Chapter 157: Actively Move On
Inside her room, Emily’s lips wobbled and her eyes burned with unshed tears and before she could stop them, the tears came — hot and fast.
She tried to keep quiet, tried to muffle her sobs, but the weight in her chest had grown too heavy. Each tear carried pieces of pain she thought she had buried long ago, but it was all back — just like that.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked herself gently, her breath hiccuping as flashes of the past returned like sharp arrows to her chest.
She had first met Callan at the orphanage home where her Dad celebrated her seventh year birthday.
He had been mean and almost ruined the party because he was mad that his mother had abandoned him. She had not held his actions against him because she was sorry for him.
She had wanted to see him again and had pleaded with her father to let her visit the orphanage again, and then he had taken her there. She had met him again, and he had not been very mean. He had even smiled at her and that was when she realized she had a crush on him.
The next time she had seen him again had been when her father’s best friend brought him to the house and introduced him as his adoptive son.
She had been happy then, thinking that he was closer now and she could see him more often without needing to go to the orphanage home.
They had attended the same school, and even though he was older than her and ahead of her in class, she remembered the way her heart used to race whenever he was near or she saw him from afar.
She remembered the silly daydreams. The hopeful looks. The shy smiles. The prayers she whispered at night, asking God to help him notice her — not as his little cousin as he liked to call her, but as a girl.
And then when she was fourteen she had kissed him. She had been so happy when she was told he was back from college. That had been the longest she had gone without seeing him, and so when she hurried to his room to see him and saw him fast asleep and looking so handsome, she had kissed him.