Page 171 of Lessons In Grey

“Okay, here she is,” Jeremy finally said.

My head spun. I felt like a child with how many nerves were sparking under my skin. It didn’t feel real, any of this. Facing Louis? Fine. Facing Emily? Nerve-wracking.

I heard her breathing, heard the shuffling as she adjusted herself in her bed, heard the door shut in the distance. All I wanted was to crawl through the phone and wrap her up in my arms, remind her how much I loved her. Touch. She neededtouch. She craved it. That was how she felt loved. How she felt needed, wanted. Words were important, yes, but physical touch was what her soul needed to remind itself that it still mattered in this world.

I couldn’t give her that right now, so I prayed that I could find the right words to make her understand that I still loved her. That I would always love her.

“Snowflake,” I said on a breath.

“Don’t call me that,” she said bitterly, the emotions clear in her voice.

I closed my eyes. I wondered if she realized how important physical affection was to her. I wondered if she realized that perhaps she wouldn’t have been so angry if she allowed someone to just hug her. “I miss you so much,” I told her, “and I love you more than anything else in this world.”

“I thought you wouldn’t lie to me.”

My eyes flashed open, my brows pulling together. “I would never lie to you.”

“You just did.”

My mouth opened and closed, confusion filling me. “About loving you? You don’t think I love you anymore?” What thefuck? I didn’t think it would go that deep. I knew she would struggle, but this? Jeremy never mentioned this.

She went silent, but I could hear the tears she was shedding, I could feel the pain she was in.

“Emily, listen to me, of course I love you. I will always love you. Why would you ever think I would stop loving you?”

She remained quiet, my heart thudding painfully in my chest. I could hear her labored breathing, it almost sounded like she was trying to stop herself from crying and it broke my heart. “Childish,” she finally spit out, although it sounded like it had been placed at the end of a sentence.

I rubbed my face. “Emily, your emotions aren’t childish. The world is screwed up enough as it is without having to try andconvince people that natural emotions make you more of a fucking child. You are supposed to communicate with me.”

“You’re supposed to communicate with me!” she shouted, causing me to freeze in my tracks. “I was fine. I was doing great until you started updating Jeremy and fuckingMatthewon everything you were doing. You can’t send me a fucking text message, but you can text them and call themboth18 times a day because you got on a fucking train to some remote village in the middle of the fucking woods? Don’t lecture me on communication, Rags, don’t you fucking dare.”

I closed my eyes, my head falling. I knew that would end badly. “Emily—”

“If you tell me the same bullshit Malachi did, I will never talk to you again.”

And I heard the truth in her threat, and it scared the shit out of me. I had no idea what Malachi told her, but I assumed the truth, which made this more difficult than it should have been.

“We had to burn bridges, Snowflake,” I explained gently. “Important bridges. Across those bridges were powerful men—”

“Malachi is a powerful man,” she bit, the tears clear in her voice.

“Yeah, I know we’ve said that, and he is a very powerful man, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other powerful men out there that can’t challenge him.”

“Hierarchy,” she told me. “Jeremy said Malachi was at the top then you people, then him and all of the goons, then everyone else.”

I grasped the bridge of my nose. I wish Jeremy would shut thefuckup about shit he didn’t understand. “Louis is more powerful than Malachi is,” I told her. “Malachi is…Emily, listen to me powerful people create powerful allies. There will always be people after Malachi’s theoretical throne. The louder we are, the more people will fight for it. Louis has made us a stone in a cave. Our echoes are spreading and there are people out there who hate it.”

She sniffed, and I imagined her pacing the room or curled up in a corner, questioning every decision she had ever made about me. I don’t think anything in this world had ever made me so terrified than the thought of losing her to her own mind.

“They were supposed to keep you updated. Did they tell you what I prefaced almost every text with?” I asked gently.

She was quiet a moment. “No.”

Goddammit I was going to kill them. “I told them to let you know. I told them to tell you.”

“Did you tell them to keep me on suicide watch?” she asked bitterly.

My brows furrowed. “What?”