Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
Sunday bled into Monday morning, and Lincoln’s nerves kept compounding.
His four texts and one voice mail remained unreturned.
He’d resorted to texting Adrian, who also didn’t reply.
By ten a.m., he’d had enough of the silent treatment.
Space was one thing, but being ignored? Lincoln wasn’t down for that.
He slipped on his shades and walked to Beatrice’s house.
Neither of the vehicles were in the driveway, which meant nothing.
He knocked and rang the bell. Emmett opened the door wearing the same clothes as yesterday.
His skin was pale and dark smudges colored both eyes. He also reeked of booze and sweat.
“Did you get drunk last night?” Lincoln asked.
“Did shots with Adrian.” Emmett moved out of the way and shambled over to the couch.
Lincoln took that as permission to enter.
He shut the door against the heat and let the air-conditioning cool him off before he approached.
Emmett sat in the middle of the couch, shoulders slumped, as miserable as Lincoln had ever seen him.
And that set off every protective instinct inside of him—instincts that told him to take care of his man and to destroy whatever was hurting him.
“You feel up to a shower?” he asked. “I can get the water running.”
“No.”
“It’ll probably make you feel better.”
“Don’t want to feel better.”
Lincoln approached slowly, confused and upset over how upset Emmett was. “Why not? Did something happen last night?”
“Not exactly.”
He squatted in front of Emmett without touching him. “Talk to me, babe. Tell me how to make this better for you.”
“I don’t deserve to feel better. I don’t deserve you, either.”
“What?” His mind reeled at that, unable to process it.
“What do you mean? You are an amazing person, Emmett. You have been so kind and patient with me. You’ve nursed me through migraines.
You helped me come alive after the accident, when all I wanted to do was feel sorry for myself. Maybe I don’t deserve you.”
Emmett made a soft, choked sound that was almost a sob. “You deserve so much better than me.”
“You’re crazy. You saved me.”
“I almost killed you!” The sharp shout knocked Lincoln onto his ass.
He stared up at Emmett, whose face had flushed red and who was watching him with wide, tear-filled eyes. His words made absolutely no sense, and neither did his raw emotion. “What are you talking about?”
“The accident was my fault.”
“What accident?”
“Your hit-and-run last summer.”
Lincoln’s throat tightened, and something dark twisted around his heart. Squeezed it tight. This was insane. “Are you crazy? You didn’t run me off the road.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t.” He couldn’t have done it. Period. Plain and simple, no other option. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. “Stop saying you did.”
“Adrian and I were at a party up north.” Emmett started shaking, which made his voice wobble. “First time I’d gone out since the fire. We both got wasted. I’d never drank before, plus my meds, and these guys I didn’t know gave me lines of coke. I blacked out the entire night.”
“You told me about that.”
“It was the same night as your accident.”
“So?” Lincoln scrambled to stand. “Coincidence doesn’t make you responsible.”
“A video does.”
For a split second, time stood still, because Lincoln couldn’t comprehend what he was hearing.
This was all some kind of misunderstanding.
Or a joke. Some asshole with a video camera would pop out of the hallway and announce that he was being punked, because there was no way in hell that Emmett had been the hit-and-run driver last year.
“Adrian recorded me on his phone at the party,” Emmett said. “He said he wanted it for posterity, because he’d never seen me like that. We were on that road, Linc. It was the way home from the party.”
Lincoln’s hands started shaking to match his insides. “I don’t know why you’re doing this, but please stop. Stop making this up. It’s not funny and it hurts.”
Tears snaked down Emmett’s cheeks. “In the truck I started singing, so Adrian started recording me again.”
“Stop talking.”
Emmett tugged his phone out of his pocket and tapped at the screen. “He never deleted it. I had him send it to me last night when I decided to tell you.”
“No.” Lincoln took a full step backward, then stumbled. Nothing felt real or in focus. He was in the middle of the worst possible April Fool’s in July joke in the history of the world. There was no fucking way that his sweet, loving Emmett had been the one to cause his accident.
No. Fucking. Way.
Emmett stood and brought the phone closer, his trembling hands unable to keep it steady, even as he hit play.
The shaky video clearly showed Emmett behind the wheel of a truck.
His voice burst over the speaker, singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” a cappella.
Laughter, supposedly Adrian’s, burst out a few times.
“Dude, I think we’re going the wrong way.”
Okay, fine, so it was Adrian.
Video Emmett kept singing, visibly wasted but also at ease. Having fun. Carefree.
Fucking stoned out of his mind and driving a goddamn truck.
Video Emmett turned the wheel sharply. Lights flashed. The video jerked hard.
Lincoln made a noise deep in his throat he didn’t recognize.
“The fuck, dude? Look where you’re going,” Video Adrian said. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“Dunno.”
The video stopped.
“That proves nothing,” Lincoln said. He was stretched taut, ready to snap. This had to stop before he lost his fucking mind. “You guys could have hit anything.”
Emmett choked. “The next day Adrian found a dent in the fender. And paint from a blue car. He got it fixed without telling anyone.”
“No.” His mind refused to accept what Emmett was telling him. It simply could not be true. Truth meant Emmett had been lying to him, keeping something so huge a secret. Hiding what he’d done from the five people who’d been in that car. Three of whom he’d met in person this summer.
“Adrian didn’t tell me because I’d blacked the whole night out. He didn’t want me to get in trouble, and the police never came to our door looking.”
“He’s lying. You hit something else, it wasn’t my car. You didn’t cause my accident. You didn’t.”
Emmett wiped his eyes, his face blotchy. “You remember back in June, that time Adrian caught us making out in the living room?”
“I remember every single kiss.”
“Fuck.” Emmett’s chest heaved, like he couldn’t breathe, but Lincoln couldn’t move a single muscle to comfort him. His entire world seemed frozen in time. “I told you I confronted Adrian over being such a jerk to you.”
He clearly remembered checking on Emmett that day. Finding him huddled in bed, as upset as he’d ever seen him—until today. “You said he told you about the drinking and the drugs, and you were mad at yourself for using coke.”
“That was only a tiny little bit of the truth.”
Lincoln’s throat closed up. “Don’t.”
“That was the night he showed me the video and told me what I did. I was absolutely sick over what I’d done. I could barely look at you that day.”
It makes sense. It makes sense, but it can’t be the truth. It can’t be Emmett’s fault that I’m like this.
“I don’t understand.” Lincoln tried to see his Emmett in the crying, shaking mess of a boy standing in front of him, but he couldn’t.
All he saw was a stranger. “That happened a week after we met. We barely knew each other. Why—?” A black thought slithered into his mind and left him reeling.
“Did you stay with me because you felt guilty? Because you felt sorry for me? The dizziness and sunglasses and migraines were your fault, so you’d better stick around and be nice to the invalid? ”
“It was never like that!” Emmett seemed less upset now, his grief shifting into anger. Anger he had no right to feel, and it started pissing Lincoln off. “Maybe it had been only a week, but I felt so many things for you already.”
“Like what? Fucking pity?”
“I didn’t pity you then, and I don’t pity you now. I didn’t want to lose you when I’d only just found you, so I didn’t say anything.”
“No, you didn’t. You let me fall in love with you, instead.”
“Which is why I’m telling you now! I love you, Lincoln, and I want everything we talked about this weekend. I want a husband and a house and kids, and I think we could have all that together, but you had to know this first. You deserve the truth.”
“Oh, I see. I deserve the truth now that you know I’m a keeper, but not six weeks ago. Not when you weren’t sure you wanted to be saddled with my issues for the rest of your life.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It sure as fuck sounds like what you meant.” Lincoln was losing control of his temper. Everything was hot and tight and he really, really wanted to hit something. And he didn’t want it to be Emmett. Not ever. Not even after all of this.
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry, Lincoln. Tell me how to fix this.”
“I don’t know if you can.”
Emmett’s head jerked as if he’d been slapped.
“I need to leave.” He turned and stalked to the front door.
“Lincoln, please.”
A hand closed over his forearm. Lincoln yanked away so violently that Emmett stumbled to his knee. He didn’t pause to catalogue the heartbreak in Emmett’s eyes, or the way he stayed down, like a wounded puppy. He slammed his way out the door and walked away from the best thing he’d ever had.
Emmett sat on the floor, arms around his knees, and rocked.
He couldn’t do anything else while his heart broke apart and drifted away on the winds of grief.
He’d known his confession would hurt Lincoln, but he hadn’t been prepared for how much seeing Lincoln’s pain would hurt Emmett.
How Lincoln’s anger and grief and confusion would turn into sharp little knives that stabbed Emmett over and over again.