Always Emily. Mary Sullivan

all lies,” Aiyana wailed. “I’m still a virgin.”

      In Aiyana’s pain, Emily heard echoes of her own.

      She fell back to sit on the bed, her past rushing toward her from a long dark tunnel, whooshing full speed ahead, the memories she’d worked so hard to submerge surfacing here where she had thought she would be safe.

      She could handle Jean-Marc and his ugly innuendo miles and miles away, because she knew she could find a way to repair the damage, somehow, but this was here at home in Accord, and it was happening to a girl she loved, and it was happening in Emily’s old school. And that easily, the woman Emily had matured into was gone, and she was back to the lost and lonely girl she used to be.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      I HAVE NOTHING TO GIVE.

      Emily had left too much of herself with all of the relics she’d resurrected and studied, and with a man who’d only wanted to control her. Any resilience she’d once possessed had deserted her. Her life was in shambles. How on earth was she supposed to help this girl?

      Emily stared into Aiyana’s dark eyes, identical to Salem’s, but filled with panic and fear. Emily couldn’t turn away from the pain of being a young adolescent, of being unjustly accused, of experiencing the unfairness of life.

      Aiyana needed a friend, and unless Emily wanted to disappoint herself and Salem, she had to try to help her.

      Jean-Marc’s unfair accusations had brought up her painful past. Aiyana’s pain cemented her in it. All of those things she’d thought she had dealt with came brimming to the surface. She didn’t want to be in this place. She wanted to escape.

      How naive to have thought that by leaving Accord time and again she had left the past behind. It sat inside her gut like a hard ball, blocking growth because she had never dealt with it. She hadn’t even begun to deal with it.

      Salem had been right—she had been running—a lowering thought, that she’d based her life’s major decision on denial.

      Rather than facing the problems she’d had in school head-on, she’d hidden from them, had believed herself to have risen above them, but all she had done was to find herself another bully to live with. Rather than deal with the lack of self-esteem with which the bullying and isolation had left her, she had created a pattern.

      And it made her sick with disappointment in herself.

      Memories of her own helplessness in high school, and the unjust accusations of mean girls, brought to flaming life the shame she’d felt back then. It had scalded then and did again now.

      Her dad had married Laura and it had looked as if Emily’s life was turning away from the solitude she’d lived with for too many years since her parents’ divorce. Her mother had moved to France with her new husband, and her father had been a workaholic. Emily spent too many evenings alone in their big Seattle home. Then they’d moved to Accord, a town Emily had fallen in love with on first sight. She’d been happy for a few years, until her body matured and a clique of the most popular girls hadn’t liked that boys found her attractive.