“Losing pulse.”
No.
That was my voice.
Or someone else’s.
Didn’t matter.
Hands moved fast around the body that was apparently mine. Pressure on my chest. Orders shouted. Drugs pushed. Time counted. The bright room stretched, bent, broke.
I fell backward into memory.
My old man’s garage. Grease under his nails. Beer on his breath. The flicker of a television through a cracked door. My mother asleep on a couch at noon, the apartment smelling like stale smoke and cheap detergent we never had enough of. Me standing over a bathtub, washing the only pair of jeans I owned with hand soap, wringing them until my wrists hurt, thenwearing them damp to school because dry clothes were for kids whose mothers remembered laundry.
I had hated that boy.
Weak.
Poor.
Embarrassed.
Always hungry.
Always angry.
I had built Dylan Degan out of every piece of him I wanted to bury.
Patch.
Bike.
Brotherhood.
Money.
Fear in other people’s eyes instead of mine.
Then Destiny had looked at me in Cabo like I could be more than that.
Not clean.
Never clean.
Just more.
I saw Callum’s face across the church table.
You’re not running because a girl made you feel human.
I saw Nate grinning with a fork in his hand.
Contractor Daddy.
I saw Georgia’s father handing me a beer beside a grill.
Everybody needs people.
