Chapter 56 Emily
EMILY
Ididn’t remember driving to Mia’s house. One second I was pulling out of my parents’ driveway, the next I was standing at the front door at Mia’s.
There was some vague memory of Cam swirling around my mind that I couldn’t quite grasp.
I pressed the buzzer, then stared at my hand. Was it weird that I couldn’t feel my fingers?
The door opened and Mia’s face swam into focus. Her mouth moved but the words took too long to reach me, like sound traveling through water.
“Oh, hey. I thought you were at your mom and dad’s tonight? Maya’s here and she said… Emily, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” The words were automatic, robotic. “I’m fine.”
“She doesn’t seem fine.” Maya’s voice, sharper, cutting through the fog.
“No, she doesn’t.”
I stumbled forward. The floor seemed to drop away beneath my feet. Maya was there. Why was Maya there? When did she get there? Did I know she would be there?
“Emily, honey, what’s going on? You’re freaking us out right now.”
Mia’s hand on my arm. I could see it but couldn’t feel it. Or maybe I could feel it but it didn’t register as real. Like touching through glass.
“The scholarship.” My voice sounded wrong. Flat. Someone else’s voice. “I didn’t. They said no.”
“Oh, Em. I’m so sorry.”
Sorry. People kept being sorry but it didn’t help. Nothing helped. My brain was skipping like a scratched record, jumping between tracks without warning.
“She bought the painting.” The words came out sideways, wrong order, fragments. “Cam’s mom… On the wall… Every day she’ll see it and she said… Real gift… She said real gift but they didn’t… The scholarship people… They didn’t think so.”
I was moving but I didn’t know where. Someone was guiding me. Mia maybe. Or Maya. The room kept sliding around.
“Mom said… She said for the best... Because I was never... She was right all along and I called her… I said the word. The C word... Right at dinner.”
My hands were shaking. The whole room was shaking. Or I was shaking. Everything was shaking.
“He said he loved me…” The thought crashed in from nowhere, derailing whatever I’d been trying to say. “Cam… He said it but that’s... People don’t... You can’t love... Not someone who’s all... I’m all...”
The sentence wouldn’t finish. My brain kept starting thoughts and abandoning them halfway through, jumping to the next panic, the next broken piece.
“Okay, hey.” Mia’s voice was soothing but distant. Muffled. Like she was speaking from another room even though she was right next to me. “It’s okay. Let’s just take a breath.”
Breath. I tried to pull air in but it got stuck halfway, my chest too tight, my throat closing. The panic was rising, black and choking, and I couldn’t stop it.
“I can’t. I can’t breathe.”
“You’re okay, Em. You’re breathing fine. Just slow down.” Mia’s hand was rubbing my arm now. The friction made a swishing sound against my sleeve. Loud. Too loud. Scratchy and unbearable. “We’re just going to get the living room, and then…”
Mia kept talking but the sound was drowned out by the blood rushing in my ears. My stomach lurched.
“Bathroom,” I managed.
Mia moved fast, dragging me. The world spun. Tilted. Colors smeared together. Then the sharp scent of bleach and toilet bowl cleaner hit my nose. My knees cracked against tile. I bent over the toilet, my body purging everything inside me in violent waves.
Mia’s hand was on my back, rubbing small circles. Maya’s voice came from somewhere behind us, saying something I couldn’t understand.
When my stomach finally emptied, I slumped against the bathtub, my whole body shaking. The tears came then, hot and relentless, and I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t breathe past them.
“I can’t,” I gasped. “I can’t do this anymore.”
I was aware of movement around me. Maya saying something. Mia responding. Their voices blended together into meaningless noise while I sat there on the bathroom floor, crying so hard my ribs hurt.
I wanted Cam. The thought crashed through the chaos in my brain, sharp and desperate. But I’d blocked him. I’d pushed him away and now I was alone on a bathroom floor falling apart and he wasn’t here because I’d made sure he couldn’t be.
The crying got harder, morphing into something that felt like it was tearing me in half.
The room started to tilt. Or maybe I was tilting. I couldn’t tell anymore.
Time stretched and compressed in weird ways. One second I was curled on my side, the next I was sitting up again, though I didn’t remember moving.
Somewhere in the distance, a door slammed. Hard. The vibration of it rattled through the floorboards and into my bones.
Heavy footsteps hammered against the wood. Fast. Urgent. Like thunder approaching.
Hands touched my back. Large palms. Calloused fingertips. My lungs seized. I knew those hands.
Then I heard it. A voice cutting through the underwater fog in my brain.
“Come here, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
Those words. I knew those words. I’d heard them before, in the dark, in the quiet, when I’d needed them most.
Strong arms scooped me up. I was pulled into a lap that felt solid. Safe. I turned my face into a chest that smelled like laundry detergent, something woodsy, and him.
My fingers fisted in his shirt and I clung to him like he was the only thing keeping me from drowning. Maybe he was. My body knew him even when my brain couldn’t process anything else.
“I’ve got you.” The vibration of his voice rumbled against my ear, deep and grounding. One of his hands rubbed slow circles on my back while the other cradled my head, protecting me from the world. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
I tried to speak but all that came out was a broken sob. He held me tighter, his arms a vice around me.
“Just breathe, sweetheart.”
I did, somehow managing to match my rhythm to his until I felt myself coming back into my own body, my own mind.
Time had stopped meaning anything. I didn’t know how long we’d been on that bathroom floor. All I knew was his arms around me, the steady beat of his heart under my palm, anchoring me to something real.
“Let’s get you up, alright?” His voice was gentle, careful.
I managed a small nod against his chest.
He shifted, his arms adjusting to support my weight as he stood, taking me with him. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let my head fall to his shoulder as he carried me from the bathroom.
“Mia, can you get the lights in the living room?”
I heard Mia’s soft agreement followed by the sound of her footsteps moving away.
Shadows swallowed the living room when Cam carried me in. The darkness felt like a blanket as he sat with me on the sectional. I curled into him, sighing softly when he stroked his fingers through my hair.
We sat there in the quiet, my breathing gradually evening out. The tears had stopped but left me feeling wrung out, hollow, like something essential had been scooped out of me and nothing remained to fill the space.
His hand moved in slow, steady strokes up and down my spine. The rhythm of it was hypnotic, soothing. Gradually, my muscles started to unclench, the violent shaking in my limbs easing to occasional tremors.
“You came,” I whispered finally, my voice raw and broken.
“You needed me.” His lips pressed against my hair and he wrapped his arms around me. “Of course I came.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were barely audible.
“Don’t.” His arms tightened fractionally. “Don’t apologize. Not for this.”
I was exhausted. So bone-deep tired I could barely keep my eyes open. But I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to lose this feeling of being held together by someone who knew exactly how broken I was and hadn’t run.
“Rest,” he said softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
So I did. I let my eyes close and my body go heavy against his, trusting him to keep holding me while I floated in the dark, empty space where all my defenses used to be.