Chapter 75
Tristen
By the time we make it downtown, the sun has set on the color-speckled cobblestone street and most of the crowds have migrated to the nightlife part of the town. The bars, the clubs, the parties.
Which left us with dining and that play Hatley mentioned.
It was … cute. Simple. An improv group with props that played a show about a boy falling in love and though Emmett seemed enthralled at first, his head was lolling on my shoulder by the second act.
Pretty sure he slept through them kissing on stage.
I only feel slightly guilty for imagining that kind of kiss with Emmett and popping a boner in public.
It’s not until we get back out onto the street that he walks close enough to me that I feel the heat from his arm. My sleeves are rolled up, but his are down, and he has to be hot as fuck.
“You can take the tie off,” I remind him, the peek of green flashing through the neck of the hoodie he put on over top of the dress shirt he’s still in, and I have no idea how he’s not passing out from heat exhaustion at this point.
Even mine is tucked into my pocket, my blazer left behind in the truck.
“I like green,” he murmurs, his eyes trained on something up ahead.
I like you in green.
I go to say the words out loud but stop when Em freezes. Halts right there next to me, his lips dropping open.
“What’s wrong?”
“T-they’re … kissing.” He says it with wonder. Wistfulness. Maybe with a hint of fear, and I follow his line of sight to the next block up.
We’ve passed a few guys holding hands. Girls with arms around each other and rainbow stickers on their face. You name it. It’s not new to me that this part of town is more open, more accepting, but it is to Emmett.
And against the brick wall, out in the open, is a guy in a suit with light hair and his hand shoved all the way inside the undone fly of the guy he’s making out with.
It’s not until their tongues untangle and the dark-haired guy throws his head back, face contorted in passion, that I recognize him.
“No fucking way.”
A wave of something hot and ugly rears inside me, and I take a step in their direction, only stopping at the feel of Emmett’s hand grabbing mine.
“Tristen, don’t. Please.”
My jaw ticks, blood boiling, as the guy who had the audacity to throw slurs at me now has another man making his eyes roll back.
Ashton.
Scoffing, I squeeze Em’s fingers and turn around.
I don’t want to see him. I certainly don’t want to watch him fucking finish.
“Hypocrite.”
“Wh-what’s wrong with it?” Emmett asks me too quietly, his breath pumping as he keeps up my pace.
I slow.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, but that guy is a fucking asshole. That’s the one from the track.”
“You made him go to sleep.”
“Yeah, that one.”
Emmett sighs but doesn’t say anything else. Just walks by my side as I curl around the block and away from the party scene. We were heading in the direction of the bars anyway.
Blowing out a long breath, I let the anger out with it.
He’s not going to ruin my night.
It’s my first date with Emmett.
The fact that he’s still here, still with me, has my chest pumping up and my smile growing.
I pull him to a stop by pinching his sleeve a few more blocks up, where the businesses are thinning out and the residential area begins. The crowd is almost non-existent down here, the alley between the final few shops I pull us into lit up by a small streetlight.
His eyes widen when I back him up to the wall, my grip gentle on his face.
Gaze dropping to my lips, Emmett wraps his hands around my wrists and hangs on for dear life.
“Kiss me,” he rushes out, nearly panting. “Please, Tristen, before I think too much.”
How can I say no?
I crush my lips to his and it’s like taking the first gasp of air after being under water for too long. That relief of flooding your system with something sweet and deadly. As consuming as any other drug.
His lips part and I waste no time diving into his mouth, teasing his tongue with mine.
Dear God, he’s kissing me.
Out in the open.
Emmett’s kissing me.
The thought of shoving my hands in his pants, just like the couple we saw, crosses my mind, but I don’t.
The thought of grabbing him, lifting him up until his legs wrap around my waist, and pinning him to the wall to grind our dicks together floods my mind, but I don’t act on that either.
Not yet.
We’ll get there someday if that’s what he wants.
Whatever he wants.
My chest expands with my breath as I lean back enough to press my forehead to his, my heart thumping inside my chest.
It feels … right.
Like we’ll be okay, even though he’s shaking in my grip.
That happiness is reachable for the first time in my fucking life.
In recovery, they tell you to find something.
A higher power, a plan, a thing. I never prescribed to the sky daddy belief—to each their own and all—so I went with a life plan.
I was gonna get sober. Stay sober. Become someone that helps others.
They frowned when I said paramedic considering the access and all, but I wanted to be the one that responded just like Mumford had for me.
Eight years ago.
Fuck, eight years ago to the day, I was his first call.
Nearly a decade has passed since I last attempted to end it all and here I am, with Em right in front of me, looking up at me with a tilt to his swollen lips.
Holy shit, he’s smiling at me.
And, God, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I want to tell him that I’m flat on my ass—have been—but I don’t even think I need to. I see it in the way he looks back at me, and I’ve never been more grateful to have been wrong before.
Never been more grateful to at least find a taste of this. Him.
Even if it’s torn away from me too soon.
A scream in the distance is the first thing I register, and it slams me back to reality, stealing away that cloud nine I almost had my fingers wrapped up in.
The second is a pop that has me dropping back from Em and running out into the street with a deep stay there thrown over my shoulder to him.
I don’t get far when I hear the third, a pounding that ricochets off the brick around us and sounds too close to ignore.
On instinct, I duck, though I don’t know where it’s coming from.
Pain blooms, sudden and piercing enough that I crumble to my knees.
Fuck … no. Nonono.
The screams surround my head like a vice, reverberating inside my skull, my gut, and I grab at my abdomen.
It feels wet, and when I look at it, it’s red.
Realization kicks in, slamming me into a new reality I never wanted to be part of, and I gasp.
But then Emmett is there, on his knees and hovering over me.
When did I lay down?
I blink hard and focus on the way he screams my name.
I’ve never heard him so loud before.
“Em-m-m,” I chatter out to the shining fear in his eyes as I press harder to the stabbing ache in my gut. “Call 9-1-1.”
He cries harder.
“I don’t know what to do!”
“C-call them.” I reach for him with what I think is a dry hand and hold on.
“Tell them—listen to me, baby—t-tell them where we are. G-GSW.” My lips tremble, a shiver taking over that never ends.
“To the abdomen. Critical.” My teeth chatter and I release him to press into the wound with both hands, but my strength is fading. I can feel it.
The edges of my vision are darkening.
Center of my chest is aching.
Warmth floods at the corners of my eyes and I choke back a sob.
I hear the faint voice of dispatch next to my head, Emmett’s panicked voice breaking my heart wide open as he speaks to them.
“I’m sorry,” I rush out and grab his hand again, “I’m so s-s-sorry, baby, but I need help.”
“Tristen,” he cries as I flatten his palm over the one I still have holding myself together. I can feel the flood flowing between my fingers, the pressure not enough. “There’s so much.”
“I-I know, I know-w. But look at me.” I swallow hard and do my best to slow my breathing. “Emmett, just look at me, baby.”
He’s gone pale. Tears raining down his cheeks. Sight darting all over.
“There’s too much,” he cries, and I push on his hand over top of mine.
There is too much.
“It’s going to be ok-kay—look at me, Emmett.”
Those sweet eyes crash to mine, and the streetlight behind him makes his messy hair glow around his head. The familiarity of it, of honey-colored irises staring down at me from beneath a halo, has my heart stuttering inside my chest.
I can almost feel the mulch poking at my back.
“P-press harder, my angel,” I say to the glow around him. “Just keep looking at me. Don’t look away.”
His tears drip to my chest and rip through me like another hole.
I can feel it claiming me, taking me away, and as much as I fight it …
I don’t know if I have enough left.
I’ve fought my whole goddamn life. Been swinging since birth, desperate to fight my final fight so I can rest. Find my place.
My place, where I belong.
It’s staring back at me. It was always staring back at me.
It’s unfair how short I got to live it, but goddamnit, I got to.
“Tristen, hang on. Please. Please!”
He was mine.
The angel from the playground.
The one that saved my life when I was six and roasting in the mulch with a broken arm.
I knew those eyes would stick with me for the rest of my life.
Honey-colored and haunted, even then.
Adding to that feels like a regret, but there’s no part of me that regrets him.
He made the fight worth every second I had to wait for him.
“I’m glad it was you, Emmett,” I whisper with everything I have left. “I’m glad it was you.”