Chapter 71
Tristen
“I miss her,” he mumbles quietly to the rickety table between us, his toast untouched and pushed away.
My too-dry eyes burn wickedly, the exhaustion and worry melding into one giant ball of fucking anxiety ready to burst in my chest.
“I’m sorry, bubbles.”
“Does everyone change when they love someone?”
The question catches me so off guard that my lungs freeze up, and I rock back in my chair.
Does he know?
Hope blooms mistakenly, weaving its way through my ribs as I lean into the table. I swallow it back as best I can, preparing an answer in my head. None of it feels right to say, especially when he finally meets my gaze, his wide and innocent and so damn haunted.
I think I hate that the most about all of this. How he carries it all right there in the window, easily seen if anyone would just look.
I see you, baby. I see you.
“Bubbles, I …” My throat clogs with emotion, hand frozen in the air above where his sits on the table. I want to hold it. To touch his arm. To grab his face and kiss him.
Anything. Something.
But he doesn’t need that, or want it, from me.
What if I need it from him?
My heart stutters in my chest and I drop my arm to the table, settling on hope that he’ll reach for me if he wants to.
I selfishly want him to.
Need him to.
It’s been so goddamn long since I felt like I had him. Like he wasn’t going to float away at the first chance he got.
It’s unfair.
So unbelievably unfair.
Hasn’t he always been floating away?
The question stings, because the answer is so glaringly obvious now. Even though I’m the one desperate for an escape from everything, a chance for life to be different, to mean something.
Turns out that I’ve become his escape. Always have been. Since that day I brought him back from the hospital, it’s been me pulling him along and hoping that he’ll get better. That he’ll want to live a life worthy of him.
That he’ll help me live mine.
I want to live mine.
With him.
This is so fucked, but now that the words are at the base of my throat, I’m having a hard time keeping them back.
Like a purge I didn’t ask for, they blurt out of me in a rush.
“I got a scholarship to get my certifications for flight paramedic.”
His eyes widen, his blinks slow.
“What?”
I swallow hard. “Flight paramedic. Careflight.”
Emmett just stares at me, and I chew the inside of my lip so long that I taste copper.
“Like on a plane?”
I feel my brows jump, the hand still in my lap running the hem of my jeans beneath my nail. “Helicopter. The ones that travel between hospitals, or straight from a scene if the wounds are too critical to wait the ambo drive.”
“Oh.” His gaze softens the tiniest bit. “Was that hard to get?”
I nod, my heart in my throat. “Yeah, I …” Licking my lips, I drop my head and stare at the table. “The slot only comes up every six months.”
I postponed the last one and nearly lost my shot.
“So, it’s special,” Emmett says, almost a whisper.
I nod because I don’t know that I can speak.
How do I tell him?
How do I tell him I have to leave him?
Pressure on my extended hand has my head snapping up and my lashes dampening.
“It feels special,” he murmurs, the sight of him feathering his fingers over mine blurs.
“I get to help people,” I rasp out.
“More people.”
“Really hurt people.”
“You’re good at that.”
My heart twinges. “I wish I was better.”
I wish I was better for you.
His fingers stop their trek across my open palm and flatten, pressing them together.
“I wish I was better, too,” he whispers to our hands.
Curling my fingers lightly around his feels like grabbing a lifeline and hanging on for dear life. It’s barely there and cutting off circulation, but goddamnit, it’s there.
Right there.
So close.
I can fucking taste it.
“I think people do change when they’re in love,” I say softly before flicking my gaze up to the swirling in his sweet eyes. “I have.”