Chapter 35
THIRTY-FIVE
The sheets feel cold, empty.
Roused by the silence, I blink the sleep away and scan the dark living room. Dawn has just barely started to illuminate the gaps in the trees outside the window, but the birds chirp like it’s the middle of the fucking day.
Since coming home, Emma’s made a giant makeshift bed by pushing two of the largest couches together so that she can wedge herself right between Bo’s protective arm and my chest. When he’s in the mood, Jesse will pass out curled around Bo’s back so that we’re a messy pile of traumatized and overprotective people trying to make it through the night.
I keep finding her in weird places when we wake, though. Even when we moved right beneath the vaulted ceiling of the living room, she still claimed it felt claustrophobic. It seems the dog cage made her dollhouse nightmares worse, so I don’t say anything about it.
But when I see her lying out in the freezing yard, and Molly scratching to get inside, I stumble to my feet.
Jesse rouses. “Wa’s wrong?” His overgrown hair is insane, voice still heavy with sleep.
“Where’s Bo?” I ask, looking around as I pull on my boots by the back door.
I hear him shuffling behind me, but my attention’s only on her as I step into the chilled morning air and lift the bundle of blankets in my hands before carrying her back inside.
This can’t happen again. The blanket’s damp from the morning dew and though the temperatures aren’t freezing, it’s still not warm enough for this bullshit.
She murmurs grumpily in her sleep as I carry her back inside and kick the door shut, carrying her to our makeshift bed and setting her in the pile of the blankets. Molly gets right to work as a foot-warmer and I turn my attention back to the next issue.
Bo.
The coffee pot’s off and there’s no chance that Bo wouldn't have started it if he was up and moving around.
“Bo?” Jesse’s voice is dulled from upstairs and for a horrific moment, I imagine him finding Bo’s body, hung or bleeding.
The stairs fly under my feet as I race up them, trying to intervene before Jesse possibly sees something that could fuck him up for life, but he’s right at the top, and I almost take us both to the ground as I smash into his chest.
“Man, what the fuck?” He rubs his chest, glaring at me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I just…I just thought for a minute—” I shake my head, breath heavy. “I don't know, did you find him?”
“No,” he says, and I know he had the same thoughts as me.
That the behavior we’d witnessed the last few days was more of a red flag than we’d guessed.
His refusal to let anyone help him with his first shower, or to let Jesse try and have the doctor come back out for a physical.
Then, after days of scarcely speaking outside of a monotone conversation, he’d offered Jesse a moment of connection, a soft hug in the kitchen I wasn’t meant to see.
Where he’d let Jesse wrap his arms tightly around him as their murmured conversation drifted into the living room.
I couldn’t hear what was said, but I wasn't meant to. That was for them. At the time, I thought it was a good thing, a breakthrough. He might let us back in. But now he’s gone.
“My fucking car is missing,” Jesse says, looking out the window at the end of the hallway. Stalking over, I pull back the curtain, and sure as shit there’s an empty spot in front of the house.
“Call him. For all we know he could just be out for a drive. Maybe he just needed some air.”
Jesse turns on me, throwing his arm back toward the window to indicate the goddamn sunrise. “All we fucking have here is air?”
I can’t keep my voice calm because I’m just talking shit to keep Jesse from freaking out. Obviously this isn’t good. “I don’t know! There’s no trying to guess what's going through his head right now, call him.”
He curses under his breath as he heads back downstairs but I’m not in the mood to fight. Checking in his room, the bathroom, anywhere I can think might give us a hint of what he was doing while we slept.
I find it in Emma’s room. A note written and slipped into her current read, propped open so she’d see it easily. He’d bent the spine, and she’ll be furious.
Em-
Hey, honey.
I heard you, I just need you to know that. I know you love me, and that it’s more.
It’s the same for me. Even with me leaving, it’s still so fucking true.
The sun can’t rise until the night is gone, yeah?
Well, I’m leaving and I’m taking all that darkness with me. Not because I don’t love you, but because I need you to rise again, and I will only make that impossible.
You’ve always been my sunshine, Em, ever since I first met you. Promise me you’ll keep trying to rise, baby. Don’t let what they did to us keep you from fucking shining.
I’ll be in touch, take care of them for me. I know they’ll take care of you.
Love you.
Bo x
Fuck. Fuck, goddamnit.
I’m frozen, the note quaking in my hands, because he’s gone. This protective thing inside me is freaking out because I’ve seen this story before. If something happens to him—if he does something to himself—Jesse and Emma will be broken.
Me too. The little shit wormed his way into that space Emma created in my chest, demanding my attention, my protection. My affection.
He’s part of us, and that means something. It means he can’t just fucking take off and try to spare us the pain he’s drowning in.
“Noah?”
Her small voice calls from down the stairs and I hesitate for only a moment before following it. There’s no point in hiding this from them.
Jesse slams the front door, stalking back inside with the frenzied fear painted across his face. The noise makes Emma jump, her eyes cutting back and forth between the tension in our bodies.
“What’s going on?” She searches the room, but doesn't find who she’s looking for. Her security blanket, the only person she feels like can understand where her head is at right now. “Where’s Bo?”
“Good question,” Jesse growls, his shortness making her flinch. My jaw clenches, knowing I’m about to derail both of them with this fucking note.
Bo, the punishment when I get my hands on you.
I hold the paper out to Emma, crinkled and torn from whichever of her notebooks he stole it from. The warped spots showing us where his few tears had hit the pages. He is so broken right now.
Her brow crinkles, confusion knitting them together as she starts to read, Jesse hulking over her shoulder.
When Emma’s hands start shaking, I step forward as if anything I do or say could fix this, but Jesse beats me to it. His arm curls around her midsection, pulling her back to his chest, his head resting on hers. Both stare at the letter much longer than it takes them to read it, just breathing.
“I have to go find him,” Jesse starts, finally looking back up at me. “I have to go find him before he does something stupid.”
“He’s already done something stupid,” I bite, torn between my frustration with him and my fear of what comes next. “We don’t have any idea where he is.”
“He must not want to be here,” Em says, sniffing and wiping her nose on her sleeve. “He doesn’t want us to find him.”
Betrayal burns in Jesse’s eyes at her words, said almost callously. Most un-Emma-like. “Yeah, but he’s not in his right mind. He needs us.”
“He must not,” she spits, stumbling out of her makeshift bed so that it separates her from us. “Bundy’s not looking for us anymore. Maybe it’s time to put an end to this now.”
Eyes narrow, I watch her stuff her pain as much as she can. She’s got a shit poker face. “What exactly do you mean by that, Angel?” She hears the warning in my name for her. To tread lightly before she says something that she can’t take back.
She does it anyway though, because underneath it all, Emma has a steel that she refuses to acknowledge. It’s what got her through everything and why she’s still standing here now after what they’ve done to her.
Sniffing, she looks me dead in the eyes and tries to cut me as deep as she can.
“This. This impossible relationship or whatever it is.” Waving her hand between the three of us callously, like this is nothing.
“We don’t need your protection anymore and playing captor can’t be fun for you now that we’re more broken than anything. ”
Her shrug pisses me off and Jesse cuts her off. “Emma, watch your fucking mouth. You know that’s not what this is.”
“I don’t know shit,” she spits, and the word sounds foreign from her mouth.
“Bo’s gone, Jesse. I’m a shell.” She motions to her body, my shirt barely covering the healing injuries that cover her.
“Bo knows what you guys haven’t figured out yet—that it’s not fun playing with broken toys. That’s what we are.”
He stalks over to her, eyes wild. “I know you’re angry, Em, but even you can’t convince yourself that’s what this is. You aren’t some fucking toy I want to play with, and I don’t know how you would let them convince you of that.”
“Convince me?” she grits out, getting in his face. Those sweet brown eyes shining with a pain that’s on the verge of shattering each and every one of us. “I don’t need convincing. Bo’s my best friend and even he left. He knows I need him and he left.”
Reaching behind her, she snatches the note back up, raising it and crumpling it in her fist. “These? These are just words. They mean nothing when he left me here.” A sob breaks her composure and she chokes on it, both of us forced to watch as she shoves it back down and turns her broken anger on me.
“I don’t want to be your Angel anymore. That was stolen and I am never going to get it back. ”
When I shake my head, she stomps over to try and get in my face. “You hear me? Do not ignore me, Noah!”
“I’m not, Em. Me refusing to acknowledge this bullshit isn’t ignoring you.”
“It’s the truth, and you know it.” Spinning, she heads over to the kitchen, throwing the note in the trash can. Jesse’s hawk eyes watch as she goes to the closet, pulling out her shoes.
“What are you doing?” he snaps, storming up behind her and grabbing them from her hands.