Sorry this chapter took so long to post, but reading your comments again riled me up to keep going. Thanks for reading!
/
The ride home is silent but filled with a coiled energy, ready to explode. Nolan can feel it, though he won't pry. He has to let her process it in her own time. But he keeps his eyes on her almost as much as on the road. They get back to the Hamptons, they walk up the porch steps of the beach house, they make it inside, and Nolan still keeps his eyes on her. He's waiting for her to break.
"Thank you for taking me," she says.
That's it? "Ems…"
"Don't look at me like that, Nolan. I'm fine."
"You've just seen your father for the first time in 20 years after thinking he was dead. I don't think fine is the word you were looking for."
She sighs but she is restless, her eyes roaming the room, searching for a place to settle but finding none. Though she isn't saying much, Nolan can see the way this is affecting her. He can see it in her hands. (She brings one to her lips for a moment, but a moment's enough for him to see that it's shaking.) Nolan regrets telling Emily about David. And he especially regrets taking her to see him. It's too much stress for her, and her baby. She is so big and so vulnerable.
"Ems, talk to me."
"What do you want me to tell you?" Emily snaps. "That I'm so happy my father is alive? That it's fine that he's been living two hours away this whole time? That I forgive him for looking into my eyes and not recognizing his own daughter?"
The break he's been waiting for. He understands why she's mad. Nolan even understands why she's taking it out on him.
"I know," he says. It's all he can say. "I know."
"Everything I've ever done—my entire life—has been for nothing," Emily says. "Aiden died for nothing."
"You can't think like that."
Emily shrugs. "It's true isn't?"
"You never would've met Aiden if it wasn't for what happened with your father."
She closes her eyes, suddenly looking so tired. "You shouldn't have told me that David was alive." She opens her eyes, levels Nolan with a steady, accusatory stare.
"Ems, I'm sorry."
"I should get some rest."
He knows she's right, she should rest, but he hates leaving her like this. She's angry with him, and she's upset. "I can stay," he offers.
She shakes her head. "Thank you, Nolan. But I want to be alone."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm fine," she says. She is distracted. He isn't going to get anything out of her, not tonight at least.
\\\
Of course, Emily can't sleep. Not for lack of trying, though. She wants to sleep very badly. She wants to see Aiden. But anytime her eyelids fall shut all she sees is his face—pale, eyes forever open, dead—sitting on the couch. And her heart breaks.
Her heart's been breaking for so long. It broke when she was a little girl, far too young for anybody's heart to break. And it broke again when Aiden died. And just as she thought her heart was finally starting to mend, tonight it broke even more. The second she saw her father alive she could feel a tear, as painful and real as a fractured bone. The second he looked at her and called her Emily Thorne—not Amanda—her heart broke clean in half.
She can feel it, clear as anything, this new ache in her chest. She wonders if her baby can feel it too. It's kicking up a storm. She sits on her bed and places a hand over stomach, a futile attempt to soothe it. Futile because she can't even soothe herself.
The irony is that for the longest time all Emily ever wanted was for her dad to come back. And now that he has she can't help but feel that the wrong man has come back into her life. She'd trade her dad for Aiden in a second. And thinking that only makes her heart break more.
Her baby kicks and her mind races and she doesn't even know what she's suddenly crying about but there's enough to cry about so she does.
Eventually she's too mentally and emotionally exhausted and her body gives in, forces her to sleep, but the sleep that comes isn't peaceful.
She longed for dreams of Aiden and she gets them, but they aren't good dreams. They're nightmares. She sees him dying over and over again and there is nothing she can do to stop it from happening. She feels the pain of his death like it was just yesterday and when she wakes with a start in the middle of the night, twisted in her sheets and damp, she feels a new kind of pain, deep within. She clutches her stomach and cries out.
Emily reaches for her phone. "I need your help," she says.
