“There was a fire in the house, you were trapped, and I went in to save you, but I couldn’t find you in time. I couldn’t save you either.”
I don’t have to ask who else he couldn’t save. Rory—his loudest ghost, a failure that haunts him. But I don’t dare ask about her or that night, not right now, when my grip on him feels so tenuous.
“I’m right here.” I rake my fingernails through his hair, letting him feel it.
His hand snakes tighter around my waist, like he feels the threat of me slipping away the same way I felt him trying to resurrect his walls moments ago.
“She looked like you,” I murmur, remembering the picture he keeps in his wallet.
“A little,” he agrees.
“Same wavy hair.” My fingers sift through his locks, and this time, when I turn, he lets me. “Same crooked smile.”
The corner of his mouth kicks up, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “She smiled that way to hide her braces. God, she fucking hated those things.”
“Her eyes were different.”
“Her eyes were a fucking menace.” This time, a sliver of light returns to them. “Got her whatever the hell she wanted. Or maybe that was just existing.” There’s no jealousy or malice in his tone.
“My grandparents tried for years to have kids,” he says quietly. “My grandma had endometriosis. Finding out she was pregnant with Rory years after they’d given up was a shock.”
His mouth softens around her name. “Grandma called her their miracle baby.”
“Sounds like she was loved.”
“God, yeah.” A faint huff leaves him. “She could get away with anything. Smart mouth. Big eyes. Everyone in that house revolved around her.”
There’s warmth there now, threading through the grief.
“I’d never seen people love each other like that before I met them.” His hand tightens against my waist. “It fucked me up for a while. I was angry I’d been kept away from them. Angry I didn’t get that from the start.” His jaw flexes. “And part of me was glad my parents were gone because it meant I finally had them. That really messed with my head.”
My chest aches. “You were a kid, Emmett, and you’d lived through horrific things. I think people would’ve been more worried if you hadn’t come out of it confused and angry.”
His shoulders lift slightly, like he doesn’t fully believe me but doesn’t have the energy to argue.
“Did you talk to anyone back then? After placement?”
“Yeah,” he scoffs. “Every week for six months.”
His entire mood shifts in an instant. Every muscle coils like he’s bracing for impact. I run my fingers over his jaw, and it twitches beneath them.
“Maybe if I’d listened to her, things would have ended up different.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, afraid I’m not going to like the answer.
“My grandparents pulled me after I broke down one night before a session, begging them not to make me go.” He paused, then continued. “She thought kids from homes like mine were ticking time bombs if they didn’t get help early. Every session turned into picking apart my behavior, looking for signs something was wrong with me. Like everyone was waiting for me to turn dangerous. ”
Anger flashes through me so fast it makes me dizzy.
He was just a kid. No,worse,he was a grieving kid who’d had his entire world flipped on end at no fault of his own, and this shitty therapist made him feel worse. I want to seek her out and do . . . I don’t know what. I want to make her look me in the eyes as I tell her what a terrible person she is. And then I want to make sure she’s not practicing anymore.
“Tell me your grandparents reported her.”
“I begged them not to.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid that I’d get removed from their house somehow and placed in foster care as retaliation.”
