“Please forgive me.”
“What?” he whispers.
Getting my arms beneath him is easier than I expect and as I stand, his wail of pain chips away at the thing inside me that’s already been crumbling.
He’s light. Too light in my arms and doesn’t bother fighting me off.
The sudden silence is almost deafening, his frame shaking against me like a jackhammer.
“I’m sorry.”
Setting him on the toilet feels like ripping out my own soul.
It’s my job. It’s my goddamn job.
But wriggling the pants just far enough down his hips while he’s sitting feels like I’m flushing it right down the drain with the rest of the waste.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I say past the lump in my throat to the emptiness in his gaze.
He starts going as soon as the fabric is cleared, his pain-filled eyes flooding over.
Watching him silently cry is too much, so I stand and turn away to guard the door, just like I said I would.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I murmur to the wall across the hall, the weight of it all settling nice and tight on my goddamned shoulders. “I should have been here sooner.”
He says something that I can’t hear over the sound of his piss hitting the bowl and I glance over my shoulder.
Bowed over, his arms holding his stomach, Emmett sobs to his knees.
My eyes flood and,fuck, I can’t do this.
I can’t just stand here anddo nothing.
The scent of urine is strong as I drop to my knees in front of him.
“I hate that you know,” he says before I can get anything out and it lands right in the center of my cracked open chest. “It was better when no one but Mom knew.”
Everything in me locks up, bile burning the back of my throat.
“What?” It comes out almost soundlessly, everything in me screaming about warning bells.
“No one was ever supposed to know, and Ihate youfor knowing.”
Chapter 63
Emmett
The darkness swallows mepiece by piece.
I sleep.
And sleep.
Nibble on the food that Tristen brings me, only to spit it back out when he’s not looking. I think he knows or at least has figured it out. The sunken look on his face when he leaves shit sitting next to me tells me all I need to know.
With each night—or is it morning? I’ve lost track of the waning daylight—I see it deepen, that scowl that mars his face. The droop to his brows grows deeper. The purple beneath his fading eyes is getting worse.
I should feel bad. Maybe even be grateful that he’s here, doing what he has to keep me and my mom alive, but the truth is that I’m not. I don’t.
