Something About Emmett (Billionaire Romance) [COMPLETED]

Chapter 9 - Something Seething

It had gotten colder. It had to have gotten colder. My hands were shaking, and an onslaught of shivers ran down my spine. It was dark inside the house, so dark that I stumbled over something as I tried to turn on the living room lights. I gave up on that, choosing to light up the staircase with my phone instead.

Carefully I walked into the bathroom, where I took a shower so hot I could feel my skin grow red, the shivers in my body disappearing with the mist so that I was left tired and languid.

I went into my room the second after I was dry, leaving it in total darkness, and climbed into bed. My eyes were closed, the sheets covering every part of me but my face, yet I couldn't sleep.

I was too busy being tortured awake by a truth I was more comfortable denying.

If there was something about Emmett that was unmistakable to me, it was that he alone had the power to make me feel so devoid of power and consumed. Powerless because no matter how hard I tried to run, he was always there, at the end of things. Ready to reel me in when I was under the least bit of an illusion that I had escaped.

Consumed because he knew how to cut through my heart so that it was in his palms again, beating there for him.

He made me weak.

Quietly I fell asleep, and he was there when I closed my eyes.

Everything was clouded, the walls were white and my clothes seemed to be the same color. I was floating, walking over white floors.

Then it all had color again, darker and richer tones, so that I was in the back bed of a truck under a canopy of thick, green trees. He was there beside me, country playing from the radio inside the truck.

And the stars and the moon were a stark white contrast against the skies.

"Jules," he said, smiling softly at me from above my face. I looked to him and laughed, shoving him playfully. Then all was silent again, just the music and an utter quiet from around.

His eyes darkened, growing deeper. I could not laugh anymore, nor smile, but my heart was beating so furiously and my blood was singing. Everything around us was red, beating and burning red.

So beautiful and so alive. The smell of his skin, the warmth of his body, the touch of his strong hands and the softness of his lips... closer and closer until they had my mouth and everything else.

We kissed that once, for hours, or minutes. I could not tell. But there was nothing other than that kiss.

I woke up in that morning with sweat against my body, and a burning somewhere low and sweet. Astonished I rose from my bed, doing everything that I could to keep from revisiting that dream...

That memory of his lips that had me pressing my legs together tightly.

***

It was a recurring battle that went on throughout the day. Even as I drove toward the lounge that evening and prepared myself backstage, I had a growing feeling inside my stomach, and it caused me to have a drink of whiskey before the show.

Yet he wasn't there. While I stood on stage and sang, looking every now and then throughout the crowd, I could not find him.

And it was strange.

Once I finished with the set list I went backstage and helped myself to one of the cupcakes that had been set out for the band and backstage workers, drank a tall glass of sweetened lemonade.

"You were perfection today, Julie," my friend Andrew's voice spoke from behind me.

I smiled and turned. "So were you. Good job with the curtains and the lighting," I winked.