Chapter 4
Emmett
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
I hide the shake to my hands and ignore the rolling of my burning stomach as my nurse for the night shakes her head at me with a disapproving dip to her brow.
It’s one I know all too well. The very same I see aimed at me from every person that’s ever been around me for more than a few minutes.
“My precious nephew.” Her eyes shine when she says it. “I want to believe you.”
Sighing deep, she taps at the computer before scanning my new bracelet.
“Then believe me,” I murmur and cross my arms.
It’s cold. I’m shivering despite the third blanket my aunt brought in for me, yet my stomach is like a ball of burning acid only found in the pits of hell.
I feel hungover, though I have no idea what that’s actually like.
I’d tell her. Ask her for something to ease the discomfort.
But it’s just that. Uncomfortable.
I’m used to that.
“Sweet, sweet boy.” She turns to me, giving me that disappointed look that I have seen before full on, making my stomach roll all over again.
This should be over, being a disappointment. I shouldn’t be here.
But saying that out loud last time got me pink slipped and sent to mental health clinic that’s since closed down. It was pointless, the three weeks I spent there, because I came out with a new attachment to a different pill and even more depression than when I went in.
Guess I can’t even take myself out the right way.
“Help me understand because I don’t.”
I sigh.
“It’s not up to me to teach you how to deal with a depressive and anxiety-ridden narcissist that has self-harm tendencies. You’re the professional.”
“Precious boy, listen to me.” She grabs my hand in her warm one and I want to enjoy it. I want to feel it seep into my bones and ease some of this hatred I harbor. Let the love she thinks she has for me set me free from the shit in my head.
Except, none of this is real.
She’s not even my actual aunt.
Just some long lost friend to my once thriving mother.
“You are not half of those things you mentioned.”
I scoff.
“I am all of those things, thank you. At least I’ve accepted them.”
It makes it easier to justify my actions. Things like taking pills to stay alive while also wanting so goddamn bad to take them all and make it stop.
The thoughts. The pain.
The undeniable ache that I don’t belong on this planet with people like my aunt.
She’s the precious one. Not me.
If I could just go to sleep …
“You’re not a self-centered person.”
“Of course I am. Just ask Mother.”
She drags in a breath and squeezes my hand. “She is so, so wrong. You have to know this.”
My chest tightens.
When you’ve been told the same thing for your entire life … it’s hard not to believe it.
But when your own life-giver tells you?
“Mom’s not wrong, ever.”
She pats my hand, then sets it down gently on the bed and steps away. “They’re going to discharge you in the morning, honey. Doc is pleased with how you’ve been the last few days.” She eyes me and types. “I want you to come home with me.”
“No, thank you.”
Her jaw clenches, but she recovers quickly.
“Please, at least think about it.” She drops a small cup of pills in front of me, and I look at the concoction. Some of them I recognize. Some I don’t. I don’t even bother to ask anymore, just tip the cup back and swallow them all at once.
It’s familiar, working the mouthful down my dry throat, and I can’t stop the ping of hope that rears its stupid head.
It’s not that kind of mouthful. Get a grip.
Dragging in a deep breath, I accept the small cup of water that my aunt offers and sip. It’s ice cold and feels good traveling down my aching throat until it hits my stomach and turns to lead.
“Ouch,” I mumble and clutch my midsection, my spine arching forward to curl around the pain of my cracked ribs.
The water spills and covers my legs, soaking through the fabric and chilling me to the bones.
The shivers that rack over me have me clutching harder to the blanket when it’s tugged. “No. No.”
“My sweet nephew, look at me.”
“No. No. No.” Heat covers my jaw, and I fight against the pull. “It hurts.”
“I know, honey. I know.” My shoulders jostle a little, but it does nothing to stop the shakes, the cold taking over my limbs and threatening to claim me.
After what I was trying to do, you’d think I would be okay with this.
It’s not the same.
There’s been a few days since. Time away from all the triggering aspects of my life that keep my already dark mind locked in the cave of desperation to find a way out.
The only way out is in a box.
I curl up tighter, pulling my knees up to protect my middle and digging my fingertips into my twitching calves.
I didn’t choose this part.
My kneecaps mash into my forehead, the bones like blunt smacks to my pounding head.
I wanted this to be over.
“Hey, hey, hey. What’s going on here?” A hand wedges between my head and the bruising it’s causing on my knees.
I don’t know why I let it stop me, but I smash right into the waiting palm and hold it there.
“Nothing,” I wail into the cavern my too-small body creates between my thighs and my chest, filled only with the tears that track down my face that drip onto the too-cold blanket and my too-big shirt.
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me, bub.”
I shiver and roll my head over that open palm. It’s warm and rough on my skin and nothing like the touch of my aunt.
“Fuck you,” I mumble. “I’m not your bub.”
“That’s more like it.”
The fingers attached to the phantom of a person I’m not sure is real flex and scratch along my scalp.
I immediately rear back.
“Okay, okay.”
The tone is placating, borderline condescending, but I don’t get a chance to react or even see the man behind the voice before my aunt is pulling my jaw in her direction.
“This man has been coming in to check on you for the last three days, honey. Be nice to him and yourself.” She snaps the last bit but recollects herself by pasting on a smile I know that she thinks is for me.
It does nothing to ease any of this shit inside me.
“Now I’m going to go grab something for that belly ache. Tell me what else you need.”
I level her with a look that does me no good because she just arches a brow that makes me feel small.
She doesn’t mean to, I don’t think. My aunt is a nice person.
But that doesn’t stop me from feeling two inches tall.
“Toast,” I mumble in a small voice that cracks, and pick at the wet spot that’s gone warm on my shin. “Please.”
“Good. Some bread will help settle that stomach.” She turns away from me only to lean back, snatch my blanket, and run.
“Hey!”
“Here, I got you.”
Hot fabric drapes over my knees and I melt into it. Pull it up to my nose. Tuck it under both hips.
It smells like hospital and antiseptic somehow, but it’s like a hug that has my eyes watering all over again.
“Thanks,” I mumble and swallow, fisting the scratchy material around my ribs.
“I stole a second one from the warmer, too, if you want.”
I nod to the mattress.
My shoulders are covered before I even stop moving my head.
It’s like a cocoon of safety wrapping around me, holding me tight enough to stay mostly together.
“My name’s Tristen, by the way.”
Swallowing hard, I finally glance to my left where his presence has taken up more than enough of my attention.
But when I finally let myself look his way …
follow the line of his jeans stretched over decent-sized thighs to his white shirt that’s mostly hidden behind the open zipper of a leather jacket …
I want to vomit.
“Who are you?” I mutter to his shoulder and hold myself tighter.
“Oh, I’m nobody,” he says with such … pride, such … enthusiasm, that my sight snaps to his and I freeze.
Those eyes.
They’re familiar.
Brown irises stare back at me with a lightness that makes me shudder. Lick my lips. Drop my gaze back to the blanket.
“I’m nobody, too,” I whisper, though I think we mean two very different things.
He’s nobody to me and I’m … well … nobody to everyone.
“Here we go, sweet boy.” I jump at the sound of my aunt’s voice and burrow deeper into the wrap of blankets. “Take this for me, will you?”
Sneaking a hand out, I accept the cup and tip it back only to choke on the liquid when I was expecting another pill and cough most of it back into the plastic.
“Oh, shit,” my aunt mumbles, but I barely hear it over the sound of the scratch of a calloused palm rubbing circles on the stiff fabric covering my shoulder.
“Easy now. Try it again,” he coaches, and I swallow once before trying to sip back the rest of the cup. It’s a tiny amount, and yet it feels like a gallon of gritty genetically modified yogurt. “That’s it. All done, bub.”
“Don’t call me that,” I snap, but it’s weak.
I’m tired. So, so tired.
“Then what should I call you?”
“Maybe the name on the fucking board.”
“Emmett!” my aunt snaps but I just dip my head beneath the covers. Burrow into my cocoon of warm, and slide my tired eyes closed.
“Sleepy,” I murmur to the off-white blanket and tip to the side with thoughts of pretty brown eyes watching over me.
I don’t know why they watch me, but they do.