Emancipating Emily - Chapter 5 (Part 3)

Emancipating Emily - Chapter 5 (Part 3)


"We ran, like a couple of newborns..."

"What?"

"Nothing, just a thought."

Lt. Pfluger stared at the woman for a moment, as if he'd never really seen her before.

And then he quietly said, "She won't see me."

"She doesn't see anyone," Trisha said without a smile.

"I ask for her every time I come."

"She knows," Trisha told him with a gentleness in her eyes, as if she knew just how much her words would hurt the police detective.

He sat up and almost shoved her away in an attempt to get a better look at the middle-aged woman's face.

Trisha wanted to cry, because she knew that kind of ache, knew how sharply he felt these feelings.

"It's not you," she began.

"It's not you, it's her," the tall man with the thick muscles said in a mocking fashion that only made fun of himself.  Though it cut Trisha just the same.

The gorgeous woman winced a bit, and then began stroking her long dark fingers back through the man's thinning blonde hair.

"Em doesn't see anyone, baby.  I've told you that," she told him, as she coaxed his head back into her lap.

"I know," he said, just as a child might, a child who's missing out on a favorite show.

"It's just... I thought after all we've been through," the man began, sitting up once more, but then couldn't finish, because the woman's tongue in his mouth wouldn't let him, as it suddenly made all words impossible.

After a long, deep kiss, the former rocket scientist turned sexual consultant looked long and hard into her most regular client's face, and said, "That's the reason she won't ever see you.  She'll talk all day to strangers.  But you... someone who's seen her at her very worst... she will never again look you in the eye."

Eric Pfluger, a 20-year veteran of Austin's Special Forces Unit stared with an open-mouth at the woman he'd fallen in love with.

"She would never say that," he began.  But Trisha put a finger over his lips, and told him in a hushed whisper, "She would never admit it.  But it's true.  She's still running.  Still hiding."

The middle-aged man who had never taken a wife looked long and hard at the woman he wanted to marry.

"I want to tell her I'm sorry."

"She knows.  She's sorry too.  More sorry than you perhaps."

The woman's eyes were soft, but her words sliced like a rapier sword.

"Don't you think she wants a family?  Don't you think she wants to stop running?  Stop hiding?  Stop fighting for everybody else to get a piece of the pie?"

Eric nodded, because he had no idea what to say.

His woman went on.

"Em is doing what she's always done.  She's surviving.  And the hard truth is, babe," she ran her fingers back through his hair once again, "is you will never see her again."

Eric sat looking at the woman as if he'd only just now seen her for the very first time.  His mouth agape, his breathing as shallow as it gets.

After a long moment he put his head back into her lap and wrapped his arms tight around her waist, sinking his nose deep into her crease.

Deeply he inhaled the musky fragrance that acted like a soothing tonic to his frantic mind.  His shoulders fell by degrees as he slowly relaxed into the woman's warm and yielding muscles.

"How can she ever have a family if she never lets anyone see her fail?"

Trisha didn't say another word that night or ever again about her boss, not to Eric Pfluger, not to anyone.  She had only spoken of the woman who had formed The River, and then had faded almost entirely into the background because she knew it was what the man needed to hear in order to heal.  The hard truth.  It was the way of The River.  Sink or swim... the river always has her way.


(to be cont.)




© Raena Exe 2023
 
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

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