Chapter 62
Tristen
“I don’t know what to do.”
Mumford looks at me with a sternness to his dark gaze, thick arms crossed over his chest.
He looks fucking huge in the hallway outside Emmett’s room, the darkness caged inside spilling out.
“Let him grieve in his own way,” Mumford rumbles.
I sigh and lean back against the wall opposite, my eyes heavy, my heart even heavier. “He’s not eating.”
“Neither are you.”
“He’s not come out of there. I don’t even think he’s pissed in two days.”
Mumford pins me with that dark gaze, clearly communicating that I should do something to help.
But Emmett’s refusing to come out, to talk, to do anything.
His mom has gotten worse instead of better, except now she’s awake often enough to sneer at me like any of this is my fault.
Each day that passes without Emmett’s normal presence has been like walking through a sludge that just gets thicker. Colder. Harder to move through.
Nothing I do seems to matter.
Bobbie keeps trying to talk to him. Nothing.
Hatley laid with him. Nothing.
Me? Nothing.
All of it stings, but that one stings worse.
“You can’t fix this for him, Ten. You just gotta be there.”
There’s a knowingness that falls over Mumford’s face and I grit my jaw hard.
My chest aches.
I wish I’d gotten here sooner.
It wouldn’t have changed anything, I know that. The damage had already been done to Emmett. I saw it that first night I laid eyes on him—that darkness that followed him like a shadow even in nighttime.
But maybe once … just once … someone could have been there to save him.
It should have been me.
Biting my wobbling lip, I push off from the wall and Mumford follows me back out into the living room where Charline still lays.
I’m not even sure she knows her husband was carried out of here in a gurney just like this one, and after the hospital stay, he disappeared.
They had to wire his jaw shut.
I regret nothing.
“I want him to press charges,” I tell Mumford as I screw a plunger into Charline’s IV. I hope I missed a bubble. “But he won’t talk to the police.”
“Ten, I know you’re hurting but quit making me repeat myself.”
Growling, I spin on him, the vials of Charline’s medicine still in my grip.
“I want him back!” I yell and throw my arms up, my eyes burning wickedly. “I don’t want him to grieve on his own and fucking rot in that goddamn bedroom alone.” I feel the hot tracks trail down my cheeks and that dark stare softens. “I wanna rot with him.”
Mumford’s shoulders lift with an inhale, those thick arms back across his chest, his gaze nailing me.
“Then rot with him, Ten,” he says softer than his exterior suggests is possible, but I know the man. The heart inside his chest. He’s a good man. “Sit with him. Sleep with him. For however long it takes.”
The sob I tried desperately to hold back claws its way up my throat.
“I’m scared.”
He drags in another deep breath. “The version of him you knew may never come back. But there’s only one way to know for sure.”
Hand held out, Mumford gestures for the vial I’m holding. The syringe I don’t recall grabbing.
The label screams at me when I read it.
It’s morphine. When did she get morphine?
I grip it tight enough the stopper at the top creaks, my fingers long ago gone numb.
Quiet.
Could I get a dose out before Mumford stopped me?
How shitty would that be?
Part of me doesn’t care. That part wants the hit of relief anyway. The bliss of fading awareness calling my name.
“Hand it over and go.”
I squeeze tighter.
He’s big. Bet I could outrun him.
The breath shakes from my too tight chest when my grip is covered by his big hand.
Tears cascade down my face as I release the small bottle and turn away, my body carrying me back down the hall to Emmett.
He’s curled up on his side, facing the wall, and still in the same clothes he was in four days ago. His hair is a knotted mess on his head—longer now and greasy as fuck—his frame even more pronounced than it was. I can practically see his shoulder blade through the hoodie.
My hoodie.
“Baby, it’s me,” I whisper thickly, swiping at my sniffling nose as I lift the blanket and climb in behind him.
I curl around him, careful to keep some distance between us.
“It hurts,” he whispers weakly, and my heart rate kicks up even more, the pounding in my ears painful.
“What does?”
There’s a soft cry that wrenches my heart from my chest and he wraps his arms tighter around his middle.
“My stomach but not.”
“I’ll move so you can go to the bathr—”
“No!”
That wrenching in my chest becomes unbearable.
“It’s okay, Em. I can just scoot over.”
“Noooo,” he cries this time, his shoulders shaking. “I can’t go in there.”
I have to hide the way my voice shakes. “I’ll go with you.”
“B-b-but it’s the bathroom.”
“And this is the bedroom.”
The smack of his lips is water-logged, and he wraps himself tighter. Moves farther away.
My throat goes thick.
“I can go with you,” I try again, my voice softer. “I’ll watch the door.”
The room is silent for a long time aside from his pitchy breaths, long enough that I roll off the side of the bed and push to my feet. My ass hits the dresser, and it takes everything in me to not turn around and fucking destroy it. To not yell out all of my frustration to the broken pieces.
“Baby, c’mon. Please,” I say, and it feels so fucking loaded. “I’ll be right there.”
When he rolls toward me, I nearly cheer out loud.
“You’ll watch the door?” he asks, and my knees threaten to give out, my heart in my fucking throat.
“Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.”
He chews on his already gnawed lip before huffing out a small “O-okay.”
Blowing out a breath of relief is short lived when he pushes to sit up slowly—too slowly—and cries out in pain, curling in half once again.
“Tristen, I can’t,” he cries and a piece of me breaks on the inside. “It hurts so bad.”
Another part of my resolve chips away.
He’s got a fucking UTI.
“I need you to trust me, Emmett. Do you trust me?”
I know it’s asking way too fucking much from him. That I shouldn’t hold him to whatever the fuck comes out of his mouth right now.
But I hold my breath as I wait for the answer to be no.
“It hurtssss.”
He curls tighter and my chest aches that much more.
I bite back the tears burning my eyes, the thumping in my chest, and bent down to his level.
“Please forgive me.”
“What?” he whispers.
Getting my arms beneath him is easier than I expect and as I stand, his wail of pain chips away at the thing inside me that’s already been crumbling.
He’s light. Too light in my arms and doesn’t bother fighting me off.
The sudden silence is almost deafening, his frame shaking against me like a jackhammer.
“I’m sorry.”
Setting him on the toilet feels like ripping out my own soul.
It’s my job. It’s my goddamn job.
But wriggling the pants just far enough down his hips while he’s sitting feels like I’m flushing it right down the drain with the rest of the waste.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I say past the lump in my throat to the emptiness in his gaze.
He starts going as soon as the fabric is cleared, his pain-filled eyes flooding over.
Watching him silently cry is too much, so I stand and turn away to guard the door, just like I said I would.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I murmur to the wall across the hall, the weight of it all settling nice and tight on my goddamned shoulders. “I should have been here sooner.”
He says something that I can’t hear over the sound of his piss hitting the bowl and I glance over my shoulder.
Bowed over, his arms holding his stomach, Emmett sobs to his knees.
My eyes flood and, fuck, I can’t do this.
I can’t just stand here and do nothing.
The scent of urine is strong as I drop to my knees in front of him.
“I hate that you know,” he says before I can get anything out and it lands right in the center of my cracked open chest. “It was better when no one but Mom knew.”
Everything in me locks up, bile burning the back of my throat.
“What?” It comes out almost soundlessly, everything in me screaming about warning bells.
“No one was ever supposed to know, and I hate you for knowing.”