Chapter 63
Emmett
The darkness swallows me piece by piece.
I sleep.
And sleep.
Nibble on the food that Tristen brings me, only to spit it back out when he’s not looking. I think he knows or at least has figured it out. The sunken look on his face when he leaves shit sitting next to me tells me all I need to know.
With each night—or is it morning? I’ve lost track of the waning daylight—I see it deepen, that scowl that mars his face. The droop to his brows grows deeper. The purple beneath his fading eyes is getting worse.
I should feel bad. Maybe even be grateful that he’s here, doing what he has to keep me and my mom alive, but the truth is that I’m not. I don’t.
I wish he fucking wouldn’t.
But no matter how many times I tell him to leave, he hasn’t.
Unless I’m quiet enough that he thinks I’m asleep, and sometimes I am, then he finally goes to work. Pretends to be the fucking hero that he is. Leaves me alone in my little corner and returns with leftovers from the firehouse, smelling like smoke and antiseptic. Leather and sweat and sage.
I squeeze my eyes shut when I hear his footsteps like a crack of thunder coming down the hall. His presence fills the doorway, and it’s too big. Too overwhelming.
Too much.
“Still with me?”
It’s so much quieter than the first time he ever asked me that, but my reaction is still the same as it was then. Pretend I’m dead? I already feel that way.
Funny how none of that has changed one bit. The second I stepped back into this house, it crawled back beneath my skin and made a home there, burrowing so deep that no amount of cutting has bled it back out like I wish it would.
Take it back or fucking kill me.
I sigh.
My ‘yeah’ comes out on a breath, my throat scratchy, my vocal cords cracking from lack of use. “But I wish you weren’t.”
“I know,” he whispers thickly and drops a wad of foil next to my head. “Grilled cheese. Eat up, bubbles. I’ll be right back.”
“Don’t bother,” I rasp out and roll over, yanking the covers up over my head.
“Told you,” he says softly, his weight lifting from the side of the mattress as he stands. “Long as you’re wearing my hoodie, I know you’re full of shit.”
He barely believes the words, even as they leave his lips. I can tell by the shake in them he tries to hide.
As if he doesn’t know it’s the only one that hasn’t been ruined.
I feel him leave, taking the way that he fills out a room with him, and roll over to push the foil off the side of the bed. I want it gone. I want him gone.
But the universe has a way of giving me the exact opposite thing I ask for, and Tristen is back within a few minutes. He sees where the dinner landed, something in his features falling. He doesn’t even try to hide it as he turns away, lifting a—
“Is that a fucking TV?” I ask and it cracks all to hell. “What are you doing?”
His shoulders lift with his inhale as he places the thing on top of my dresser and starts rooting around for where to plug it in.
“I got tired of watching shit on my phone.”
My brows pinch, my skin too tight to not feel them move. “Bullshit.”
The muscles in his jaw jump like he’s gritting his teeth. “Fine. I thought maybe we could watch a movie. You can ignore it if you want to.”
He steps back, aiming a remote at the screen and flooding the room with light.
I wince with a hiss passed my cracked lips, my retinas seared and watering and lift a hand to block it out.
The scabbing along my wrist catches on the cuff of my sleeve and pulls uncomfortably.
My hand, almost too bony, lets light feed between my skinny fingers. I drop it.
“Why?”
“Why not?” he shoots back and plants his ass right on the edge of the bed.
Why not … why …
“Because I don’t want you here anymore, Tristen.”
The sudden stiffness radiates off him in waves and that piece of me, the tiny inconsequential piece buried beneath the rubble of who I’ve become, quivers.
And yet I resist it anyway.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say aloud this time instead of keeping it in my head. “It’s tainted you. So just fucking stop.”
So very slowly, he looks over his shoulder at where I’m balled up on the bed, covered from head to toe and shaking. I’m always shaking. On top of the sweatpants and the hoodie with the hood pulled up, I’m buried under the blankets, too.
There’s no way for him to know how much weight I’ve lost. How many fresh scars there are. How many new ones are being formed.
Still, his gaze softens on me. Almost painfully. Like he’s looking over me with pity.
I hate it. Him. This fucking place. This brain of mine. The feeble body I’ve been trapped in.
“I’m not going away, Emmett,” he whispers and it’s so goddamn thick that it strokes that tiny thing I am beneath all the terrible shit.
But I can’t let it.
I can’t let him.
All I’ve ever done was try to protect it, I’ve just been too weak. Too queer. Too small to do anything about it.
That’s no different now, but that doesn’t stop me from kicking my foot out and landing solidly against his side. His yelp of surprise cuts me, and yet I add it to my growing collection of wounds that’ll never really heal as I do it again.
“Get out,” I breathe out, slamming my foot into his arm. “Get out. Get out. Get out.”
“No,” he growls vehemently, his grip catching my foot, and I scream.
“Leave me alone!”
“No!” he yells so loud, it makes my ears ring, but I don’t stop planting my feet in him. Pushing and pounding away at him with everything I have left in me.
When he wraps up my legs in the blanket, rendering them useless, I use my fists.
Even when he pins me to the bed, his weight holding the blanket across me like a harness I don’t stop thrashing around.
I land a punch right on his brow, breaking the old wound open, and he grabs my sleeves. Uses them to wrap my weak arms crisscross my body. Then leans down so close to my face that I feel his nose close to mine. His breath hot over my face.
It’s a long moment before he speaks, his glassy eyes flicking between mine and full of so much hurt. Finally, he speaks, and my heart shatters.
“I’ll leave you alone if you promise me I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I breath heavy and squeeze my eyes shut.
“But I don’t want to see tomorrow,” I admit barely above a whisper, tears leaking out passed my tightly shut lids. “It’s just as ugly as today.”
“Baby, you don’t know that.”
His forehead drops to mine, warm and damp.
I want to wriggle away from it, but I don’t. It’s not like I have much room to go anywhere with the way he’s pinned my arms like I’m in a straight jacket, his weight baring down on the tops of my thighs.
That little thing inside me sighs against the pressure and I curse it.
Because normally, my skin crawls. When someone touches me, I want to scream.
But I’m so damn tired, worn down and broken, that Tristen being on top of me almost feels like … relief.