Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
At least three cop cars were surrounding the apartment, all of their lights mixing into a bright haze of pure chaos.
I barely parked the car, immediately opening the door and running out into the parking lot.
To the right of my car was Mom and Dad’s RV, which had to mean Moon had gotten here earlier than he’d expected him to.
When I looked up, I realized the swarm of cops was headed right for my door.
Elio.
I ran, racing toward them, panting for breath. “Wait!” I yelled at them. “What’s going on?”
One cop stayed behind, holding his hand up to me, while four others burst through my front door, yelling orders as they went. “Hold on, hold on. What do you think you’re doing? It isn’t safe.”
“What the fuck do you mean? That’s my fucking apartment! My boyfriend and brother are in there!”
An ambulance pulled in, screeching to a halt. People were coming out of their doors, looking around at the quickly escalating scene. “Listen, son, we got reports of screaming and gunshots coming from your apartment, okay?”
Gunshots? “What? No, no, you have to let me through.”
“I can’t do that right now. Let’s just go sit in my car and talk things through—hey!”
I didn’t let him finish before bolting for the door, running past car after car and neighbor after neighbor. Some people yelled at me from behind, but I didn’t listen. Elio was in there, and I needed to be there too.
The moment I reached the entryway, I froze.
Something in my brain cut all communication with my body, anchoring my feet to the ground.
The door was wide open, and a few policemen were taking stock of the situation, just as I was.
I could hear feet behind me, along with the chaos of confused conversation and angry people in uniforms trying to get me to leave.
All of the noise grew muffled as I struggled to make sense of the scene before me. Blood. There was a lot of fucking blood. I walked through, looking to the right, my jaw hanging open as I tried to take it all in.
There, lying against the bookshelf, was Sarah, but her eyes were closed, her body was contorted, and I knew without being able to confirm it that she was nothing but a shell anymore.
My gasp died in my throat as I turned my head to the other side, trailing my eyes up from the motionless feet on the floor, roaming until I realized what I was looking at.
Moon was slumped on the floor, curled in on himself as his entire body shook with sobs. Beside him was Jude, lifeless, beaten, and bloody. Jude’s eyes were still wide open, staring at nothing. There was a dim gloss over them; his mouth parted on his last breath.
And then there was Elio, my Sunshine, his forehead against the floor with one hand curled into a fist beside Jude’s. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, all the noise rushing back in. It was loud. So fucking loud.
“I don’t see a gun, boss!” A policeman yelled from our bedroom.
Our bedroom. Our fucking bedroom. The same room Elio and I spent our nights curled up against each other in our safe bubble of happiness. It was ruined. Everything was fucking ruined.
I ran toward Elio, kneeling beside him. “Baby?”
He whimpered. A noise I hadn’t heard in so long, I’d forgotten how heartbreaking it was. I wanted to scoop him up in my arms and take him with me to a new place. A safe one, far away from the horrors we were surrounded by.
“Moon?” I called out to my brother, but I didn’t get a response. Tears started to blur my eyes, turning the blood into squiggly lines of pure despair. I turned my head, looking at the bookshelf. Though I knew it was pathetic and pointless to do so, I still called out to her. “Sarah?”
No response.
No response from anyone. No response from anything. Not even the demons that’d plagued my mind for so fucking long wanted to speak to me. The silence was more sinister than if they’d screamed at me.
An EMT knelt on the floor by me. “Hey, we need to check him out, okay? He looks hurt.”
I looked at Elio and the way he hadn’t moved yet. “El, baby, they need to look at you.” Was I even speaking at this point? Was my mouth moving? Was any sound coming out? My tongue felt numb. Too numb to have been doing anything good.
When I looked back up, Moon was off the floor, a policeman behind him.
He was locking cuffs around Moon’s wrists—my brother’s wrists—dragging him by the elbow.
“Hey, wait!” I looked at Elio, who was being checked over by the EMTs, and back to Moon.
I had to make a choice. I had to choose between going after my brother or staying with Elio, but only one was being taken away in cuffs.
Growling to myself, I stood from the floor, running after the cop. “That’s my brother! What are you doing?” The same cop from earlier stepped in front of me, holding me back once again. “Stop it, dude! That’s my fucking brother they’re taking!”
“You need to calm down. They’re taking him because he was on top of the deceased man over there when they came in.”
“I don’t want to fucking calm down! I want to know what’s happening.
I just—” I looked to the side, wincing when I realized someone had put a sheet over Sarah’s body.
“I just want to understand. We’re supposed to be moving to our new house today.
I just got off work, I-I… fuck!” Pain twisted in my chest as I tried to breathe through the lungfuls of sticky, putrid fear. “I don’t understand.”
He placed his palms on my shoulders, looking me straight in the eyes. “Stop. Breathe. Look at me.”
My breaths were coming out choppy, and the room was slowly starting to spin. Sweat dripped from my forehead down into my eyes, clouding everything in front of me. But I looked at him. I looked at him, and nowhere else, because I wasn’t sure what to fucking do anymore.
“That your boyfriend the EMTs are helping?”
I nodded.
“Okay. He’s pretty beat up, kid. I won’t lie to you. What you need to focus on is going with him to the hospital right now. From the state of this room, I think he’s going to need you. You hear me?”
Elio. “Yeah.” I breathed, letting it all sink in. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. Fuck, you’re right. Are they going to tell me what’s happening when I get there?”
His mustache twitched with his upper lip.
I watched a slight grimace form as his eyebrows pinched downward and his eyes creased.
“Probably not for a while, unfortunately. You need to focus on your boyfriend right now. Your brother will be held for questioning, but they’ll let you stick with your boyfriend.
Focus on what you can, and the rest will get to you eventually.
” He nodded behind me. “Looks like they’re about to load him up, so you may want to go with them for now. ”
I turned around, watching the EMTs load Elio onto a stretcher. “Yeah, okay, thanks.” I rushed to them, following them out the door, trying to push everything else out of my mind.
I knew I couldn’t, but I could sure fucking try. For Elio. For Moon. For me.
The beeping of the monitor had gone from driving me insane to being the only comforting sound in the room.
My head lay against Elio’s leg, my cheek pressed into the scratchy material of the hospital blanket that was covering him.
Every now and then, his leg would twitch, and I’d get excited, thinking he was waking up.
So far, none of the doctors had told me when exactly to expect him to. He’d been through a lot, they said. He’d wake up when it was time, they said.
Nobody could tell me about Moon, either. No cops had shown up. No one had tried to call me. I was surprised the apartment complex hadn’t ripped me a new one after the entire fiasco. It’d been almost six hours since we’d gotten to the hospital, and nothing.
The only thing keeping me company was the steady rhythm of Elio’s heartbeat on the monitor. They said he’d be perfectly fine, albeit a bit concussed and bruised. He may have a few new scars across his face, but that was about it. They told me it was a miracle.
They forgot to mention the emotional scars tonight would leave behind for him—for all of us.
Sarah’s body kept flashing in my mind, the image of something so cruel happening to someone so innocent.
I couldn’t wrap my head around anything that’d happened.
I couldn’t understand what she was doing there or why Moon hadn’t called to let me know he’d come into town early.
That cop told me it’d be a while, but he didn’t say I’d be in complete darkness for this long—or that it’d feel so crushingly alone.
Mom and Dad didn’t even know yet. That was my fault, honestly.
They’d want to come up here to support us and be wonderful, loving parents, but that was the last thing I wanted right now.
I didn’t need their suffocating, undying love and pity.
I needed someone to cry with me. Or to sit silently as I tried to get everything out of my fucking mind.
Too bad therapists weren’t twenty-four seven. I could really use mine right now.
My eyes were closed, and my breathing was loud in my head, echoing against the enclosed space between my face and Elio’s covered leg. It was hot. Unbearably so. Either way, I refused to move.
Elio’s leg twitched beneath me, and this time, I didn’t let myself gather too much hope. It was soul-crushing every time I thought he was waking up, only to realize it was a sleep spasm.
This time, it came with a grunt. I shot up from my position, looking up at him as his eyes seemed to move rapidly beneath his eyelids. And then one of them opened, the other following right after. He whimpered when he looked at me. It broke my heart. I fucking hated that sound.
“Baby?” I whispered to him, too afraid to wake up the world around us. The room was dark—the windows full of nothing but moonlight and twinkling stars.
“Cres.” His voice was barely a rasp.
“Yeah, baby, I’m here.”