Then there’s Bobbie, nearly inconsolable every time she stops by.
Her world is falling apart before her eyes, one she didn’t realize had slipped through her fingers long ago, the truths she assumed long lied about. The friend she lost, and the man she knew wasn’t great but didn’t know wasthat bad.
They never seemthat badto outsiders.
I can’t help being angry with her regardless.
How did she not know?
Meanwhile, Emmett’s life was destroyed by the time he got a chance to fucking start one.
If he decides to keep it.
My stomach twists violently.
“If I get him to the track, will you come?”
I swallow down the emotions choking me. My answer is noncommittal and placating.
“I guess, man. I gotta go check on Charline.”
The worry lacing my best friend’s face should stop me in my tracks, though it doesn’t. Instead, I leave him on the lawn in amess of tools and bike parts to stare at the woman who shares eyes with my Emmett.
“You again?” She’s weak but as venomous as ever. “Don’t they have anyone else at that fucking hospital?”
Fury laces my veins. She has no idea why I’m here, and yet my hands move on autopilot. I check her pulse and her pressure and screw a little syringe of trial meds into her IV.
“You deaf now?”
It’s so condescending and unwarranted that I toss her a narrowed gaze I regret.
Instead of a sickly Charline lying on my gurney, all I see is Emmett staring back at me. The eyes they share dead inside her skull, showing me exactly what my future with Em looks like.
The bile that burns the back of my throat I swallow against can’t stop the tumble of words from falling out.
“How could you?” She has the nerve to look shocked, but I can’t stop them from slipping off my lips. “You knew what the fuck that man was doing to your son, and you didnothing.”
The force of pushing the meds must sting because she grabs her arm and hisses.
“How dare you speak to me—”
“How dareyou,” I snarl back. “Youlet yourhusbandabuse your own flesh and blood like that.How fucking dare you.”
She stares at me, slack jawed, her pupils going unfocused.
“He’ll never amount to anything. Especially with you,” she says flatly, telling me she knows more than she leads on, and turns away, her arms fall to her sides. Like she’s given up. Accepts the sting of the meds as I push the plunger, all of which she’s not bothered to ask about.
“Fucking coward,” I mutter and inject the last mix of drugs keeping her alive.
Eventually, they’re going to run out. The trial is going to end and there won’t be anything left to try. The toxins in her body arebuilding up, and not even Bobbie’s brilliance is going to have an answer.
She’ll be left to fight the shit on her own and nature’s going to win.
I hope it’s soon.
Chapter 66
Tristen
