I exhale shakily, rubbing my thumb along the edge of the screen. Jude’s contact photo lights up for a second before it fades to black again.
If I keep loving him like this...who do I turn into? Because his darkness is very, very dark—and lately, I can feel it tugging at me, too.
I drift from room to room, pretending I’m doing something worthwhile. Eight passes. Then nine. Then eleven. My eyes burn, but I don’t go to bed. I curl up on the couch with a blanket around my shoulders, my phone face-up on the coffee table, waiting for the lock screen to glow.
Waiting for him.
But Jude doesn’t come home to me.
Chapter thirty-six
JUDE GRAVES
I pull into the driveway on autopilot, not even sure how I made it from that warehouse back to the coast. My hands are still shaking on the wheel, knuckles raw and split from slamming some guy’s face into a concrete floor until he begged.
Alexei’s voice still rings inside my skull.“Get the message across. If he cries, good. If he bleeds, better.”
I put the car in park, engine rumbling under me, and drop my forehead to the steering wheel. I never texted Emma back. It’s now one-thirty in the morning. My goddamn ribs ache when I breathe, and my hands won’t stop trembling. I can’t go inside like this. I can’t deal with Micah being scared for me anymore.He’ll ask all about my night and what Alexei made me do. And I can’t talk about it.
“Down the Drain”by Marcy Playground hums softly through the speakers, the melody light and gentle.
I reach under the driver’s seat before I can think better of it. The baggie, plunger, and tourniquet wait for me in the car kit. Muscle memory takes over, the scent of heroin hitting my nostrils like some chemical goddess beckoning me into the darkness.
My ribs protest as I cinch the tourniquet, my eager pulse fluttering, waiting for the high my veins are screaming out for.
The needle slides in.
When I push the plunger, relief hits fast.
Too fast.
Warmth blooms up my arm, spilling into my chest, settling low in my stomach. My head falls back against the seat. The song keeps playing softly while the world dims, colors melting into syrupy, slow fragments crawling far away.
Fuck.
It feels like sinking into a hot bath. Or like being carried instead of holding yourself up. The music wraps around me, all cheerful and wrong, as if nothing bad is happening at all. As if I’m not putting my body through hell.
My eyelids grow heavy. Really heavy. My breaths stretch out lazily, drifting between notes. The steering wheel blurs, and the car tilts. My fingers slide from my lap and thud quietly against the seat.
“Mhm...fine,” I murmur, but it doesn’t sound like my voice.Who am I even talking to?My legs go numb, and my chest tightens. I try to inhale.
Try again.
The song keeps going.
The car feels ice-cold. Or maybe I’m the one going cold. My forehead slips sideways, cheek hitting the window. The sting doesn’t register. Nothing does. My vision tunnels, shrinking the world down to a pinpoint of light pulsing in time with the music.
Fuck.
Fuck, no, I didn’t mean—
The melody tangles with my thoughts. Words blur, the meaning of them slipping entirely. And I stop trying to breathe.
Something slams into the side of the car, and a muffled voice breaks through the haze. “Jude?”
Another hit. Harder.
“JUDE! Open the fucking door!”
