Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Something was stabbing me in the eye. Or my nose. Maybe my side.
Scratch that, it was stabbing me everywhere.
I slowly started to climb my way through the layers of exhaustion weighing my body down.
My head was swimming, the dizziness mixing with incessant stabs of pain every few seconds.
I couldn’t locate the source, no matter how hard I tried.
I couldn’t think past the thick maze of cobwebs surrounding my brain.
There was something wrong inside my skull. I groaned and tried to shift my body, willing it all to stop. To just fucking stop. Stop hurting. Stop stabbing. Stop pounding.
Where was Jude?
Goddamn it. I was in so much pain, I couldn’t muffle my groans. It just hurt so much. Everywhere. But I needed to be quiet. I couldn’t disturb him.
If Jude heard me whining, he’d only make it hurt worse. I didn’t want him to make it worse, so I forced my nausea down. I bit my tongue. I tried to make my legs stop moving and writhing in time with my pain.
“Elio, hey. You awake?”
A hand on my shoulder. A hand I didn’t recognize. A hand, ready and aimed to hurt. To slap. To squeeze. I flinched away, my skin pulling beneath something sticky, ripping at an open wound.
“El, it’s me. Come on. Open your eyes for me.”
Crescent? Why was Crescent here? His voice sounded rough, as if he’d been crying. I’d know. As his best friend, I should know. I’d made him cry before, but why was he crying now?
There was a shuffle just before warm breath spread across my cheek. He was right there, right in front of me. It sounded like he was bending down to me. “It’s Crescent, El. You’re in my apartment. It’s okay to open your eyes. I’ve got you.”
God, his voice had always been so soothing. Deep, with a smooth timbre. The color of sunshine after a week of cloudy days, golden and beautiful. A sunrise glowing pink, blue, and orange amongst forest fires below. In chaos, his voice was nothing of the sort.
Slowly, I pried my left eye open. It wouldn’t go all the way, stuck from what I assumed was swelling there. Sharp, intruding light flooded my eye, forcing my head back with a wince. “Fuck,”
“Shit, hold on.” At first, Crescent’s voice sounded far away. It got closer as his footsteps got faster. Was he jogging?
What felt like plastic handles went over my ears, sliding across the skin on the side of my head. Crescent maneuvered what seemed to be glasses on my nose, moving them around gently. “Try that.”
I hesitantly opened both eyes. The light wasn’t as bad this time, the sunglasses Crescent had given me filtering it. “Thanks.”
He looked worried. Red rings sat around his eyes, bright enough to worry me as well, even through the glasses. “We need to change your bandages and get some meds into you. How are you feeling?”
I scrunched my face, blinking a few times. “Bandages?”
The moment the word came out of my mouth, I regretted it.
Pain dripping with memories forced its way through the cobwebs in my skull, pounding to the beat of the stabbings.
Jude chasing me. Jude getting me. Jude sitting on top of me, wailing on me with fists covered in poison.
His eyes glowing with monstrous hunger. A hunger nothing could quell. Nothing but violence.
“You can’t run away from me, Elio.”
I tried to sit up as ghostlike hands started to wrap around my middle and squeeze. The tip of my tongue went numb, just as the space between my shoulder blades began to ache and scream.
My entire body screamed. For help, or for death, I couldn’t be sure, but the screams rose from the bottom of my spine, curling all the way up my throat until they escaped from my lips.
Crescent flinched away for just a moment, maybe only half a second, but I saw it. It made me stop, heaving and staring as I desperately tried to make sense of everything.
We stared at each other, my eyes only half open, half looking at the man before me. His long, curly hair falling just below his shoulders. The deep, cavernous turmoil resting in the usual light honey of his eyes. “Crescent,” I whispered.
“Yeah?” It was barely a breath, spoken on a long exhale.
I blanked. I fought through the thick, heavy maze of a fucking mess in my head, wondering why I’d said his name in the first place. I searched for something to explain it—to myself and him both. “Don’t you work today?”
More staring. It was warranted this time, though. The question took both of us by equal surprise. “Uh, no. I called in.”
“Oh.”
“How are you feeling?”
I watched as his eyes ran over my face. I followed them, looking down at myself. There were bandages all over me, covering what were undoubtedly wounds from Jude. “Who put these on me?”
Crescent rose from beside the couch, meandering into the kitchen.
He spoke loud enough for me to hear, but not enough to hurt my head.
“So, Sarah knew a doctor who would come over and help us out without forcing you to a hospital. He patched you up, and we have some medicine waiting at the pharmacy once we’re ready. ”
He said “we” as if he’d also gotten himself into this hell of a mess. I shook my head, blinking a few times. A heavy, ever-present exhaustion settled deep within my bones. I had a million questions but not enough energy to ask them. “I’m sorry.”
Glass and medicine in hand, Crescent stood just a few feet away from the couch. “Why?”
Why? How dense had he gotten over the years? “Because of… everything. I shouldn’t even be here.”
“Don’t apologize.” He crouched beside me, handing me the glass and pill. When I opened my mouth, the skin of my lip pulled and tightened painfully. “There is absolutely no reason for you to be sorry. Can I change these?”
I nodded, not fully paying attention to what he was asking. “This isn’t your mess to figure out, though. I signed up for this with Jude, not you.”
“Are you saying it’s your fault?”
“I mean, I’m still with him, aren’t I?”
“No, you aren’t.”
The bandage on my arm made a ripping sound as it tore away from itself. Loud and unsettling, revealing blood-tinged gauze beneath it that I didn’t remember being placed. Had Jude scratched me there?
I felt the tear in my heart. Or, at least, the hole my heart should’ve been in. It’d been so long since I’d used it, I wasn’t sure it existed anymore. My chest felt empty—hollow—where I used to carry so much love in it.
For my mom and dad. For Crescent, Moon, and Star. For Mr. and Mrs. Miller. For Jude.
If there was still life inside of me, it paused the moment Crescent said what he did. He wasn’t looking at me, instead focusing on the gauze stuck to my skin. “What do you mean, I’m not?”
“You’re not with him anymore.” So fucking nonchalant. As if he wasn’t signing my death certificate—and his.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Jude could kill me if he wanted to. I’d already come so close to losing my life at the hands of the man I used to love. The man I still love. The man I craved love from, no matter how awful he’d treated me.
Isn’t that funny? How desperately we as humans need love.
The struggle between enough and not enough, just because of a basic, psychological need within us?
I often wondered why. Why did I give so much of a fuck about someone enjoying my company enough that their heart would do a little pitter-patter in their chests, and they suddenly wouldn't want to let me go?
I didn’t think Jude had felt that in a long, long time. Not for me, at least.
“Elio.”
I looked up, staring into Crescent’s eyes as he looked between mine. Left, then right. Left, then right. “You can’t decide that for me.”
“Then why did you have Sarah call me?” Something ran over my skin. It was Crescent, cleaning each of my wounds carefully as we talked.
I hardly had the capacity to wince at the most sensitive areas. “You said if I needed anything—”
“That I’d help. That if you called or texted me, I’d come running. And I did. I have.”
I tried to pull my arm away from him, jerking it enough to force his gaze back to me. “You never said you’d intervene like this. Do you understand how fucking dangerous this is? And the fact that I never said I wanted this.”
His eyebrows knitted together, the lines on his face deepening into a scowl.
“Dangerous or not, I’m not scared of Jude.
Even if I were, I wouldn’t care. I want to help you, not hurt you further by throwing you back into that mess.
” Gauze wrapped around my arm, Crescent lowering his gaze to watch his fingers as he placed fresh bandages over it.
“End of discussion, Elio. You can’t go back.
You can’t keep getting hurt. You realize that’s all that would come out of going to him, right? ”
“Better a fuckup like me than someone like you.”
I’d never seen Crescent look so angry before. He whipped his head up, his hair forcefully thrown to the side as he stared at me, a glow emanating from his eyes. “Are you fucking listening to me, Elio?”
I didn’t say a word.
“Are you?” Fear disguised as anger followed each word, a stern command laced viciously in each syllable.
I nodded.
“I know you’ve just spent the last nine or so years with a fucker so insecure and so evil that he had to put you in a place lower than hell, but I refuse, fucking refuse, to let you think that way about yourself.
I refuse to let him dictate how you view yourself, Elio.
You are not a fuckup. And if you are, then shit, what the fuck am I?
Huh?” He let out a long, slow breath. I watched his chest fall, only to rise when he inhaled just as deep.
“Just stay here for a while, okay? We’ll worry about the rest later.
This isn’t me having to help you. I want to.
More than fucking anything, I just wanna help you, man. ”