Emmy & Oliver - Robin Benway Page 0,91

to leave you.”

“Stop saying that!” I screamed. “You keep making it sound like it was your fault when it was all his fault!”

“That’s what you don’t understand!” Now he was yelling, too. “All of this is my fault!”

“What are you talking about?” I cried. “You were seven! That’s ridiculous!”

“Not then! Now! All of this”—he waved an arm toward his house, toward the daily struggle of trying to return home after ten years somewhere else—“this is all my fault.”

“How?” I yelled, throwing my hands into the air. “Because you let them take your fingerprint? Enlighten me, Oliver, please! How exactly is all of this your fault?”

“Because I made sure my dad wasn’t in the apartment that day! That’s how it’s my fault! He wasn’t arrested because of me. I made sure of it.”

It was like all the air got sucked out of the room. We were both breathing hard by now and for a few seconds, that and the blood pounding in my head were the only things I could hear. “What?” I finally said when I was able to speak again. “What are you . . . ?”

“I told him,” Oliver said, and his eyes were rapidly filling with tears, so fast that as soon as he wiped them away, fresh ones took their place. “That next morning at breakfast, I told him about how they had fingerprinted me at the police station. He didn’t really say anything. He just said he had to go out for the day. And then he left.”

He sank down onto my desk chair, the tears starting to come fast and furious, but I didn’t move from the bed. Oliver was full-on crying now, but I didn’t want to stop him from talking. “Did you—tell him that you knew?”

Oliver shook his head. “No, it just happened that way. But I didn’t think I wouldn’t get to say goodbye to him, you know? I thought I could tell him or at least hug him once more or something. And now he’s here and I just want to see him again, Emmy. That’s all I want. I just miss him so bad and I fucked up everything and I ruined my mom’s new family and the twins and Rick and I thought it would be okay but it’s not and I’m sorry, Em, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. . . .”

Oliver was about to say something else, but when he took a breath, the tears finally got the best of him and he pressed his palms to his eyes as his shoulders started to shake. He cried silently, in so much pain that there was no sound to equal it, and in that moment, he reminded me of his mom, of those nights when she would sob at our dining room table, aching for something she couldn’t have.

I got up from the bed and walked over to him, sitting down on his lap and gathering him in my arms. He hung on to me tightly, so tight that I thought my ribs might crack, but it was okay. I could take it. I could do it for him. I stroked my hand over his tangled hair, protecting him from anything and everything that had happened, from everything that was about to happen, and I held Oliver while he sobbed.

We sat there for long minutes, until he was gasping and shuddering against my shoulder. My sweatshirt was wet and cold with his tears, soaked straight through to my heart, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything except the fact that Oliver had been carrying way too big of a burden for way too long. I tucked his hair behind his ear, smoothing it off his forehead the way my mom would do to me whenever I woke in the night with a nightmare about Oliver.

“Fuck,” was the first thing he said, and we both laughed a little. “Sorry. Wow. Sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry,” I murmured. “Better?”

He nodded, and I started to get up to get some tissues for him, but he just wrapped his arms around my waist and held on to me. I sat back down, resting my cheek against the top of his hair. “I just don’t want the next time I see my dad to be in a courtroom.” Oliver sighed. “Or through a plate-glass window while he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit.”

I just hugged him and didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. Sometimes there just aren’t enough words to fill the