Page 135 of Anything But Lonely

“Pink,” Mateo answers softly, “he kept saying how he couldn’t wait to show you.”

I close my eyes, and the tears fall instantly.

A week of darkness.

So intense that I couldn’t even tell that time was passing.

Everyone kept moving while I disappeared.

Life kept happening.

Crew broke his arm.

The sobs hit me hard enough to knock all the wind out of me, and I can’t stop them.

I feel Mateo’s arms wrap around me, and I hang on to his arm across my chest just to stay grounded. All the feelings I’ve been avoiding for days, weeks, months come rushing in, and it feels like I’m dying. Actually physically dying.

And I don’t want to die.

The pain is so severe that my lungs begin to burn as I fight to take a breath.

“Breathe, baby,” Mateo whispers against my forehead before he presses a kiss to the skin. “Breathe for me. Please.”

I try, but I can’t. It’s like all the air in the room was sucked out, and I’m suffocating, slowly, right before his eyes.

“I’m right here, Emerson. I got you,” he says, over and over again.

I don’t know how long I cry in his arms, but it’s long enough for my eyes to burn and my throat to ache even worse than it did when I got out of bed today.

I inhale my first full breath, and it makes my chest hurt. I exhale shakily before trying again, feeling my shoulders rise and fall, Mateo’s arms never releasing me from their hold, just loosening slightly to let me take in my breaths.

“I didn’t mean to.” They’re the only words I can manage to say, and they don’t even scratch the surface of what I’m trying to say.

I didn’t mean to disappear for so long.

“You’re here now,” Mateo says, hearing the words I can’t manage to say. His palm finds the side of my face, urging my eyes to meet his. “You’re here now,” he repeats, and the words finally land.

I close my eyes, laying my head on his shoulder.

“I need to go see her,” I whisper, and I feel Mateo hold me tighter.

“I know,” is all he says, and then the tears come all over again.

CHAPTER 44

MATEO

“Where is Ems’ mom?” Crew asks from his car seat. My eyes float to the rearview mirror, watching my son examine his hot pink cast as he waits for my answer.

How do you explain death to a four-year-old? Until now, there’s been no reason to.

My parents died before Crew was even a thought, same with Talia’s.

Pepper is probably going to live forever just to spite me.

Death has never been a topic we had to broach.

Until now.