Wild Heart Read Free Page A

my life, I just didn’t know it then.
    “Ah. You’re the new neighbor, huh?” Emerson nodded. “Well, little Miss Emerson, I’m Julia, and this is my son, Zac.”
    Emerson’s big ol’ eyes took me in as she smiled around her tears.
    “Hi.”
    She was so pretty then—so sweet, so innocent.
    “Uh…hey,” I grumbled, fiddling with my fishing pole, trying to keep my eyes on my tackle.
    “Are your parent’s home?” Mom asked her. I tried like hell not to care, but I cared. I didn’t want her to leave just yet.
    “Uh-huh.” She nodded, still looking at me.
    “Would you like to stay for ice cream, if it’s okay with your folks?”
    “Yes, please.” Emerson’s smile was infectious. A million of her smiles would never be enough. I spent years treasuring every single one of them.
    After that she spent hours, well into the night, on the porch with me as I cleaned up my tackle box and strung up my fishing poles. She talked my ear off and bothered the hell out of me, but she felt right there with me. She fit .
    I never got rid of her after that day, either. Ice cream turned into dinner. Dinner turned into fishing, and fishing turned into being with me every day for the next eleven years.
    Emerson Jae became my world that day.
    Tilting her head, she stares at me like she knows something. Unfortunately, she does know shit about me. A lifetime worth of shit.
    “No. Nothin’ about you stuck.” Lies. Everything that’s coming out of my mouth is nothing but bullshit.
    “I feel all kinds of ways about you,” she says casually. I’m real damn happy this is so easy for her. “Some good, some not so good, and all of them stuck.”
    “I don’t fucking care,” I reply. I take a seat, feeling defeated. I open a beer and drain it, realizing there’s not enough beer in the great state of Washington to make this any less painful.
    I can’t believe I’m here with her right now. I was one hundred percent sure I’d never see her again, and I was okay with that. But here she is, blowing that all to shit.
    “Yes, you do,” she says as she walks towards me. “You care.”
    I would have thought that after all this time she’d be cautious, unsure of me. Hell, maybe even a little awkward. Instead, she’s so confident in her words, you’d think she never left. You’d think we just saw each other yesterday, and everything was good between us.
    It’s been years— a lifetime for me—and nothing is good. 
    She’s wearing ripped jeans, a black T-shirt, and she’s barefoot. I hate how much all this reminds me of high school. My glory days. Our glory days.
    Crawling onto the hay bale next to mine, she snatches up my last beer, pops the top like a champ and tosses it back.
    “Sure, you can have it.” The girl has never asked for anything, because she always takes.
    “Thanks.”
    “You know you’re missin’ your shoes, right?” I look down at her bare feet, trying to find anything to change the conversation. She’s never liked shoes, and it seems to have carried through to adulthood. 
    “Yeah, I know,” she says, shrugging. “Shoes aren’t my thing.”
    “So what is your thing, Emerson?” I growl, not really interested in her answer, but I ask anyways.
    Nothing about her face changes, aside from the glimmer shining in her eyes. “Oh, ya know…”
    “Why are you here?”
    “I missed you.” That hole in my chest just keeps getting bigger and bloodier the more she opens her goddamn mouth.
    I stare at her and she stares back, smiling.
    Why does she have to smile at me like that?
    For a few years after Em left, I wondered if she forgot about me, wondered what she was doing and where she was doing it. But mostly, I wondered if she ever missed me. Hearing her say it now doesn’t help like I thought it would. If anything, it makes it worse. It’s easier hating someone, thinking they don’t give a shit about you.
    “Listen, Emerson—”
    “There you are.” My head whips around as Nadia walks in. Her face