Tristen’s hands fly up in surrender. “Promise I’m just here to help, bub. Hospitals suck, yeah? So let me get you home.”
Home … home.
He can’t go near my home. No one should ever visit that place.
It’ll taint him with this blackness that’s covered me like permanent ink. Staining my hands and therefore everything I touch.
“No. No.” I fight the shiver that wants to take over my limbs and fail.
A rush of dread rolls over me, leaving nothing but a racing heart in its wake.
“It’s cool. Can I take you somewhere else? Please?”
The desperation in his request has my eyes snapping up.
When did he move closer?
“My place? I have a house and a roommate, but he’s totally chill. Probably won’t even be home.”
He takes one step closer, his brows pinched over those eyes that I swear see right through me when I say nothing.
“You have a choice,” he almost whispers and it feels like he’s talking to a different part of me. A desolate piece that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. “You don’t have to stay here.”
Don’t I?
“Emmett, honey,” my aunt’s soft voice adds to the torment of my psyche, pulling my gaze her direction. “It’s okay. Go if you want. I’ll just be working.”
“I …”
My throat is thick, and my lips are dry.
“O-okay.”
Chapter 7
Tristen
I don’t know whyI thought this was a good idea.
I mean, it’s a great fucking idea because I feel like a kid that somehow just scored a sleep over with the popular guy at school who happens to be that way because he ignores everyone, but Emmett looks like he’s going to throw up any time now and we haven’t even made it up the driveway yet.
The borrowed truck bumps over the driveway’s edge that’s in desperate need of fixing. I’ll get to one of these days I’m not working.
Or apparently invading a practical stranger’s hospital room.
Only to invite him back to my house where I sleep.
Good going, Ten.
Snorting, I pull half into the dying grass because Hat’s and my bikes are pulled up to the garage like a hoodlum parked them, and kill the engine.
The guys from the firehouse must have brought them home when we borrowed the truck again last night, and I’m honestly glad to see them right where they should be. It was weird as fuckleaving for work this morning knowing Green Envy was stuck somewhere else.
Emmett’s still holding the to-go cup in his lap, cradling it in both hands when I turn to look at him, his sight downcast to the plastic lid as he stares right through it.
“My roomie might be home. That’s his bike.”
He nods once. Rubs the pad of his finger over the hole in the lid.
