It’s fucking embarrassing.
Yet my body rejects my protests and empties regardless of Tristen’s presence.
This time, though, instead of setting me down, he bypasses the toilet and steps directly into the already running shower, fully clothed.
Water hits his back and sprays out, sprinkling across my face.
I scream.
“Noooo!”
“It’s okay, baby. I’m here with you.” The softness of his tone clashes with the violent way I thrash against him, my elbows and knees crashing into muscle and tile. “I’ve got you, Emmett. I promise, I got you.”
He steps back, fully under the spray, water running over his hair and trailing down his stony face to collect in the crevice between us. It soaks into my side, my chest, and I hate it.
“Ihateyou!”
“I know, bub.”
My voice grows weaker, my resolve waning with each droplet that seeps into my skin through the clothes. “I fucking hate you, Tristen.”
“Me, too, Emmett.”
The ache in my chest blooms into a full-blownstabbingat the way his voice breaks around the admission, his grip on me loosening.
“I’m gonna stand you up, now. Hang on to me if your knees feel too shaky.”
I ignore the way he keeps his grip away from the middle of my back, his hands light and pressed into my shoulders and my lower back.
The places I told him were okay.
He always touches there. Nowhere else.
Sniffling hard, I tighten my grip on his neck and let him slide me down until my toes hit the tub.
Pins and needles shoot through my heels, my socks sloshing in the collection of barely warm water already collecting in the bottom.
It makes me want to scream all over again, though I don’t.
“Why?” I whisper to his chest instead with more than just water droplets collecting on my lashes. “Why do you keep coming back?”
A long silence filled with nothing but the sound of the shower smacking his clothed back stretched between us. It wedges into the space separating us, seemingly making it spread wider and wider until I can barely feel him there. He is, and I can touch him, but he just feels outof reach. Unobtainable.
Too far away.
I did that.
I pushed him, and I keep pushing him.
The silence stretches so long that I finally dare to meet his gaze, and I’m shocked by the emptiness that stares back.
“Why not?” he murmurs softly, knocking away droplets that have collected on his lips.
“B-because,” I respond back just as quiet, barely audible over the sound of the shower I don’t remember being this loud. “I don’t deserve you to.”
His eyes fill, and his lip trembles.
He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I.
