Waiting on Forever

Chapter 2

Emerson Adams had not been back home since she had decided that the future she wanted waited for her somewhere else.

Her mother had been on her way to being somebody when she was her age. Her parents' fortune had been dwindling through the years, but Virginia's mother got her girl on the pageant circuit. She had actually won a scholarship to college, where the Davys hoped she would be able to become something or marry rich, whichever came first.

Virginia had found herself in a place many others had before her during her Junior year after a visit to the doctor.

Now Clyde Adams, Em's reluctant father, had to succumb to his father's wish that his grandchild would not be born out of wedlock.

Clyde accepted out of fear of being left penniless, but their short marital bliss barely lasted until she was born.

As Emerson ran through the airport trying to catch the last shuttle of the day, she remembered how of course, her mother's narcissistic tendencies had peaked just when she had vetoed, for the fourth time, a destination wedding in her hometown.

She just didn't want a wedding back in home with old crumbling houses and up and coming gentrified neighborhoods where the heat would be too much for James' Northern California family, and she'd serve them Nanny's delicious BBQ in a paper plate at the ballroom of the local Holiday Inn. That's all Forrest Hill had to offer her.

That, in part, was why she had left.

As the lights of the shuttle drove away in an incredibly mocking manner, Emerson decided the world was making her pay for the aggressions she had most likely committed in a past life.

"Fuck me with a motherfucking chainsaw..." She muttered under her breath trying to prevent her body from throwing a tantrum. She was tired, sleepless, and the next stop past ravenous hunger.

"I'd have to insist on you buying me dinner first." Said a smooth, gritty, and commanding voice behind her.

It sent an unwelcome cold shiver down her spine and made her forget everything that had gone wrong with her day. She froze like a deer who had encountered a hunter on its territory. Part of her brain rationalized that if she didn't move maybe he'd leave and think her hard-of-hearing.

It couldn't be him...

It could be anyone but him.

She heard him chuckle behind her and she had to use all of her strength not to make any type of sound come from her mouth. Her breath quickened; her pulse must have too.

"So you're too good now for silly banter with your old friends?"

She knew exactly what specific half-smile and raised eyebrow-combo he'd have on now. It annoyed her just then as much as it had annoyed her back when they were together.

She pursed her lips in said annoyance and turned around slowly, not prepared at all to see him.

Dane Callahan in all his glory. He stood a couple inches taller than the last time she saw him. She was not wearing heels and she had to crane her neck a little to try and look him in the eye.

She'd forgotten his eyes, a beautiful mess of spruce-green and ocean-blue that seemed to change both color with his mood and his surroundings. His face was tan and speckled with more freckles than he'd had in her dream the other night. His light-brown hair was no longer shaggy like it was in high school, but expertly tamed. He was dressed for business in a suit not unlike the one Emerson's fiancée wore. She saw him wearing the same tie that very morning.