Page 38 of Codename: Dustoff
CHAPTERTWENTY
Iwatched Gemini pull up with Amelia in the passenger seat. Somehow Gemini had pulled it off. I wondered while I watched them chat in the front seat if Amelia even realized that the dress Gemini bought was for her. I prayed as I waved off the UPS driver, that after some initial caterwauling she’d be excited to go to Jones’s wedding.
“I’m just going to put this upstairs.” Gemini winked at me as she practically skipped past, bringing the dress inside.
Amelia rather than join Gemini on the path up to the restaurant, beelined for her car instead.
“Where ya going, angel?”
She ducked from my embrace. Her mouth twisted into the most intense frown I’d ever seen from her. Pissed was too light a word for how angry she looked.
“Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Emmett, how could you? How did you? I’m so baffled right now.”
She shucked off her messenger bag from her shoulder with such violence, the strap exited from her body with a sharp snap. It sounded like it would have hurt, but her face gave no indication she even felt it before chucking it into the open door of her car and onto the passenger side.
“Let’s go inside,” I suggested, reaching for her hand. Rather than take it and follow me up the path, she twisted away from me, digging her heels right into the ground we stood on. She crossed her arms beneath her chest, noisily drawing in a deep breath.
“I don’t want to go inside with you, Emmett. I want to know why. Why on earth would you meddle in my life. Especially with something that was none of your business, and I expressly said I had no interest in doing.”
There was no opening in her monologue to interject, so I just stood there, waiting for her to finish. Hoping if she got it all out, she’d lose steam and maybe we could have a conversation. I tried once to get her to let me hug her, hoping if I could hold her, the rush of endorphins might calm her down.
“How on earth did this whole thing even happen?” she demanded, leaning against her car while she waited for an explanation.
“Saturday night, when you passed out, I got concerned.”
We hadn’t really talked about what happened after our messy attempt at sex. At first I thought she’d just fallen asleep. But given what happened the time before at the Christmas tree lighting, I feared it was a black out.
“I thought maybe the overload of stimulus would do some damage to your brain, kind of like a concussion does. I mean you had a little smile on your face, but who knows maybe that was a sign of a stroke or something. I got into my own head and started to really worry. Your phone was on the nightstand. Honestly at first I was looking to see if you had your doctor stored in there. I was going to call and ask about blackouts. But I saw Jones’s text message right at the top of your messages and thought he might know, since he would have experience with all kinds of soldiers. So I texted him and asked if he knew who your doctor was, that you’d had a moment of panic and blacked out and I wasn’t sure if I needed to take you to the hospital. He told me that sleep was the body’s way of resetting and that you would be fine and would wake up as if nothing happened.”
She’d woken up smiling so I didn’t think anything of it. I’d just been relieved that she didn’t want to call Finn and have him play bodyguard while she collected her things and left again. But she stayed and we ate breakfast and had such a wonderful day that I didn’t want to ruin it reflecting on what happened the night before.
“He called me this morning to check and see if everything was okay. We chatted for a bit, and he mentioned the wedding.” He rolled his lips, and tilted his head back towards the sky, as if the answer to my question would drop from the clouds, “Look Amelia, if you don’t go, you’ll regret it. You will. If the esteem you hold Jones in for all he did with you truly means as much as you say it does, then one day you’ll look back and wish you hadn’t been too afraid attend.”
“Afraid?” She looked at me as if I’d just told her the earth was flat. “You have absolutely no idea what it’s like, Emmett.”
“So tell me. Please.” If I had two hands, they would have both held out in front of me, as if truly begging. She kept so many things close to the vest and I desperately wanted to know where her head was at. “What is holding you back from seeing your friend? From being happy for him. Enjoying his party and reconnecting with your old unit? Don’t be resistant to new experiences Amelia, just because you’ve convinced yourself that they’re all upset with you.”
“How dare you!” she shouted, pointing at me with such ferocity, I nearly thought her finger would detach and turn into a missile landing right in my eye. “Me being there with this broken body, will only remind every man of the Tenth about things they want to forget. Imagine what it would be like seeing twelve men, and having them all have an attack like me, but all at the same time and in the middle of a wedding ceremony for someone you respect the hell out of. What kind of wedding memories would those be? As a bride, would you really want to think back on your special day and remember the moment the handicapped chick walked into St. Augustine’s and triggered a pew full of soldiers?”
She went from angry enough to spit nails, to quiet and off balance.
“Amelia? Talk to me. What’s happening?”
Dread choked off any more words. Her body folded onto the pavement. My reflexes weren’t quick enough to catch her totally, but enough to gentle her fall as I yelled for Gemini and Finn to come and help.