Chapter 81: Making It Up to Her

Chapter 81: Chapter 81: Making It Up to Her

Garrett made it halfway back to his room before he stopped walking entirely.

Leaving things the way they’d been left, Emiliana storming out, the door shutting harder than it needed to, wasn’t something he could just sit with until dinner and hope it resolved itself. He didn’t know the mansion well enough to find her room on his own, not with any confidence, so he flagged down the first staff member he passed, a young man carrying a stack of folded linens.

"Could you point me toward Emiliana’s room?"

The man didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask why, clearly already briefed on who Garrett was and why he had every reason to be walking these halls. "Of course, sir. This way."

He led Garrett through a couple of turns before gesturing toward a door near the end of the hall and excusing himself.

Garrett knocked.

Nothing.

He knocked again, waiting a beat longer this time. "Emiliana."

Still nothing, though he could hear movement on the other side, deliberate and unhurried, like she was making a point of not rushing to answer.

"I know you’re upset," he said, keeping his voice level, not pushing it through the door. "I’m not here to argue through a door. Just want to talk. Face to face."

Another long pause.

Then the lock clicked, and the door opened a few inches, Emiliana’s expression carefully unreadable on the other side of it.

She tried to step back, putting distance between them the moment the door opened, but Garrett caught her hand before she could fully retreat into the room.

"Wait."

Emiliana looked at their joined hands, then up at him, arms crossing the second he let go.

"I’m sorry," Garrett said, no performance behind it. "For earlier."

"Sorry doesn’t really explain it."

"I know." He held her gaze. "I wanted you. That hasn’t changed, and it’s not going to. But something about being here, in your house, made everything in me lock up. I don’t have a clean explanation for it. I don’t fully understand it myself."

Emiliana’s jaw tightened. "So what, I’m supposed to just accept ’I don’t get it either’ as an answer?"

"I know it’s not much."

"It’s not an answer, Garrett. It’s an excuse." Her voice climbed slightly, more hurt bleeding through than anger now. "You know how that felt? Like I wasn’t enough of a reason for you to actually be present. Like I’m some kind of joke to you."

"You’re not a joke to me." He said it firmly, no hesitation in it. "None of this is funny to me. I messed up, and I don’t have some clever way to make that sound better than it is. I’m just sorry."

Emiliana studied him for a long moment, some of the sharpness in her expression softening slightly, though she clearly wasn’t ready to let it go entirely.

"So how exactly do you plan on making it up to me?" she asked, arms still crossed.

Garrett considered it for a second, then let a small, deliberate shift creep into his tone. "Guess."

Emiliana blinked, caught off guard by the sudden turn. "That’s not an answer either."

"Wasn’t trying to give you one. Just trying to remind you I’m actually here to fix this, not just apologize and disappear."

She didn’t smile, not yet, but she stepped back from the doorway, silently allowing him in.

Garrett followed her to the bed, sitting a careful distance away, giving her the space to close it herself if she wanted.

"You want to actually talk about it?" he asked.

Emiliana exhaled, pulling her knees up onto the bed, arms wrapped loosely around them. "You came here to stay with me. We barely had any actual time alone together, and the one time we finally did, you shut it down. And now you’re telling me you’re leaving tonight anyway." She looked at him, something raw behind the words now. "Do you understand how disappointing this whole visit has been? From where I’m sitting?"

Garrett let her finish without interrupting, resisting the instinct to immediately explain himself again.

"I do," he said once she’d stopped. "I hear you."

"I don’t want you to just hear me. I want you to actually get it."

"I do get it." He held her gaze steadily. "I’m sorry. Genuinely, and I’ll make whatever time’s left actually count. That’s not me trying to fix it with a nice sentence. That’s just what I intend to do."

Emiliana studied him a while longer, the tension in her shoulders easing slightly, though not disappearing entirely.

"I’m still annoyed," she said, quieter now.

"That’s fair."

"I haven’t forgiven you yet."

"Also fair."

A small, reluctant smile finally broke through despite herself. "You’re very calm about being in trouble."

"Panicking wouldn’t help either of us."

She let out something close to a laugh, some of the earlier heaviness in the room finally starting to lift.

They kept talking, the conversation gradually loosening, and it was somewhere in the middle of it that Garrett caught sight of the clock on her nightstand.

Just past two.

He’d need to start thinking about heading back soon if he wanted to make it home at a reasonable hour before class tomorrow.

Emiliana caught the shift in his expression immediately. "What?"

"Nothing, just—" He hesitated, aware of exactly how this was going to land. "It’s already past two. I’ll probably need to head out in a few hours."

Her expression fell instantly, the fragile progress from the last several minutes visibly cracking. "Are you serious? We’ve barely had any real time together and you’re already thinking about leaving?"

"I know how that sounds."

"It sounds exactly like what it is."

"Leaving tonight doesn’t mean I want to leave you," Garrett said, steady, not backing away from the conversation this time. "We’ve got class tomorrow. That’s just reality. But I’m not disappearing after this. I’ll figure out a way to make up for how this visit’s gone. I mean that."

Emiliana didn’t answer right away, staring at her hands for a moment before finally looking back up at him.

"You’d better," she said, though the edge in it had softened considerably from where it had started.

They kept talking after that, the conversation settling into something easier again, Emiliana gradually relaxing back into the comfortable rhythm they usually had, even if the earlier tension hadn’t fully disappeared from the room.

Garrett sat with her, listening more than talking, very aware that somewhere underneath all of this, a pattern had started to form that he couldn’t keep ignoring.

If he wanted to stay in Emiliana’s world, he couldn’t keep treating the hard parts of her life like obstacles to walk around.

At some point, he was going to have to walk straight through them instead.