“No!” he yells on a jerk and jams his hands into my shoulders. His small body is so light that he lifts himself up, digging my hands into his back and there’s no mistaking that there’s something there. Something that feels like mountains beneath my fingertips.
My stomach drops faster than my hands do.
“I’m sorry, bubbles. I’m sorry. I—”
The screeching sound of the bay door opening pierces through the room and he stumbles back from me with tears in his eyes.
“Fuck.”
Chapter 37
Tristen
In a flurry ofmovement, I manage to stuff myself in my uniform as the rest of the firehouse files back into the building, just outside those doors.
Emmett sobs, and my heart aches.
I have no idea what to do.
“Bubbles, I’m sorry,” I croak again, hoping that maybe this time he’ll hear me. Maybe this time he’ll feel me. “I didn’t know.”
He swipes at his face with his covered fists and my stomach twists at the breath he sucks back.
Crouching next to him, the feet between us like a crater that threatens to suck me in, I try to dip enough to catch his sight. See his sweet eyes.
He hides them.
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“I know,” he half yells, startling me, and I rear back. “I know.”
My spine is stiff as he stares back at me with a pumping chest and an anger I wasn’t expecting darkening his bloodshot eyes.
“Then what is it?” I ask softly, my own eyes burning.
Why are there marks?I want to ask, but I don’t. I’m not sure that I could handle the answer to what left his skin so textured. My stomach twists at the possibilities and I settle on a different question when that all burns too hot along my tongue.
“Why don’t you want me to touch your skin?”
His eyes fill.
“I do want you to,” he all but screams and I swallow so hard, I swear I hear it over his panting breath. His words ring around in my head, his actions their echo and my chestachesso deep.
I don’t know what to do.
“I want you to,” he repeats and its thick. So goddamnheavyas his sight drops to the ground and his shoulders droop. “That’s the problem.”
My chest goes impossibly tighter, and I drop all the way to my numb hands and shaking knees under the weight bearing down over us. “Emmett.”
His shoulders tremble and he curls up even tighter on himself, pressing his knees into his chest. There’s a deafening silence that falls over us despite the noise outside this room of firefighters and EMTs going about their shifts, filling the time between tones.
Please, God, don’t let anyone come in here.
“Bubbles,” I whisper to the top of his head that’s pressing into his knees. “W-Why is that a problem?”
His sob breaks me.
Quiet.
