Endangered Hearts, page 19
“Never.” He shook his head and handed her the large envelope.
Though skeptical, Emilia smiled, taking the envelope and opening it. Kasper had gone out of his way before, yet what luxury item could an envelope possibly contain? On that theory alone it seemed harmless enough. But as she saw the colors of the logo on the very first page, her breath ceased to come.
“Cornell?” She shook her head. “I—I don’t understand.”
“You were intelligent enough to get in.” He smiled again and took a seat beside her on the bed. “I think you do.”
“Yeah, I got in—” She thumbed through the paperwork, housing paperwork, waiver forms, and medical information. All the forms she had sent back after she had told the graduate school she had to give up her spot. “I can’t afford this though, and I declined the acceptance months ago.”
“I know,” he said. “Yet I know how badly you want to—”
“I don’t believe this,” she said with a smile threatening to break through. “How—wait, how do you know? I never told you about Cornell, did I?”
“Oh…” Kasper rubbed the back of his neck and leaned back onto the bed. All of the possible questions and this was the first one she asked? “Well, I’m afraid I have a little confession there. I conducted an inquiry on you when you first began your employment here. Your school records and things of that nature were inclusive material in the investigation.”
“Investigation?” She closed her eyes and tried to avoid what she knew she was about to hear. “What? You mean like you googled me, right?”
He chuckled slightly as he reached up and twirled a piece of her hair around one of his fingers. “A bit more than that, actually. A detective I employ for these things researched you significantly.”
“What?” She shoved his hand away from her. How could he be so callous when talking about her life? “Why?”
She was pale now, visibly distressed as she shook her head. Admittedly Kasper didn’t understand why, but he was eager to make amends.
“My infatuation towards you made me act idiotically. I needed to know everything about you, thought about you constantly—thought that if I understood you, you would no longer hold any interest for me.”
Emilia clutched her stomach as she stood up. “I see.”
“I—don’t you see, my love?” He did not try to hide the desperation in his voice now. Didn’t she understand that she could go to Cornell now? She could go and have all those things they stayed up late into the night talking about. Why was she focusing on this? “I’ll provide for everything and you do not have to fret! Aasif is already looking for homes in the Ithaca area―” Panic flooded him like it hadn’t in weeks. He had just assumed that they could be together in New York. Yet, what if she did not want to stay with him? Wanted to live the college life? “You can live on campus, of course, if you like. This was your first choice of school, was it not?”
She looked away. “It was.”
“Then why do you look so despondent?”
He didn’t understand? He really didn’t get what he had done wrong here? She waited; half-hoping he would laugh as a joke but knowing that he was completely serious. “You were—you’ve been spying on me?”
“What? I—that was—”
“Answer the question,” she demanded. But since when did she demand anything? The revelation confused her, but she didn’t have time to analyze it. For now what was important was answers and if Kasper told her what she thought she knew, then Emilia would have a decision to make.
“I was not spying on you..”
“You paid someone to do research on me?”
“Among other things.” He shook his head. “You are missing the point. Now you can accomplish what you want. Something as redundant as money will not hold you back—”
“What do you mean ‘among other things’?”
Kasper failed to see the problem. With the deviant who dwelled in her mother’s home, Emilia needed someone to look after her and he was more than happy to do it, would do so for the rest of his life if she would let him. He had not looked in on her while she undressed, kept at such a distance that she hadn’t not known he was there—so why did she now seem so angry?
“When I first knew you, occasionally—often, I would sit outside of your home. I would watch you and your mother interacting from the bay windows when the curtains were open.”
“What?” She was shocked, horrified. This was the reaction he had expected when he was first unmasked, when he first revealed his lineage, but certainly not now. She ran her hands through her hair before resting her forehead against the cool pane of the window. So much made sense now… but where there should have been relief there was anger, anger and the uncapped feeling of betrayal.
“What kind of stuff did you see?”
He clenched his toes and stared at the floor. His brain tried to grasp why she was reacting this way, but couldn’t. “Only the way you would study laying upside down on the couch, how you took out the rubbish a day before the collectors came for it because your mother never remembered it. I favored the way you would hum quickly when you warmed up your vehicle on cold mornings…”
She shook her head. “You were the one scraping the ice off my windshield?”
Emilia didn’t have to look to know that he nodded.
“I thought I was going crazy.” She clenched her jaw. “Really nuts.”
For all his small attempts to help Emilia, it had never occurred him that his efforts were doing the exact opposite. Now that it was however, he was profoundly ashamed that he could be a part of deteriorating the little peach. He wondered, hoped the guilt might literally crush him. “I apologize, little peach. I—I have never been good at interacting with others. I did not know how to court you properly, and I still don’t. Nevertheless, I love you, Emilia. You have owned me since the moment I first saw you.”
“I understand that,” she said. “I think I do, anyway. Why this isn’t okay? Y-you’re acting like you have no clue that what you did wrong.”
He shook his head. Once again she had seen straight through him. “If I’ve hurt you, there are no words to describe how sorry I am.”
“If?” Emilia laughed as she turned to him. How could such a brilliant man be so dense? “Kasper, you truly don’t understand, do you? You’ve been lying to me every day. I thought we’ve been getting to know each other, but this entire time you had information on me, an advantage that I can’t even begin to compete with—”
“No,” he tried to insist. “That isn’t how—”
“How am I supposed to trust you when our relationship is based on a lie?”
“You can trust me!”
“It doesn’t feel like that to me,” she whispered. “I feel violated. I thought I felt safe in this house, safe with you. But if I was wrong about that, wrong about my own instincts, what does that say about me?”
“You can trust me, Emilia. I swear on my life, swear on everything I love! Swear on you!”
Emilia smiled sadly. “That doesn’t seem like much to me.”
“But it is, my little peach. It’s everything. You are everything.”
Her temperance began to fade at the declaration. Why did he get to claim such admiration when she was perfectly content to be furious at him? It wasn’t fair that he could be a jerk and romantic at the same time. Both desirable and annoying enough to make her want slam something through the window. “My mom’s boyfriend, he’s always trying to—”
“Look at you? Yes, I know. He is the most vile kind of person.”
“You know?” She had intended to make a point, to compare the two of them to make Kasper contemplate how invading her privacy hadn’t just hurt her but how it was also morally irrepressible, but he had already known? Was he truly so clueless?
“I can’t believe you! What makes you different from any other pervert?”
“Emilia—” He reached out for her, but she recoiled.
“No.” She vehemently shook her head. “I don’t like this. You know all the things I’m afraid of, ashamed of, and you won’t let me in? Not only that, but knowing that, you embodied all those things I hated the most and didn’t give any regard to me. H-how can you claim to love me?”
“How can I prove myself to you? How can I fix this? Whatever it takes—”
She shook her head to keep his words out. How did he not get this? “Not with gifts, or tuition, and not with sorry…” She spat the words out at him, at him and his oblivion. Emilia was no longer sure what angered her more, the fact that she had once felt guilty for researching him online, or that that he just had no comprehension. “I want you to leave me alone.”
“No.”
“I can’t stay here anymore.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it!” Quickly she dressed and ignored his pleas as she stuffed her unfolded clothes into the same bag she had arrived in—uncaring tears fell freely from her eyes. When it became obvious she ignored him, even as he reached out for her and again she pulled from his grasp, violently and vengeful. “I am so sick and tired of apologies that don’t mean anything. Trying to figure out if people mean what they say this time, if they’ll keep their promise this time.” She stopped and sighed. Maybe this was her fault. Inadvertently, he had warned her from the beginning that he didn’t understand typical relationships merely by the way he treated her. Kasper had called her names, been cynical towards her, and even inconsistent in his affection. Had she honestly thought she could make him any better? Change the monster on the surface?
“I’m leaving,” she repeated softly, “and don’t you dare follow me.”
Gathering her breath, she pointed a finger at him. “If I even suspect you are—I’ll call the police, Kasper.” Emilia exhaled, wiped her tears on her sleeve and smiled. “I swear to God I will.”
Kasper opened his mouth to say something but the words did not come, refused to even take a place in his head. The tears she shed were more painful to him than any name she could call him, than anyone who had ever taunted him before. Even still, he would let her go, let her go because she was right. It had been unintentional, but he had done those same things to her that had made her feel so uncomfortable in her own mother’s home, and as the revelation settled in, the self-hatred made him incapable of response.
She sniffed. “I thought you were better than this.”
For that type of sin, he deserved no forgiveness.
***
Emilia did her best to form a new sort of routine, devoting any spare time she had to the tutoring center and work. Furthermore, if it was out of a childish spite that she registered at the Baymont Motel, she did not acknowledge it. Instead, she went back to those tragedies that did not belong to her, using the music to void out the arguments of the other motel residences just like she did for her mother.
Predictably, the security she wished for did not exist. She had hoped that in her anger and rage when she first left Iram Manor she would feel a new strand of independence. Having lived at her mother’s house and then at Kasper’s—now this place, this grimy little motel room was all her own. Unfortunately however, that enlightenment never came, even when she shopped with enthusiasm for new sheets and bleach, automatic air fresheners, and a sharp self-defense attack keychain that she kept on her lanyard. She did her best to make herself feel proud that she had even thought of buying slippers so that her bare feet didn’t have to touch the floor and always thought to have easy, portable food.
Regrettably however, Emilia could not help but dwell on the potential of her mistake—could not unreel Kasper from the spindle of her mind.
In any case, Emilia continued to tell herself that everything was fine, and that her anger in Kasper was justified no matter how lonely she felt—no matter how badly she missed him.
To banish him entirely seemed like a vulgarity, but just as soon as she would realize this she would remember how nervous she had felt those first weeks she had worked for him. She didn’t know if she could ever forget the ominous sensation that had embodied her one particular night in October. The symptoms of a passing nor’easter had caused the power to chime in and out, and although Emilia had been alone she once again could not escape the feeling of being preyed upon. She had dismissed it on the spooky season and George accidently trying to walk in on her while she showered a few days earlier—but even still, she could not detach herself from the fear.
Now she knew it had probably been Kasper. Had he been watching her in the shadows outside her mother’s house that night? Probably. And why, because he loved her? Though she hadn’t been a person easily prone to self-consciousness before, now everywhere she turned she wondered about those who looked at her. Logic assured her that they wouldn’t follow her back to her motel, but if Kasper could so easily conceal his true thoughts about her, maybe other people were also so good at hiding how they felt about the world around them. What if nothing at all was at it seemed?
To Emilia it felt like a sort of lie, smiling and laughing when you couldn’t stand to be around someone, or the other way around. The idea made her paranoid, and she began second-guessing every expression that came from her fellow students in addition to the way people interacted with one another. The idea boggled her to the point where Emilia literally looked over her shoulder from time to time, just to see if others were looking back. It wasn’t as though she expected everyone to wear their hearts on their sleeves as readily as she did, but at the same time, she didn’t understand why people couldn’t be more honest with one another.
Fifteen days.
He had kept his word for fifteen days, six hours, and twenty-seven minutes. Even that however, had been extremely difficult. If it had not been for his work Kasper was not sure he would have been capable of holding himself back for that long. For several days he was consumed with Ryall Science Center and the Maysville-Adam House—two endeavors that should have required far more time than they did. However, with the unwillingness to sleep and the need for another obsession, they were nearly complete within record time.
Unfortunately, Kasper was not the only one who suffered. He had forbidden everything and anything that reminded him of Emilia Ward, banning her as much as possible from Iram Manor—as if he could bar her from his heart. Therefore, the horses received a great deal of neglect since the mere idea of entering the stables brought out some of the best memories of her.
He had not failed to noticed how Mrs. Levkin had hired the stable boy on a regular basis.
Kasper had rebuked her for it. Yelled, cursed, and called her names that not even the experienced older, woman had heard before for not asking his permission beforehand. All the while, he had known that she had made the correct decision and yet could still not control his anger. As he was doing it, he knew his anger was not justified, but just the same he could not stop himself.
The truth was that Kasper was angry with himself, enraged that he could destroy the most wonderful thing he had ever experienced. More than that though, perhaps he was angrier that his prediction that he would, in fact, ruin it to begin with had been so accurate all along. Emilia Ward had given him hope, and while he had done what he believed was his best to deny it, his love for her had changed him most definitely. Kasper had once believed he could do anything for her. And perhaps that was nearly true.
He could do anything but give her up.
Chapter 19
Reinforced Disaster
Free time was bad. Emilia hadn’t had much of it in the last several weeks, but what she had was spent crying and eating foods she didn’t even want. Thus when Emilia found herself with a free afternoon just before graduation, she did all the laundry she could muster, cleaned her room, and reorganized the files on her computer. Then when there was nothing else to do, she began to panic. Because when there were no tasks left to mend, she was forced to think of Kasper, and despite the time that had passed, the pain there was still intolerable.
This alone inspired the idea to go to her mother’s house. After all, a lot of landlords did credit checks in addition to background checks anymore, and though she had scanned most of the essential documents to her computer a long time ago, she had left behind the originals of her birth certificate and social security card, which would be essential in the long-term future. Then there was the matter of her high school diploma and the few articles of clothing suitable for the spring/summer season. And the last thing Emilia wanted to do on top of everything else was waste money she didn’t have on clothes and apply to get her degree resubmitted.
First, she called to make sure no one was home, and she felt sure after the tenth ring or so that no one was. Emilia hoped for a second that maybe her mother and George were working, given that it was the middle of Monday afternoon. As she drove there, she even let herself daydream that leaving her mother had inspired her to get her act together, that maybe her mother had diminished her drinking, and who knows—gotten sober. They hadn’t talked much since Emilia left—not at all, really. Emilia suspected that her unanswered calls and text messages were Susan’s way of telling her that she hadn’t forgiven her for not helping her with her DUI, the silent treatment.
Whatever was going through Susan’s head was not available to Emilia just then however, since there was no visible sign of life around the house that Emilia could see. With the driveway empty and lights off, she let herself in. She was not unsurprised that the back door had been left unlocked, or that the holiday decorations from when she had been there last were still drooping in the kitchen.
Resisting the urge to clean the destruction around her, Emilia sighed, then instantly began coughing. It seemed since she had left the smell of cigarette smoke had gotten even worse. Or was it possible that maybe she had just become unaccustomed to it? Regardless, she breathed through her mouth to avoid the smell the rest of the way, vowing to be in and out of there as quickly as possible. If Susan hadn’t thrown away or stolen the remainder of her things, she would grab what she could and go.
