My eyes start to burn, feeling the words deep. “This is a commission?” I ask, looking up at Emmet in shock.
He shakes his head. “Technically no, it was just a piece that I was playing around with, or at least that was the intention until I ended up staying up until the wee hours finishing it.”
“It’s beautiful.” I take notice of the scars that adorn the man’s body, somehow combining to make him look both human and supernatural.
“Thank you,” he offers me a shy smile and pushes a stray piece of hair out of his face. “The words, shattered but not broken…” I trail off, wanting his interpretation.
He bites his lip softly as he returns the painting to his closet and when I get a closer look, I notice that he has a rack for the art to sit on.
Finally he turns to me and leans against the now closed door. “When people say something is shattered, they automatically assume it’s broken, but I don’t think that’s always the case. You can always put the pieces back together, yeah they may not fit right and it may not look the same in the end, but it isn’t a lost cause.”
I feel his words hard and a stray tear leaves my eye before I wipe it away.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry.” He moves over to me and wraps his arms around my shoulder as I tuck my face into his neck.
“It’s okay,” I mutter. “I just feel that so much.” I pull away from him, our eyes locking. “Is that… how you feel?”
He nods and ushers me over to his bed and we sit beside each other. Our knees knock against each other as we face the other and his hands reach over to grab mine and bring them to his lap.
The moment feels so intimate and the connection of our hands makes it feel even more so.
“I know you don’t know as much about me as the others, but… I led a rough life for a while. My parents were both native American and as you can tell from my features, it was hard to hide my culture.”
“Why would you?” I ask, frowning. Emmet is beautiful from his gorgeous brown skin and thick eyebrows, to his long curly hair that I love to tangle my fingers in.
He shakes his head, his topaz eyes full of pain. “The kids at school weren’t so friendly about my differences,” he confesses. “I went to a private school and as such, there were a lot of snobby brats who looked down on me for the way I looked. My skin wasn’t light enough and my parents didn’t have a lot of money. I was at the school purely on an art scholarship. It didn’t make things any better that I was always quiet and off by myself doodling.”
He bites his lip and takes a deep breath. “I was in high school when I realized I didn’t have a preference when it came to gender.” He lets out a bitter laugh, not an ounce of humor in it. “Of course I had to find it by falling in love with my best friend and when I told him…” One of his hands leaves mine and he starts to fiddle with his necklace. “He cornered me after school in the art room. Some of his friends from the basketball team were with him.” He shudders and I feel sick to my stomach, knowing where this story is headed. “They were shoving and hitting me when I fell and cracked my head against a table” He pulls back his hair to reveal a scar I’ve caught glimpses of before.
His eyes hold unshed tears and a pang goes through my chest. “After that, things didn’t get better, if anything they got worse. My mother died from breast cancer months before I graduated and when I came out to my dad, he kicked me out. I didn’t have any other family or friends so I ended up homeless.” He looks away from me and I feel his pain.
I hate it.
I reach out my free hand to touch his face gently, encouraging him to go on.
He takes a deep breath and it fans across my hand. “I found Charlie after about a year of being homeless and I was already hard on drugs. For a while, it was because I thought it made me feel more creative and then it became the only thing that made me feel anything. When I got Charlie, she gave me a comfort that I hadn’t felt for a long time, but I was already addicted.” He rubs at his arm and I know it’s a subconscious gesture but it also gives me an idea of what he was addicted to. “I was at rock bottom when Chase arrested me,” he finally turns back to look at me. There’s something underneath the pain in his eyes, but I can’t quite figure out what the emotion is. “I think if I hadn’t met him that day, I’d be dead. I would’ve overdosed and the sad thing is, I don’t know if it would have been accidental or on purpose because I was that fucked up.”
“When he arrested me, the only thing I cared about was Charlie, I wanted him to make sure she was taken care of. I didn’t honestly expect him to, though, so when I got out and he found me and he still had Charlie, something about it gave me hope that I hadn’t had in a long time, hope that I didn’t think I’d ever have again.” His lips part slightly as his gaze moves to the door.
“When he offered to let me stay with him if I worked on getting clean that made me decide that I’d do better. He was giving me this opportunity and I couldn’t just throw it away, you know... ” He shakes his head, his gaze returning to mine. “Being in the slammer had already detoxed me to a certain point. After that, it became a thing of keeping away from temptation. Chase and I agreed that keeping the weed would maybe help take the craving off slightly.”
“He won’t admit this to anyone and he’d curse me out if he heard me say it, but he saved me.” His eyes are slightly watery and he wipes at them. “He went above and beyond. Any waking second, he was beside me, checking on me. He helped me find my first art commission when one of his mom’s friends needed some work done for her house. When I was going through withdrawal hard, he’d hold me.” He lets out a soft chuckle. “I always think it’s so that I couldn’t get away, because there’s no way I could have overpowered him. He was always just there and that helped me in ways that no one else will understand.”
I watch him and listen to the way he talks about Chase and it warms my heart. To have a virtual stranger care for you that much and enough to give you shelter and help you get your life straight…
“He even made Nate give me a job at the restaurant when I was still needing a second paycheck and I know he asked him to keep an eye on me on days that he couldn’t.” He bites his lip as his eyes meet mine. There’s that unknown emotion again in his topaz eyes… “In some ways, it screwed me, because how can you not fall in love with someone who takes care of you like that?”
And there the words are. I could hear them as he told me about his past and that combined with Nathan’s suspicions had already given me an idea of his feelings for Chase.
Looking into his eyes, I can tell he’s waiting to see if I’m going to judge him, but I won’t. I can’t say I’ve ever been in love before, but with how he described how Chase took care of him, I understand...
“Have you ever told him?” I ask softly, the information feeling too fragile to speak loudly about.
He shakes his head, fidgeting with one of the rings on his hand. “No, not directly, but…” he hesitates and his eyes wander from mine for a second before returning. “I kissed him once, it was closer to the end when I was starting to become more independent, more able to rely on myself to stay clean.”
“And what did he say?” I ask, curious. The two are clearly still best friends so it couldn’t have been bad.
“He didn’t say anything, I think it was his way of letting me down gently, that despite me kissing him, we’d still be friends.”