Part 10 (1/2)
Emerson's heart kicked against her breastbone, which was stupid, really. She'd had nearly a decade to face facts, and a lifetime's worth of work-faster-be-smarter-do-better to back them up.
Chasing good enough was a waste of time.
”Not to my parents, it's not. My father may have been raised in a small town and had to work his way through community college in Camden Valley, but he always wanted the best, the biggest, and the brightest, no matter what.”
”So how come he came back to Millhaven after medical school?” Hunter asked, his expression changing as he backtracked. ”Don't get me wrong-I obviously love living here. But we're hardly big or bright. Your mom is from Richmond. Why not stay there, or head to a big city like Was.h.i.+ngton, DC? h.e.l.l, if he wanted the biggest and brightest, as a surgeon he could've gone anywhere.”
The question was legitimate, and one that had crossed Emerson's mind no fewer than a hundred times before she'd left Millhaven herself. After all, her father had met her mother while doing his residency in Richmond, and she'd been an administrative a.s.sistant at the hospital there.
”I asked him that once, right before I went to college,” Emerson said. ”He told me that in big cities, great surgeons are a dime for a baker's dozen. Being part of a crowd-even a distinguished one-wasn't good enough for him. He wanted to be the best, so that's exactly what he did. He came back here and became chief of surgery at Camden Valley hospital faster than anyone before him.”
She knew, because her father had made it plain as her name during that conversation that his record was her yardstick, and he fully expected her to come home after medical school and break it.
And that was the moment she'd realized that if she didn't leave Millhaven forever, she'd never escape the pressure of her parents' expectations.
Hunter's gaze flicked to the path in front of them, moving over the bright-green fields beyond the scattering of trees holding their bench in the shade. ”Definitely sounds ambitious.”
”I don't think ambition is a bad thing when it comes to doing what you love,” Emerson said, and it was the truth. After all, there had been no shortage of high expectations in her PhD program, and she'd happily worked hard in order to meet every single one, no panic attacks in sight. ”But for as long as I can remember, my parents have expected me to live up to their standards, their way, no matter what. Valedictorian, homecoming queen, early admission to Swarington.” The list was as long as her leg, and those were barely the highlights.
”Wait . . .” A muscle tightened in Hunter's jaw, pulling ever so slightly beneath the sprinkling of stubble on his skin. ”Didn't you want to do all those things in high school?”
”Whether or not I wanted them didn't matter. It was the best or nothing. My parents made that perfectly clear.”
”Jesus, Emerson.” Hunter turned toward her, his knee sliding against hers in a warm brush of denim on denim. ”How come you never said anything? I mean, I always knew they wanted big things for you, but I had no idea the pressure was so bad. That must have been a h.e.l.l of a load to carry.”
The thread of remorse whisking through his eyes sent a pang right to the center of her chest. Of course Hunter would've wanted to fix the mess between her and her parents. His gla.s.s-half-full mentality had been one of the things she'd loved about him the most.
Too bad it didn't apply when the gla.s.s was broken to start with.
”For a long time, I thought if I worked hard enough, eventually my parents would be happy. Piano recitals, science fair compet.i.tions-G.o.d, I even took cotillion cla.s.ses without complaining.” She laughed, because it was too late to cry over all her spent effort. ”But there was always something else to win or earn or do, and none of it was ever good enough. And if I wasn't good enough for my own parents, I thought . . .”
Emerson stopped, biting her lip hard enough to sting. But she'd already loosened the story, and anyway, she couldn't change the past. What would it hurt to tell Hunter the truth?
”I started having panic attacks. Really bad ones, where my heart raced so fast and it was so hard to breathe, I nearly pa.s.sed out.”
”Are you serious?” Hunter asked, his voice gravely matching the word in question. ”The pressure was making you sick, literally, and you never said anything?”
”I know it doesn't make much sense now,” she said. ”But I kept the pressure to myself for so long that after a while, it felt like a secret. I thought if I told you the truth about not being able to meet my parents' expectations, then maybe you'd think I wasn't good enough for you, either. I was afraid to let you see all of me. That you might think I was weak because I couldn't handle the pressure.”
For a minute, Hunter sat perfectly still. ”Are you kidding? I was crazy about you.”
Her pulse pitched, knocking the words right out of her mouth. ”I know.” G.o.d, that had been half the reason she'd gotten into her car and driven away in the first place. ”But between football and working on the farm, you were always so easygoing and confident and strong. I was scared to admit that I wasn't, too, especially since you thought I was.”
”Still. If the pressure was bad enough to trigger panic attacks, you should have told me.”
He spoke without judgment, although the flash of gray in his stare betrayed the emotion beneath his calm, and Emerson didn't think, just answered.
”Maybe. But it only would've made things more difficult in the end when I had to-”
Hunter's head snapped up. ”When you had to what?”
Emerson's heart slammed in her chest, silencing her all too late, and dammit, she had defenses for a reason. But impulsive or not, she'd let the past out.
And dangerous or not, Hunter deserved to know all of it.
”When I had to leave Millhaven. I didn't go to New York because I wanted to, Hunter. I went because I didn't have a choice. But what I really wanted was you.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
Hunter tried as hard as he possibly could to process Emerson's words. Failed. Tried again.
Nope. No f.u.c.king way that was happening.
”I'm sorry,” he said, and okay, at least that was accurate. ”I don't understand.”
”I never wanted to leave Millhaven. I love it here. I loved . . . you.” Her smile was completely bittersweet, the corners of her pretty, peach-colored mouth turning up just enough to keep his pulse jacked sky high.
”But that's not what you said,” Hunter managed, hating the sting in his tone even though he felt every inch of it. Thousands of nights had come and gone since the one when he'd asked her to stay in Millhaven and marry him, but he'd never lose her answer from his memory.
I can't stay. I have to go to New York, and I'm not coming back. I'm sorry, but this is for the best . . .
”I know what I said.” Emerson dropped her chin, her hair tumbling over her gaze, and the sweet, heady scent of honeysuckle took a potshot at his chest. ”The night before you asked me to marry you, I told my father I wanted to go to community college in Camden Valley instead of going to Swarington.”
Hunter knew he should feel the warm, wooden bench slats beneath him, or hear the leaves over his head rustling in the soft summer breeze. But his brain spun too hard and his heart spun too fast for him to process anything other than the bombsh.e.l.l Emerson had just dropped square in the lap of his well-worn Wranglers. ”You . . . what?”
”I wanted to stay,” Emerson said, her voice soft but sure. ”I'd been thinking about it for weeks, trying to come up with a way to make my parents understand. I didn't want to skip college,” she clarified. ”But I also didn't want to go to New York. G.o.d, I never even chose Swarington in the first place. The university had been hand-picked for me, just like everything else.”
Dozens of questions dusted up in Hunter's mind, each of them trying to make the trip past his shock and out of his mouth. Any idiot on two legs could see Emerson's need to get the story out, though-Christ, the look on her face alone was enough to crush him-so as much as it took effort, he bit his tongue and let her keep talking.
”I planned out my argument to the letter,” she said. ”Which cla.s.ses I'd take in Camden Valley, how I could supplement the curriculum by earning extra credits from the state university online, places that might be willing to let me do interns.h.i.+ps in the summer. I'd even gone to the head of admissions at the community college and gotten a letter of acceptance.”
Even in the face of his uncut shock, Hunter had to huff out a tiny laugh. All that smart, savvy strategy sounded like her. ”And then what happened?”
”The only thing left to do was tell my parents I wasn't going to New York.” Emerson's fingers knotted in her lap, knuckles pale white against the navy-blue denim hugging her hips. ”I thought if I told them together, they'd present a united front and I'd never have a chance at making them understand my choice to stay. So I waited until my mother had a board meeting at the hospital.”
Whoa. ”You told your father first?”
”Part of it was circ.u.mstance,” she said over a nod. ”He was home and she wasn't. But then . . .”
She stopped, her mouth pressing into a thin, flat line, and adrenaline peppered Hunter's gut full of holes.
”Em?” The shortened version of her name, the one only he had used throughout high school, rolled from his mouth unbidden. She blinked at the single syllable, her gaze growing stronger as she returned to the story.
”Part of me was glad it was him. My father grew up here. He knew what it was like to love Millhaven, to belong in the town. Plus, he'd gone to the community college in Camden Valley himself. I knew he'd be harder to convince, but I thought maybe, just maybe, he'd understand.”
Hunter thought of the man they'd run into, with his set-in-granite jawline and his shrewd, icy stare, and the adrenaline in his gut slid into dread. ”So you told him you didn't want to go to New York.”