Chapter 61
Tristen
Even though I waited until he was snoring in a ball on the corner of the bed to leave, his shirt back in place, I still feel like shit that I did.
Hatley wouldn’t stop calling me.
I’m worn down. Exhausted. Running on guilt and fumes.
I was four hours late for my shift and it still feels like I ran a marathon.
Leftovers from the firehouse hang heavy on my aching elbow and I hide my wince as I reach to knock on Emmett’s door.
He’s inside, and so is my duffel bag from last night, but it doesn’t feel right to just … walk in.
Because while he lived here before, this was never really his home.
Our house should be his home.
Get it together, Ten.
Shaking my head, a reach to tap on the door again when it feels like it’s been too long.
Envy lays in the yard, her insides spread around like maybe Hatley was showing Em how to change the oil or check the carburetor, and got distracted.
Was that there yesterday?
It warms something in my gut to know the two of them get along so well. That my best friend would show up when I needed him to, and that Em lets him.
There’s a small smile on my lips that fades fast.
Did he fall back to sleep?
“Emmett? Come lemme in,” I say softly. I don’t wanna scare him.
It’s early still, and normally I’m the last one left at the firehouse. But since Emmett… I tend to be the first one out.
By the time the first half of my shift winds down, I find myself missing him way too much. When that final hour rolls around? I’m officially unbearable. Every. Single. Morning.
But after last night?
It was like that first one I brought him home all over again.
Grumbling when the bag slides down my forearm, scraping over the bruises I desperately ignore, I snatch the welcome mat back in search of the extra key.
It’s not there.
My gut turns violently.
What the fuck?
The hackles on my neck rise.
Did he take it?
A haze of something eerie falls over the porch just like that first night I stepped foot on it, and I dump the bags on the fading boards.
He would have told me. He would have said not to come back if that’s what he wanted.
Right?
I lick my lips and will my racing heart to slow.
I trust him. I trust him to tell me.
He showed me … he was vulnerable with me. He wouldn’t just hang me out to dry.
Right?
The ground feels like it’s going to fall out from under me when I flip the mat back and step around the side of the house through the missing railing.
Too familiar, the silence presses in on me, and I rub at the ache growing in my chest.
The bathroom window is right next to his room, the pane still covered in what I now know is dark paint of some kind that still sets me on edge when I come up next to it.
Maybe if I knock, it’ll wake him up.
My raised hand freezes midair at the sound of rustling on the other side. Shuffling. Grumbling.
The water is running.
I swallow hard.
What the fuck.
“I said take it back, you disgusting nobody.”
My hackles rise and I jam at the window, but it’s fucking locked.
“No. No!”
“I knew you were a no-good piece of shit.”
A slam on the other side of the glass has me sprinting to the back, my shoulder leading the way through the door. It clatters, smashing back against the wall as I run through it.
“Emmett!” I roar.
The bathroom is closed, locked.
I kick it in with my heart in my throat.
Working the streets as an EMT has led me to be a huge part of the worst days some people have had. Will ever have. There’s not much I haven’t seen.
Blood, guts, brains. None of that phases me in the slightest anymore.
Torn open ligaments and busted bones never make my heart race or my stomach turn.
But busting down this door is like walking straight into a hell that no one should ever have to live through, especially someone like Emmett.
My sweet Emmett.
I dive for the man with his pants around his thighs and his dick in his fist. No pausing to think as I throw the first punch into his swollen jaw, knocking him away from where Emmett’s on his knees in front of the vanity. We crash to the shower floor as water rains down on my head.
He said no.
I don’t stop swinging.
Not until I see red flood the bottom of the tub.
Not until my knuckles split and my rage tears from my throat in a wicked shout.
Tears sting my eyes, and I swing until my arm threatens to give out, the man laying limp and gurgling beneath me.
“Emmett,” I croak out with a raw throat, my grip tight around the man’s neck and my arm cocked back, ready to force another blow.
But his face is stained with blood and beet red, his bulging eyes already swelling up.
He’s not quite passed out but pretty close, and reeks of something I can’t think about.
If I get a response, I don’t hear it through the pounding in my ears that only seem to want to focus on the rattle of breath coming from below me.
“Call the cops, Emmett.”
He doesn’t move.
Tearing my gaze from the piece of sopping shit on the shower floor, I find Em exactly where he was when I came in, his shoulders up near his ears and his chest barely moving with his breath.
He’s still wearing my shirt, the neck of it pulled loose, a new hole ripped just below the hem.
His hair is the wrong kind of mess, his cheeks void of the color I’ve come accustomed to seeing.
Despite all of that, it’s not until I catch sight of his dull eyes and empty stare that I push off from the shower.
“Bubbles,” I choke out and drop to my knees in front of him.
I want to reach for him, but I don’t.
“He won’t touch you. I fucking promise.”
The words that fall from his lips are monotone. Tapered. Almost dead.
“Too late.”