Chapter 37
Tristen
In a flurry of movement, I manage to stuff myself in my uniform as the rest of the firehouse files back into the building, just outside those doors.
Emmett sobs, and my heart aches.
I have no idea what to do.
“Bubbles, I’m sorry,” I croak again, hoping that maybe this time he’ll hear me. Maybe this time he’ll feel me. “I didn’t know.”
He swipes at his face with his covered fists and my stomach twists at the breath he sucks back.
Crouching next to him, the feet between us like a crater that threatens to suck me in, I try to dip enough to catch his sight. See his sweet eyes.
He hides them.
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“I know,” he half yells, startling me, and I rear back. “I know.”
My spine is stiff as he stares back at me with a pumping chest and an anger I wasn’t expecting darkening his bloodshot eyes.
“Then what is it?” I ask softly, my own eyes burning.
Why are there marks? I want to ask, but I don’t. I’m not sure that I could handle the answer to what left his skin so textured. My stomach twists at the possibilities and I settle on a different question when that all burns too hot along my tongue.
“Why don’t you want me to touch your skin?”
His eyes fill.
“I do want you to,” he all but screams and I swallow so hard, I swear I hear it over his panting breath. His words ring around in my head, his actions their echo and my chest aches so deep.
I don’t know what to do.
“I want you to,” he repeats and its thick. So goddamn heavy as his sight drops to the ground and his shoulders droop. “That’s the problem.”
My chest goes impossibly tighter, and I drop all the way to my numb hands and shaking knees under the weight bearing down over us. “Emmett.”
His shoulders tremble and he curls up even tighter on himself, pressing his knees into his chest. There’s a deafening silence that falls over us despite the noise outside this room of firefighters and EMTs going about their shifts, filling the time between tones.
Please, God, don’t let anyone come in here.
“Bubbles,” I whisper to the top of his head that’s pressing into his knees. “W-Why is that a problem?”
His sob breaks me.
Quiet.
“Is it me? Did I do something wrong?”
My fingers tremble with a need to reach out. To touch him. To console him so that he knows he’s safe.
Doesn’t he know he’s safe with me?
“No,” he mumbles low, then shakes his head along those bony knees and I know it must hurt. “Yes.”
Everything in me freezes up. His singular word locking up every muscle in my body until I feel nothing but shame. Guilt.
Quiet.
I need quiet.
My chest blossoms with that familiar ache, the fluttering of my pulse, and I suck back a breath. Hold it so long that it burns and he finally, finally, lifts his head. Scans the tile floor from behind wet lashes and something in my chest splinters.
Quiet, quiet, quiet.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs and digs his fists into his eye sockets too hard.
It’s too difficult to watch. To sit and do nothing.
To not grab him and wrap him in my arms.
Not beg him to tell me what he’s been hiding beneath my hoodies. To not rip his clothes off until he’s bared and shows me.
To not demand his story.
Who made you tremble when the TV is too loud? The sound of a chip bag too much?
Why did I find you in a blacked-out house, alone and dying?
I swallow hard.
Who made you want to end it all?
Shooting to my feet makes my head spin and the edges of my vision dance but I have to back away before I upset him further and give in to all these tingling urges to save him.
I … just want to see that smile of his.
The shrill sound of the tone alarming makes the world tilt and my heart rate increase.
No. No. No.
“Emmett,” I choke out, my collar too tight, my uniform too heavy.
“Go,” he murmurs from behind his legs, his forehead back against bone.
I’m stuck. Trapped in my indecision, crippled by my duty. My responsibility to both my job and Emmett.
He needs m—
He needs someone.
Just like the person or people on the other end of the tone. Someone to find them. To help them. To resuscitate them and piece them back together.
Just like Em did.
“I’m … I’m so sorry.”