“D, I know you told me to check on Noah in case that fucker was still here, but you need to get here.Now.Noah’s—he’s on the bathroom floor. He’s not responding. There’s—” Ryan’s voice breaks, breath hitching. “There’s… There’s vomit everywhere. I don’t know how long he’s been like this. Just—just get here, alright? Bring Nate if you have to, I don’t fucking care, just come. Please.”
My blood goes cold. For a moment, I’m not in the Sin Bin anymore. I’m back in high school, hearing the crack in Ryan’svoice when he told me Noah was skipping meals and missing practice. I never wanted to hear that sound again.
“I’m on my way,” I say, grabbing my shit. “Keep him on his side if you can. Don’t try to move him completely. I’ll call Nate and be there in ten.”
“Yeah, yeah—I’ve got him,” Ryan says, voice breaking. “He’s so cold, D.”
“I’m coming,” I promise, already bolting for the door.
Killian grabs my shoulder, steadying me for a beat. “What’s happening?”
“It’s Noah,” I say, my voice breaking as I try to shove his hand off, but he doesn’t let me. “Fuck—I don’t know what happened, but Ryan says he found Noah on his bathroom floor, and he’s non-responsive. I—I can’t—I gotta go—”
“Text me Noah’s address, and I’ll get Nate and a doctor there,” he says and pushes me toward the door. “Keep your head, Moore. Noah needs you alive.”
“Thanks, Kill,” I nod, breath coming in ragged, and bolt for the door, nearly slamming into Thorn in the hallway, ignoring his shout as I barrel out the front door. I hit the driveway, fumble with my keys, and peel out of the lot so fast I almost hit a trash can.
My heart is thundering, a wild animal in my chest, but the only thing I can see is Noah—curled up, hurting, scared, and alone, and I wasn’t there.
I wasn’t fucking there.
Hold on, Blue. I’m coming.
Damien
I’msittinginthechair pulled up too close to the bed, one knee knocked against the frame because I can’t stand the idea of being any farther away from him than this.
The Sin Bin is quiet in a way I’ve never heard it before; the usual noise has been shut down completely. Killian made one trip around the house, and everyone vanished without a word.
I don’t care what he did or said to make them leave. All I care about is the boy lying in the middle of my bed.
Noah is lying on his side under one of my blankets, the soft gray one he always curls into when he stays over. His hair is damp, still a little tangled from when Nate helped wash him off, carefully and efficiently but visibly shaking with rage the whole time.
There’s an IV taped neatly to his arm, clear fluids dripping slowly into his vein, the steady rhythm of it the only sound in the room besides the faint hum of the air vent. His skin looks paleagainst the sheets, his lips a little dry, his lashes dark and still against his cheeks.
Too fucking still.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on the mattress, and thread my fingers through his carefully. His hand is warm now, warmer than it was earlier, and that alone is enough to make my chest ache all over again. He’s alive. He’s here. He didn’t slip away while I wasn’t looking.
But fuck, it was close.
I keep seeing the kitchen every time I blink. The way my foot slid on something sticky near the counter when I rushed in. The empty containers scattered everywhere— two ice cream cartons, chocolate bar wrappers, a half-empty jar of honey tipped on its side and oozing onto the tiles.
The smell of the bathroom hits me first in my memory, sour and overwhelming. The way Ryan’s voice cracked when he tried to explain how he found Noah. The floor, slick with vomit and soaked towels where Noah must have tried to clean it and given up halfway through.
I’ve seen bad shit. I’ve been around injuries, blood, broken bones, locker rooms full of pain, rage, and denial. None of it prepared me for that.
Noah had been restricting; he didn’t keep it a secret from me. I’d seen the signs—the careful way he portioned his food, the mental math behind every bite, the quiet pride when he finished something small without panicking.
But he was eating. He was fuckingtrying. He wasn’t pale and dizzy. He didn’t flinch away from food or push it around his plate. Noah was doing better. He’d been letting me sit with him while he ate, letting me talk him through it, letting himself exist in the space without spiraling. He was starting to love himself, for fuck’s sake. He was starting to appreciate the beauty of his body and what it could do for him.
This wasn’t a slow slide; this was a trigger.
And I know, down to my fucking bones, just who that trigger was. He’s the reason we didn’t take Noah to a hospital because he would have been Noah’s next of kin, and then I would never have seen my boy again.
I want to scream. I want to hunt that man down and make him pay for every time he made Noah feel less than, made him feel broken, made him feel unworthy of being loved.
But right now, all I can do is sit here. Sit with this pain and this fear and this goddamn, unmovable love for a boy who has never once deserved any of the shit life’s thrown at him.
