But it’s Tristen’s and it’s making me feel like he’s here.
Instead of out there, doing what he does.
Saving lives.
He walks into danger for a living, and I …
I hide.
Holding the screen door so it doesn’t slam, I step back inside, my head low and my shoulders high. My spine hunched over, and my fists covered.
I don’t think I want to anymore.
Being here again for the first time since … since I tried to end it all … is like walking into a dream I didn’t agree to. Like waking from a nightmare only to fall right back into it when going back to sleep.
Except this time, the shadows on the wall are accompanied by the steady beep of the monitor signaling my mother’s heartbeat.
And the stupid part of me?
The childish part of me?
Just … wishes she’d wake up. Be okay. That she’d finally come back to the person she was.
That she’d wake up and love me like she used to.
Missing that version of her, the one u have for a long time, and not this one settles like rotting shame in my gut.
I find myself staring down at her sunken and slack face, unable to recognize the women from my memories.
“I hate that I want you back,” I whisper to her profile, her nose pointier than I remember. Her chin appearing longer. “Because you’re not a good person.”
My eyes burn and I grab her hand. Squeeze hard.
“You justhadto tell him about the kid on the playground, didn’t you? You were so fuckingproudof me that day. I remember it. I remember it so vividly, because your smile was like the sun and it was all because I chose to defend a boy I didn’t know.”
Our joined hands stain with my tears and I jam them into the thin mattress when there’s still no response from her. No noise. No movement.
“Fuck you, Mother,” I say with almost no heat and all the pain in my chest as I toss her hand back across her midsection and turn away. “Fuck you.”
I’m swiping angrily at my face and the moisture tracking down my cheeks that she doesn’t deserve when the knock on the door makes me jump.
Then freeze.
“Bubbles, it’s me.”
It comes through the panel softly, slowly, and my chest inflates.
I run.
My breath hitches when I swing the door open to Tristen’s blinding smile that shows off his crooked tooth, his muscular arm raised high like he’s holding onto the door frame and completely exposed in his black tank.
“Are there tattoos in your armpit?” I ask in a rush, but don’t stop moving forward until I collide with his chest. Wrap my arms around his ribs. Inhale his freshly showered scent.
Sage and musk.
Leather and home.
He just snorts and slides his arms along my shoulders. “Yeah, there is.”
