Chapter 67
Emmett
The sound of a constant beep has pulled me from sleep yet again.
Except this time, it’s an alarm instead of a monitor flatlining.
There’s no corpse next to me, even though I still feel like it is.
Not even a body is squeezed in with me as the sound is silenced from the other room, footsteps I can’t help but zone in on shuffling around the house.
It’s like a fucked-up superpower at this point, hearing everything in the house.
Assessing it before it hits my room. Wondering if this time I guessed wrong, and it’ll be the face of my nightmares that floats through that door instead of Tristen. Or Hatley.
Sometimes it’s Bobbie, but I hate seeing her just as much.
None of them could save her.
I burrow deeper beneath the covers, pulling them up over my head.
“Still with me, bubbles?”
It sounds just as sad as I feel. Flat and distant and croaked with sleep.
At least he got some.
“No.”
“Me, either, baby.”
“Stop calling me that,” I snap and yank on the covers when I feel the bed dip.
“Stop wearing my hoodies.”
My eyes burn.
I don’t want to.
It makes me feel close to … someone … without having to be close to anyone.
It should have been me.
“Fuck you,” I mumble back and swipe my nose on the cuff of my sleeve.
“Emmett,” Tristen sighs like a weathered old man, his weight shifting. “They won’t postpone again.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll need the closure.”
My eyes flood. “No, I don’t.”
“You want her buried without you there?”
The flood leaks over my lids, running down to wet my temple in a puddle that grows cold quickly.
“No,” I cry, my heart aching, my stomach churning.
“Then c’mon,” Tristen says lightly, too lightly, and the bed lifts. For a moment, relief floods me that I’m left alone again, but that fades fast when the covers are yanked out of my grip, and something is shoved beneath me.
“What the fuck?” I screech when I go airborne, my voice cracking. “Put me down!”
“Not today, bubbles.”
His arms beneath me ache against my sore muscles, their stiffness just another reminder of all the things I got wrong.
He shouldn’t be here.
I am nothing but a burden on everyone. A frail character. Weak minded and fucking gay.
Should have let Eric kill me.
The permanent welts across my back are a reminder of what happened when I tried to run. When I disobeyed. When he was just too angry.
He was faster. Always faster. Stronger. More of a man than I’ll ever be.
“Please forgive me,” Tristen whispers and I don’t bother to ask why when he enters the bathroom and presses his lips to my temple. We’ve been through this already. Every day, at least once, he brings me in here and sets me on the toilet.
It’s fucking embarrassing.
Yet my body rejects my protests and empties regardless of Tristen’s presence.
This time, though, instead of setting me down, he bypasses the toilet and steps directly into the already running shower, fully clothed.
Water hits his back and sprays out, sprinkling across my face.
I scream.
“Noooo!”
“It’s okay, baby. I’m here with you.” The softness of his tone clashes with the violent way I thrash against him, my elbows and knees crashing into muscle and tile. “I’ve got you, Emmett. I promise, I got you.”
He steps back, fully under the spray, water running over his hair and trailing down his stony face to collect in the crevice between us. It soaks into my side, my chest, and I hate it.
“I hate you!”
“I know, bub.”
My voice grows weaker, my resolve waning with each droplet that seeps into my skin through the clothes. “I fucking hate you, Tristen.”
“Me, too, Emmett.”
The ache in my chest blooms into a full-blown stabbing at the way his voice breaks around the admission, his grip on me loosening.
“I’m gonna stand you up, now. Hang on to me if your knees feel too shaky.”
I ignore the way he keeps his grip away from the middle of my back, his hands light and pressed into my shoulders and my lower back.
The places I told him were okay.
He always touches there. Nowhere else.
Sniffling hard, I tighten my grip on his neck and let him slide me down until my toes hit the tub.
Pins and needles shoot through my heels, my socks sloshing in the collection of barely warm water already collecting in the bottom.
It makes me want to scream all over again, though I don’t.
“Why?” I whisper to his chest instead with more than just water droplets collecting on my lashes. “Why do you keep coming back?”
A long silence filled with nothing but the sound of the shower smacking his clothed back stretched between us.
It wedges into the space separating us, seemingly making it spread wider and wider until I can barely feel him there.
He is, and I can touch him, but he just feels out of reach. Unobtainable.
Too far away.
I did that.
I pushed him, and I keep pushing him.
The silence stretches so long that I finally dare to meet his gaze, and I’m shocked by the emptiness that stares back.
“Why not?” he murmurs softly, knocking away droplets that have collected on his lips.
“B-because,” I respond back just as quiet, barely audible over the sound of the shower I don’t remember being this loud. “I don’t deserve you to.”
His eyes fill, and his lip trembles.
He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I.
I know I should speak, say something that isn’t fucking mean as shit. But I can’t get my throat to work or my tongue to move.
It’s even harder when Tristen steps back just enough to pull his arms out of his wet shirt. He leaves it hanging around his neck where my hands are still pressed against him, the damp material collected in my fists.
It feels like a lifeline threaded between my fingers, begging me to hold on. To wait it out. To see this through.
And though there’s hot tears meddling with the water dripping down my face, I do.
I hold on with everything I have left in me.
“Can I?” he asks on a breath, the first words spoken in so long that it feels as if he screamed them. It takes me a long moment to realize he’s asking about my hoodie—his hoodie.
It takes even longer for me to finally nod.
Gingerly, he pulls at the sopping material, careful to leave my shirt behind, until he frees it from my head. My arms. It flops to the floor just outside of the shower curtain with a splat that doesn’t sound real.
Cold air leaks in through the curtain, making me shiver.
“How about the socks?” Tristen taps my foot with his bare toes and my nose crinkles.
“I hate feet.”
A weak chuckle fills the shower.
“It’s okay. Most people do.”
Eyes locked, searching mine, Tristen slowly lowers until his knees hit the tub, the warmth of his hands hovering over my ankle. It feels like another tether to this moment, my grip tightening on the shirt around his neck.
My shivering becomes violent enough I have to lean into the wall to lift one foot.
“P-p-p-please don’t hate me.”
His eyes soften, his brows dipping.
“I don’t hate you, Em. I never could.”
I swallow hard as he tugs off the sock with gentle movements, then goes through the same slow process with the other one, waiting for me to catch my breath in between each step.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter wetly with my heart in my throat, my stomach rolling.
My toes clench and unclench in the water, the spray getting into my burning eyes, and not once does Tristen look away from my face.
“What next, baby?” he whispers thickly, the air in here gaining heft.
“I-I-I-I don’t know.”
A sad smile tips his lips, and it doesn’t reach his eyes.
There’s something there, something swimming beneath the surface of his whiskey brown irises that reflects what I feel. A darkness that feels insurmountable. A demon that feels too close.
Another shiver racks over me, and my teeth clatter.
“Shirt,” I murmur and grab the hem.
It’s safer than the rest.
He helps push it up to my ribs, his touch feather light and so goddamn warm I want to curl up on the shower floor and weep.
Everything about him makes me want to cry.
He’s too caring. Dangerously sweet. So goddamned self-sacrificing.
Forever the hero.
Doesn’t he know he’s in the wrong story?
With nothing but my sweatpants left, I stand before him. Bare. On display with tears in my eyes and scores across my pale skin.
Not once does he break eye contact.
“You’re too good.”
“I’m not,” he rasps back.
I jam my fingers into the waistband of my pants and shove until they pool at my feet near his knees.
The struggle to not look broadcasts across his face, his features tightening. His breath coming faster.
“Emmett, I’m no fucking good, baby. I’m not.” His breath puffs hard enough I feel it on my exposed skin, his fingers twitching against his thighs. “All I can think about is making you feel better. Good.” He licks his lips, his nostril flaring. “Giving you a new memory.”
The thickness in my throat is hard to swallow. “H-how?”
There’s a muscle in his jaw that jumps and the air shifts again, the cold long forgotten as heat pools in places I’ve never felt before.
It’s so foreign to have my heart thumping wildly, my tongue drying from my rapid breaths, mixed with the wicked despair embedded in my skin with each mark that he can see.
With jerky movements, I move around Tristen to grab the soap and cover my skin in suds.
I feel so fucking exposed and antsy.
Gross and curious at the same time.
My skin both crawls and tingles, and I instinctively cover myself with one hand once I’m rinsed.
“How?” I ask again when his eyes flare, the color more vibrant than before, that swirling getting darker with each second that he stares up at me.
“By giving you all the control that was taken,” he rasps and reaches up, twirling the loose material of his shirt up until it’s wrapped around his neck like a noose, the bulk of it held lightly in my fingers. “Take it back, Emmett. Use me. Green.”
My breath catches.
And for the first time in months … my stomach flips.
“I d-d-don’t know, Tristen.” He licks his lips, and I can’t help the way that I watch his tongue slide across them in a way I wish I could. “I’ve been such a dick to you.” My eyes burn fiercely, my heart fluttering in my chest.
“I understand why you were and I’m telling you that it’s okay as long as you promise me something.”
I nod. “Okay. Okay, yeah. I’ll promise.”
He inches closer, his breath tickling the base of my stomach, making me clench.
No one has ever been this close to me.
“Promise me you’ll try your best. That you’ll take what you need. From me, from anyone that can give it to you. Promise me you won’t fade away.”
Tears prick my eyes, and though I don’t know if I can keep that kind of promise … I nod.
His grip sears against my hips, sure and tight yet somehow gentle at the same time.
“Green.”