Cold.
I jerk my hand back. “Jude?”
He doesn’t look at me. Instead, his gaze drifts past my shoulder. It’s unfocused, like he’s listening to someone or something I can’t hear. The music from my phone warps. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he says suddenly.
My stomach drops. “What do you mean? This is our kitchen. Welivehere.”
His eyes finally meet mine, but they’re dark now. Empty.Gone.
“Why didn’t you let me go?” he asks softly. “We both know that we would have been better off without each other.”
Panic creeps in. “You’re scaring me.”
He exhales and rubs his hands together. I quickly notice that it looks like he’s trying to scrub something off. That’s when I see the dark stains smeared across his palms.
Blood.
“No,” I whisper, backing away. “No, no—”
He steps toward me. The floor creaks too loudly beneath his feet. The light flickers. The edges of the room blur, like the world is collapsing. His arms are suddenly littered with bloody track marks. His face blooms with cuts and bruises. “I did it so you’d be safe,” he says. “You always fucking ruin my life when you come looking for me.”
“I didn’t ruin anything,” I cry. “You left me.Again.”
His face tightens, pain cracking through the numbness. “I had to,” he says. “And you can’t save me. Not from this.”
I reach for him anyway. My hands pass straight through his chest.
He’s gone.
The kitchen collapses around me—the counters dissolving, the sunlight bleeding away. The music cuts off abruptly, leaving a high, ringing silence.
“Jude!” I scream, lunging for the front door, like he’s just walked out again. Then the floor drops out from under me, too.
I wake up gasping, my body jerking violently against the hospital bed. My heart slams against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. My hands claw at the sheets, breathing too fast. I blink several times, looking around to see that I'm still in the hospital, with Micah and Heather sleeping on their pull-out bed.
You can’t save me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, tears spilling over my cheeks. My shoulders shake with silent sobs, careful not to wake them.
Chapter two
JUDE GRAVES
Moscow is gray this early, the thick, gray clouds swollen with rain. Windows stretch from the floor to the ceiling, all glass and steel. And the room smells like Adriana’s perfume. She’s wrapped around me, one bare leg slung over mine beneath the blankets, her toes brushing my calf every time she shifts. Her nails trace lazy, absent-minded lines up my back. It’s not comforting at all, since I know it’s possession from a person I don’t want to possess me.
I stare at the windows and count breaths in the quiet room.
My arm rests between us, and when I turn it slightly, the track mark from last night is already drying. It's a dark, rusted smearagainst my skin. I’d been too eager to get high before bed. If I was numb enough, maybe she wouldn’t want to fuck me.
It worked.
Adriana hums softly and presses her face closer to my shoulder. Last night, she snorted a metric shit ton of coke and wanted to talk about everything under the sun. So that was fun.
I swallow and look back at the city. A week ago, I was sharing a house with Micah. Eating real food. Sleeping through the night sometimes. Letting myself imagine a life where I didn’t have to answer to anyone but myself. He and I were never apart for long. He was my best friend. Now I’m here…alone. I don’t even have him to talk to about the shit in my head. I suppose I relied on him to much. But the truth is…I would likely already be dead if it weren't for him.
Now I’m sharing a place with the bitch, and the bastard is next door. She’s accepted whatever hollow version of me is forced back into her orbit. That’s the deal. I stop resisting, and she goes back to being my handler and sort-of girlfriend. It’s a strange trade, since I didn’t win anything.
She shifts again, her knee pressing between my thighs. Her fingers pause when they brush the tiny wound on my arm. Then she moves on. She’s been trying something new lately—distance. Space. Like she’s waiting me out, knowing I’ll break eventually and come to her on my own. A long time ago, I did give her affection. That was before I got too heavy into the drugs and the killing. But the further I fell, the more she started reaching for me.
