kiss his cheek, or hear his laughter again.

  It felt as if I had been transported back in time, and every emotion I felt as a lovesick teenage girl waylaid me again.

  The glow from the streetlights illuminated Myles as he descended out of a small bus and leaned back onto the bottom step. He rested his elbows on the doorsill, letting the rain pour down his all-too-perfect face. Was it fair for one person to be so blessed?

  It scared me. I had loved him as deeply as a girl could possibly love, and I couldn’t even dim my feelings.

  There was something so special about him that he commanded my attention like no other. Even at the early age of twelve, and I would never be embarrassed to admit it, he captivated me. Nothing had ever been the same since the instant our eyes met.

  I scraped my hand along the bark of the oak tree I was hiding behind.

  Was I to expect my name would truly be on the list? Did he even know I still lived in town? Did he even care?

  I knew what he said, but what if it was a cruel joke? What if he wanted to show someone what a child I was? What a mistake I was?

  Myles wasn't the type to hurt someone for humor. He meant the words he spoke.

  After giving myself a little pep talk, I made my way over to a tent where a group of guards stood. My nerves frayed as if I had thrown them in a blender and turned it up on high.

  The most prominent guard held a clipboard and had already turned away a handful of hopeful guests.

  "Ahem," I cleared my throat and thought about running. The guard was tall, wide, and downright imitating. "Emma Murphy," I said under my breath.

  He eyed me from head to toe and smirked before looking down at his clipboard. His forehead wrinkled. He glanced up at me then back down on the list before motioning to two smaller guys loading a semi-truck with gear from the band.

  The smallest of the two placed a speaker on a nearby tractor-trailer and walked over to us.

  "This is the girl. See that she finds him," the roadie said and roamed his eyes over me once again as if he couldn't believe what he saw.

  The little guy waved his hand to follow him. I trailed behind him, sick of barely existing, fed up with missing Myles, tired of grieving the living.

  Myles stood when we approached him nervously, kicking his Clarks Wallabee boots in the grass. He leaned onto a nearby railing. I noticed a tattoo of a crushed heart at the base of his thumb. I wondered what other new ink he had.

  He coughed, bringing my attention back up his body. The rain clung to his shirt, exposing the rip muscles along his chest. Pulling his bottom lip into his mouth, he sucked on his lip ring. He had piercings now. What else had changed? He reached out a hand to wipe a wet strand of hair from my face. His touch was still so familiar. I leaned closer to him before remembering his betrayal. I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t muster one ill-feeling. My stomach suddenly filled with a million cliché butterflies again. I was acting pathetic and ashamed of how weak I was.

  "Emma?" The way my name rolled off his tongue both broke my heart and healed it. Instantly, he had his arms wrapped around me and kissed the top of my head. The scent of him ripped through me like a shot of morphine, and an unexpected heat coursed directly through my veins.

  "You came. I was beginning to believe this was all for nothing."

  It was for me. Myles had planned all this to see me. My chest constricted as I snuggled as close to him as I could get and rested my cheek over his heart. I didn’t want to appear emotional. I failed.

  He was taller than I remembered.

  He had a thick, five o'clock shadow.

  His voice was more resonant, but it still had that raspy quality I had missed so very much.

  None of that mattered. Time didn't change one thing, the way his arms brought me such peace. "This was to see me?"

  "I'm desperate. I will do whatever the hell it takes to get close to you again."

  "You could have just come to the trailer. I still live in the old neighborhood."

  "I tried but didn't have the nerve to knock."

  "You never knocked before."

  "I knew you wanted me before." Myles’s eyes dropped down to my lips. All I wanted was to feel his lips on mine. I needed to think.

  The tip-hammering in my chest was back. I stepped out of his grip and slid down onto the steps Myles had previously been sitting on. He sat next to me, ignoring the rain drenching us both. His thigh rubbed against my knee. I went numb. Someone or something had flipped the emergency shutoff valve in my brain.

  "Where is everyone?"

  "Being close to home, the guys bought their kids to see family and shit."

  "Kids?"

  "Yeah, Wade is married and expecting any day now. Camden and his girlfriend have a newborn. Sawyer has the cutest little girl named Sadie. Can we get out of this rain?" Myles asked and stood, then held out a hand to help me. I clutched his hands, and once again, the familiar burn raced over my skin. He led me onto the bus. It was newer than the one I remembered him having. Its entire living area was bigger than the living room of the trailer he was raised in. He had truly moved up in the world.

  Did he have anything left from the time we were together?

  We barely got the door shut before I started talking. "Sawyer is settled down. S
o, much has changed, hasn't it?"

  Myles rolled in laughter, so hard he shook the entire bus. "He has a daughter. He's still a whore and not ready to settle down. Sadie's mom was a one night stand, but he is a great dad. He’s a grown toddler raising a real one." He handed me a sweatshirt and eyed the wet white t-shirt that clung to my body and showcased the outline of my overdeveloped curves. "Please change. I can't think clearly with you standing there like a steak ready to be devoured."

  A football-sized lump formed in my chest—I couldn't even swallow my saliva.

  I turned around to change out of my wet clothes into an oversized sweatshirt that was warm and his. "Why didn't you try? Why didn't you fight for me?"

  He frowned, and his brows knitted together. "I tried fighting for you. I kept calling. I sent letters. Hell, I released a solo recording, hoping you realized how much I missed you."

  I shook my head vigorously.

  "You had to have heard it. It went platinum. I performed it on Headbangers Ball. Hell, the radio played it on a constant loop."

  The song I heard while shopping with Sarah was all him because it was a solo recording. It was about me. "I couldn't listen to your music. I wouldn't even listen to the radio because I was so scared I would hear your voice. I couldn't hear you without falling apart."

  He appeared physically pained and devastated. "Baby, I royally screwed up, but I have never gone a day without missing you and wishing you were with me."

  I shook my head and backed up until my backside hit the far wall in the bus. "You're lying. I read the only letter you ever sent me, and you told me goodbye and to move on because you have."

  "What the hell? I never sent a letter like that. I can't even process the words because it hurts so damn much. I've thought about killing myself daily because I destroyed the best thing in my life. I destroyed us. I wanted to escape this pain." He punched himself hard in the chest. "I'm already dead without you anyway."

  The ugliest of tears rocked me to the core. Not only had I been shattered and unwilling to move on, but so had Myles.

  "Granny gave me the letter; she said your mom left it." My heart juddered then took flight from my chest. "You don't think they lied to keep us apart?"

  There was silence for a long few seconds when Myles produced a cellphone. I had never actually seen one in person before. They were considered a product from the future in the small town I lived in. The town Myles came from. It only signaled how different we truly lived.

  "Mom, get to Emma's now!" Myles frowned. "You know which Emma. The only Emma I give a damn about." He snapped the cellphone closed and tossed it onto a nearby sofa. "Come on. We are about to find out besides my own stupidity what has kept us apart."

  "Wait," I said and placed my palm over his heart. "I can't be your enabler. I was my mom's, and she died. I don't want to live in a world that you aren't in." I just started talking, and I was already on the verge of crying. Who was I kidding? I was already sobbing.

  A little too quietly, he said, "You aren't with me in this world anyway. Why does it matter if I'm alive or not?"

  He didn't mean for me to hear him, but I did. Suffocated, the tears freely fell down my face. Could I let him in? My mom's addiction almost destroyed me. Losing him made me introverted and unconditionally lost. How much more could I take? "I'm so scared. If I come back, one day, I will find you dead. The pain I feel now is crippling." My head involuntarily shook. "I can't I couldn't live if I found you like I did my mother. I would have nothing to live for."

  "What can I do to prove to you I'm clean, and I only want you?"

  "You hurt me, bad. But I want you with me. There is nothing you can say that will heal me. You have to show me by your actions, but try. I'm so tired of hurting, going through the motion of life without living. I've tried living without you, and it's too hard. You are my other half. Please try. Try hard because I'm so broken. It will take a lot to heal me." When I finished, I picked up a t-shirt he had thrown on the floor and wiped my tears away. The shirt smelled like I remembered. It smelled like Myles. Maybe, he hadn't completely changed in the last few years.

  "I know, baby, I'll do whatever you need to heal you us," he pleaded.

  Looking into Myles’s gray eyes with little blue specks, I didn't know what to say.

  Because I deserved more—I deserved someone who doesn't lie—I deserved someone who wouldn’t crawl between some groupie's legs.

  "Let me kiss you again?" he begged.

  My eyes closed, hiding from the pain I had experienced. I leaned into the feel of his rough hand on my face. He smelled like an endless dream. A dream of walks down Main Street on a chilly brisk fall night. But the thing that made me want to kiss him again, despite my better judgment, was that he wanted it as much as I did. He could have stolen a million kisses, and I would have given in without hesitation, but he didn't. He asked and waited for my answer.

  My insides coiled, and without thinking, I took a step closer to him. "I can't until I know what we are doing?" My heart pounded. I wanted to run, but I knew the only thing that can ease the pain I had felt the last five years was Myles. “What are we doing?”

  "Getting the hell out of here together, and making sure we are never apart again." Myles lifted his finger, hooking it around my pinky, and led me back out into the rain.

  Chapter 16

  T he heavy patter of rain seemed to melt away around us. Myles squeezed my hand with both of his on the way to a pickup truck. He boosted me into the truck then lightly patted my behind. My body stiffened. "Sorry, it just looked too good," he said with my favorite laughter, then turned blood red.

  "No problem as long as I can check out all your tats later," came out like verbal diarrhea.

  "I think I can suffer through that."

  The language was our banter of old, but there was a tension to our words. The whole ride, Myles smoked one cigarette after another. I was beginning to wonder where he was keeping them all. I was also wondering when he started smoking. I finally had enough and took the cigarette from his lips, flicking it out the window.

  "Talk to me," I demanded.

  "About what?"

  "What are we doing?"

  "Riding in my truck." He turned the knobs on the air conditioner and switched the radio station. "Want to play a game with me?"

  "What kind of game?" I asked softly.

  “PACMAN,” he answered. I rolled my eyes and stuck out my tongue. Did it still bother him that I once had fun with Sawyer? "How about quid pro quo then?" He took his lip ring between his teeth, and his cheeks flushed.

  I didn't answer him, but my blank expression gave me away.

  "Tit for tat. I ask you a question about anything, and then you can ask me one. Hell, I'll be nice, you can ask two. I figured you have more running around in that beautiful head of yours than I do. You first?" He placed his hand on my inner thigh. I felt my muscles bunch together, then twitch in response to his touch.

  I smiled. "Favorite tat?"

  I wanted to kick myself when he removed his hand to shift in the seat and pushed his shirt off his left shoulder. "This one." Written in script was the letters EM in a pale blue across his left collarbone. He shot me a sideways smile that made me want to kiss him. "It was the first one I got when I got out of rehab. It started my newest addiction."

  "What does it mean?"

  "Em? It means I miss you." He curled his fingers around the hand I had rested on my knee. "My turn. Please, God, tell me you aren't dating anyone?"

  "No." I pulled my hand out from under his and twisted the other way.

  I've been a hermit, a lone wolf, no one appeals to me, but you and you hurt me.

  He gripped my hand, forcing me to turn back to him, and winked. "I love you and saying I'm sorry isn't enough. Just give me a chance to show you?" Myles fisted and unfisted his hand on the steering wheel as he crawled along the streets. "We'll take it slow. Start as just friends. Please, baby?" He lit up another damn cigarette. "Beautiful, never give up on m
e. Fight for this. I'd die for you." He rolled down the window and stuck out his hand, letting the wind whip around it. "Stay with me tonight. I don't care if all you want to do is talk. If it is, then that's what we'll do. I don't give a damn. I will rent a room with two beds. I just want you with me."

  "I don't know what I want, but one bed will work."

  Fifteen minutes later, Myles pulled onto the gravel pad in front of the only place I had ever referred to as home, but it wasn't a single-wide trailer that was my home base. Time and time again had taught me home was being in Myles’s arm. Myles is the only place I have ever felt like I belonged.

  I stumbled out of the truck. Myles waited for me in front of the vehicle. He reached out to firmly clasp my hand in his. "We got this. I will never let anyone keep us apart again. Not even myself. I love you, Em. You’re my home, and I am so damn tired of being homeless."

  It was as if he had plucked the words from my mind.

  I grasped his arm with my free hand and squeezed because my emotions would have taken over if I had responded.

  Myles strode upon our narrow front doorsteps and started to knock when Granny slung open the door. "Is everyone okay?"

  My heart did a front handspring into my stomach, two cartwheels into my throat, then three lay-ups back into place. We neither said a word as we crossed over to the small living room and took a seat on a nearby sofa. I couldn't take my eyes off Coraline. She was usually smiling and overly talkative. But she only stared as she twisted her fingers around a crumpled piece of napkin. The ah-ha moment hit her the instant she saw Myles and me holding hands.

  Myles bared down on my hand as he struggled to contain the raging inferno burning in him.

  "I don't want to hear your bullshit," Myles said. "I never sent Emma a letter telling her to move on." He visually shook.

  I glanced up at him. He had not only gotten older, but he was surer of himself. He was a man who didn't take kindly to hearing the word no. It scared me in a sense, but the way he held me, I knew I terrified him too because he didn't have the upper hand with me. I was one of the few people who was on an even playing field with him. The person he worried about impressing.