Chapter 5 JULIAN
JULIAN
Three days without anything in my veins.
Three days without a hit, a line, a pill, a sip—nothing.
No numbness. No blur. No chemical mercy.
And my body is screaming for it. My skin crawls like insects are trying to burrow out.
My bones ache. My muscles twitch without permission.
My heartbeat is a fist punching inside my ribs over and over and over.
The worst part is that my mind won’t shut up. It’s not quiet in here. Not ever.
Rafe finally unlocked the container yesterday, told me I could leave whenever I wanted. He didn’t say it like a kindness. He said it like he already knew what I’d choose. And he was right.
I haven’t stepped out once. Because Rafe knows everything, sees everything. There are cameras in every corner, shadows with eyes, doors that open only when he fucking decides they do. He doesn’t need to follow me—every move I make belongs to him whether he’s in the room or not.
But that’s not why I’m stuck. It’s him. Nathan.
He keeps flooding my vision. Slipping in like a ghost, like a nightmare with perfect teeth and hands that used to feel safe.
Every time I blink, I see him. His face, his body, his mouth.
The smirk at the end of that tape—that fucking tape—the last time my locker opened and I found the end of my life inside it.
I’m right back there.
The cubby. The envelope. The tape. The threat. The second I touched that locker door here, it all came back. Every detail. Every breath. Every lie.
Now the memories are eating me alive.
I can’t stop pacing. I feel like my skin doesn’t fit.
I stumble across the container, hands shaking so hard they look like they belong to someone else. I claw at my forearms, my neck, my chest, anything to stop the itching under my skin. Anything to shut my brain down for one fucking second.
But it won’t. It just gets louder.
“Nathan, stop—” I don’t even realize I said it until I hear my own voice cracking in the steel walls.
I drag my hands through my hair, pulling hard, yanking at the roots, anything to drown out his name echoing in my skull. My breath hitches, turns harsh, turns into a sob I choke back down because no one here is going to see me cry.
I scream into the empty room. A raw, broken sound that bounces around the metal like something dying. “STOP! GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HEAD—”
I slam into the wall with my fist. Once. Twice. Again. My knuckles split on the third hit, warm blood trickling down to my wrist, but I barely feel it.
I drop to my knees, gripping my hair again, nails digging into my scalp.
Forty memories a second. Forty knives. Forty ways I ruined my life.
I’m alone. Alone with every ghost I made. Alone with withdrawal clawing through my veins. Alone with Nathan’s voice in my ears and Rafe’s shadow behind my eyelids.
And I don’t know which one terrifies me more.
I can’t breathe in here anymore. The walls are too close. The air is too thin. The ghosts are too loud.
My fingers slip off the metal again, and I push myself upright—shaking, dizzy, stomach twisting. I grab the handle, yank the container door open, and stagger out into the yard like something feral crawling its way out of a trap.
The light blinds me. The cold slaps me. The ground tilts and I stumble forward, bare feet slipping on gravel because I didn’t even bother with shoes—I just needed out.
My heart is punching at my ribs hard enough to bruise.
My hands are clawing at my own skin again, dragging down my arms, twitching, trembling, needing something.
Anything. Because I can’t take it anymore.
My head is splitting open. My body is screaming. Nathan is everywhere—behind my eyes, under my skin, in every shadow. I need a fix. I need a hit. I need silence. I need something in my veins before I claw myself out from the inside.
I trip over nothing and slam straight into a chest—warm, solid, familiar chaos.
Finn catches me before I can eat gravel. His hands clamp around my elbows, steady but surprised. “Whoa, rookie—watch it, you trying to kiss me or kill me?”
I shake my head hard, too hard, because everything spins. My fingers curl into his shirt like I’m drowning. My voice comes out shredded. “Take me to Kai,” I gasp. “Please—Finn—please—I need— I need him— I need something—I’m going fucking crazy—”
Finn’s grin dies instantly. He looks me over from head to toe—the tremors, the glassy eyes, the pacing marks on my arms, the dried blood on my knuckles, my bare feet, my hair sticking to my face with sweat—and his expression shifts like he’s piecing together a puzzle he didn’t know he was solving.
“Shit,” he mutters, gripping my shoulders tighter when my knees buckle. “Okay, okay—hey—look at me—right here—look.”
I try, but my eyes won’t focus. Everything’s shaking. “Take me to Kai,” I beg again, voice cracking. “Please—please—I can’t— I can’t—”
He winces at the sound. Like my desperation actually hurts him.
“Alright, pretty boy,” he murmurs. “Let’s go.
I got you.” And he starts dragging me across the yard—not mocking, not teasing, not playing.
Just moving fast because he knows. He’s seen this before.
And he knows exactly where I’m going next.
Straight to the dealer with the needles.
By the time we reach Kai’s door, my whole body feels like it’s vibrating out of its skin.
Sweat pours down my back, down my ribs, dripping off my jaw like I’ve been running for hours when I’ve barely taken fifty steps.
My vision blurs in and out—static, shadows, light smears—and every few seconds my knees give, like my bones are made of fucking glass.
Finn pounds on the metal frame. “Doc! Open up—he’s crashing hard.”
The door unlocks with a soft click and Kai fills the doorway like a calm nightmare—bare feet, loose black sweats, hair tied back, dark eyes dragging over me slow and unforgiving.
Then that smirk. Slow, cruel and surgical. “Feeling tingly, golden boy?” he asks, voice smooth as a scalpel sliding across skin.
I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. “You gonna fix it or not?!”
Kai tilts his head, eyes gleaming with professional interest. “Depends,” he murmurs, stepping aside. “Come in.”
Finn pushes me through the doorway, hands still gripping my arms until he’s sure I won’t face-plant. Kai’s container is nothing like mine. Not even close.
It’s clean. Stainless steel counters. Shelves lined with glass vials, pill bottles, powders sealed in labeled bags. Syringes in neat, perfect rows. Medical monitors, a cot, a sink, atray with alcohol wipes. It smells like antiseptic and quiet death.
I freeze in the center of the room, sweat dripping from my chin, shaking so hard I can barely stand. My eyes dart from vial to vial, needle to needle, like my body already knows which one it wants.
Kai closes the door behind us, then steps in front of me, one hand lifting my chin with two fingers, forcing my eyes up to his. “Tell me what you want.”
I swallow hard. “You know what I want.”
His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth, tilting my head slightly. “Oh, I do,” he purrs. “But I want to hear you say it.”
My breath shatters. hate myself for it, but I’m past pride. Past dignity. “I need a fix,” I whisper, voice breaking. “Please.”
Kai’s smile widens. “Beg.”
I stare at him, eyes burning, throat raw. Finn shifts behind me, silent now, watching like he wants to intervene but knows better.
My hands shake as I curl my fingers into the fabric of Kai’s shirt, pulling myself closer just to stay upright. “Please,” I choke out. “Kai, please—I’m losing my mind—I—please, please—just—give me something—anything—”
Kai leans in, lips near my ear, breath ghosting down my neck. “There it is,” he whispers. “Good boy.”
My stomach drops. And for the first time in days—I feel hope. Or something twisted enough to mimic it.
Kai’s fingers trail down my arm, stopping at my inner elbow, assessing veins, pressure points. But he still hasn’t picked up a needle.
Kai’s fingers are still on my arm, cool and precise, but suddenly something shifts—his face flickers, the sharp lines softening into something I know too well, something I can’t outrun even in the dark.
Nathan’s jaw. Nathan’s mouth. Nathan’s fucking eyes, smug and calm and cruel, staring down at me like I never left his bed, like he still owns the air in my lungs.
The room tilts sideways, sliding out from under me, and my breath catches in my throat so hard it hurts.
For a second, I’m back in that locker room.
Back in the moment everything ended. Back at the cubby. Back at the tape. Back in his hands.
I stagger back, hitting the counter with my hip, vision going white at the edges.
“Shit—shit—make it stop—make it stop!” The words tear out of me raw and ripping, nothing controlled anymore, nothing sharp or clever—just panic twisted into sound.
My heart is a fist squeezing itself to death.
My skin is too tight. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t see anything except him.
Finn grabs me from behind, arms locking around my chest in a hold that’s meant to steady me but feels like another trap.
I thrash anyway, uselessly, trying to shove myself backward out of my own body.
His voice is by my ear, low and furious, snarled at Kai, but it’s all muffled, distorted, like I’m hearing it through water.
The edges of everything blur—Finn’s grip, Kai’s silhouette, the room tilting like a sinking ship.
Kai doesn’t rush. He moves like he’s working on a corpse, calm and measured, opening drawers, selecting something small and clear and unmistakable.
I see the glint of the vial for half a heartbeat before another wave of panic crashes into me and I’m clawing at my own arms again, trying to peel the hallucination off my skin.
Finn’s hold tightens; I go slack, then thrash, then shake so violently my teeth clack together.
Kai steps in front of me, pushes my head to the side with a firm hand, finds a vein with terrifying ease, and drives the needle in.
I don’t even know what it is. I don’t care.
I just want Nathan’s face gone. I want silence.
I want the static in my skull to stop tearing me apart.
I want to stop feeling like I’m drowning in my own fucking memories.
The drug hits like a door slamming shut.
Everything jerks once—vision, breath, heartbeat—then loosens, melts and blurs.
The panic breaks first, then the shaking, then the edges of the world soften until I’m not fighting, not running, not breathing knives anymore.
Finn’s arms become gravity instead of a cage.
Kai’s hands become distant, cold shapes. Nathan’s face fractures into nothing.
The room steadies, my blood slows. And for the first time in days, the screaming stops.
My knees buckle and Finn goes down with me, catching my weight before I hit the concrete.
We land in a heap, but he holds me steady, one arm locked around my ribs, the other braced behind my shoulders.
He shifts until I’m half in his lap, half against his chest, and the motion is so gentle, so steady, it almost doesn’t fit the feral chaos I know he is.
My breath comes in harsh pulls at first, like I’ve been drowning and someone just ripped me to the surface.
Finn rocks me without saying a word—slow, rhythmic.
His heartbeat hammers against my ear, quick but steady, like he’s trying to lend me some of it.
My head tips onto his shoulder, eyes dragging upward until they land on Kai, who’s standing over us with all the softness of a scalpel.
The panic dissolves in slow waves. The static clears. My chest stops caving in. A lazy smile creeps up on me. My muscles finally release. My fingers uncurl. The world stops trying to kill me for a second.
Kai crouches in front of us, elbows on his knees, dark eyes sharp and knowing. He tilts his head like he’s studying a specimen he just brought back from the edge. “Next time,” he says, voice low and maddeningly calm, “come before the hallucinations start.”
I blink at him, breath still ragged, brain floating somewhere pleasantly high and far away.
Kai reaches into a drawer, pulls out a small plastic bag filled with fine white powder and slips it into the pocket of my sweatpants with the delicate precision of someone placing a gift into a child’s hands. “Just enough,” he murmurs. “For tonight.”
My fingers twitch over the outline of the bag, and Finn’s arm tightens around my chest—protective, warning, or maybe just steadying me while my world reassembles itself molecule by molecule.