Chapter 58
NOVA play: Cough Syrup by Young the Giant
My hands were shaking.
I hadn’t had an attack like this since they told me my dad was never coming home again.
I’d been able to keep it together on the way back from The Cave, but the second I shut the door to my cube behind me, everything started to fall apart.
What if I couldn’t touch him anymore?
The thought slashed through my mind violently, and I nearly choked in my desperation to numb the pain of that very real possibility. Stumbling through my dark cube, I ripped open cabinets as I tried to track down the bottle of whiskey Seb had given me for Christmas the year before.
I couldn’t go back to being alone… I couldn’t do it…
My breath turned choppy as I carelessly shoved a box of bagged spices out of the way in my desperate need to get to the alcohol I had stuffed behind it.
Before Milo, the last person to hold me properly had been my father.
I hadn’t kissed anyone in nearly ten years. There had been a few desperate hookups with other Neurovance employees when the aching need for human connection had gotten to the point I could no longer ignore it… but… those had always been transactional. Quick, careless fucks in dark corners.
Each time had been unsatisfying and had left me feeling lonelier and emptier than I ever had been before, so I’d even stopped seeking even those small stolen moments.
Milo had made me forget how hard it had been.
He filled up the lonely corners of my heart with his shy smiles and beautiful mind. Every time he let me hold him, it felt so good that I sometimes found myself fighting off tears.
That’s all I’d wanted for so long.
For someone to let me hold them.
Touch them.
To make me feel like I wasn’t here alone and forgotten.
A burning lump grew in my throat at the thought of that all being over now.
Forever.
If I could hurt him just by touching him now…
I ripped off the cap on the whiskey bottle and gulped down several sips, praying the fire of the alcohol would burn away the snaking tendrils of anguish and panic that were twisting their way through my chest.
I couldn’t do this to him… he couldn’t live like this. I would never forgive myself if he ever learned what it was like to be forced to exist the way I had.
To have no one.
No touch.
No warmth.
No comfort.
Just endless days floating alone through rooms full of people until you lost your fucking mind and finally just ended it all…
There had been days when I’d thought about it.
Planned it.
I knew where I would do it.
How.
What tools I would use.
I knew what the note would say.
But then… NOVA had sent me Milo’s application essay, and his words had made me feel like maybe there was someone out there who understood…
someone I could maybe foster a true friendship with.
Someone who reminded me so much of my father that I knew I couldn’t end my life.
Not until I met this mysterious person who had an outlook on life so bright and full of possibility that it reminded me that it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I’d struggled with the idea of having pathways and growth invite him in for an interview.
Seb and I had already been chipped, and as much as I tried to lie to myself and pretend like we weren’t unwilling prisoners here, I knew the truth deep down.
The huge paychecks that came with being the Chief Memory Therapy Officer meant nothing when I wasn’t allowed to leave campus to spend any of it.
“Why would you ever need to leave? You have everything you could ever need and more right here,” Luke had crooned to Seb and me the first time he’d caught us trying to leave with our new shock collars installed.
He was technically right. Anything I could ever want was available right here on campus. There wasn’t anything on the outside that I couldn’t get from Neurovance…
But… it didn’t matter how lavish the cage was. It was still a cage, and the second I realized I could never leave, I’d never wanted to do anything more.
So when NOVA sent me Milo’s application…
I had known.
I’d known on some level that if I brought Milo here and Luke discovered how much smarter he was than me, I would basically be sentencing him to a life in chains right alongside me.
But…
I was so fucking selfish.
I couldn’t do it anymore.
Human beings weren’t built to live like this.
We needed companionship, conversation… touch.
I was already slowly dying, and if I kept going on the way I was, I knew I wouldn’t last another year.
So, after days of pacing and tearing out my own hair, I’d finally caved and sent Milo’s resume through.
I had to meet him.
And if I couldn’t go to him, he had to come to me.
‘It was the only way,’ I’d told myself as I finally hit send.
I’d spent the weeks waiting for his arrival, devouring everything he’d ever written for school with starving eyes and a frantically beating heart.
His admissions photo for MIT was horrible. The flash had lit up his lenses, and I could barely see his face properly.
He didn’t have a social media presence, so all I had to cling to in those first few weeks was that overexposed, blurry admissions photo.
It didn’t do him justice.
That first day, when that asshole clipped him, causing him to fall… I hadn’t been one hundred percent sure it was him.
I should have known from the way my heart started pounding and my scalp began to tingle.
He was so fucking perfect.
His plush, cherubic cheeks sprinkled with the lightest dusting of freckles sent me into fucking orbit.
His unsure, wide brown eyes stared up at me like he thought I was some sort of god sent down to punish him.
His soft, caramel locks, his round frameless glasses that magnified those gorgeous eyes, making them look twice as big as they actually were…
‘Murph? Is that what I heard you call yourself?’
‘N-no… Milo. Milo Murphy.’
The name of the boy who was going to change everything, spoken from his own lips.
Fuck.
It had been over for me right then and there.
That had been the first time he’d saved me…
And look at how I fucking repaid him…
“Mr. Reynolds, Milo Murphy is here to see you,” NOVA chimed, her pretty voice cutting through the irresponsible amount of whiskey I’d already consumed.
Shit.
I should have known he would come find me when I didn’t go to him.
Since he’d let me inside him, there hadn’t been a moment that I hadn’t wanted to be close to Milo.
Things were different now. If what Seb had said about the chip was true and I’d been the one responsible for trapping him here indefinitely… I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do.
“Tell him I’m busy, and I’ll come see him in the morning,” I croaked, taking another swig of whiskey straight from the bottle.
“He seems pretty adamant, sir,” NOVA replied, her artificial voice sounding amused. “He stamped his foot and everything.”
Despite the fact that I was currently teetering on the edge of tumbling into the dark, familiar chasm of despair that lived deep in my mind…
my lip twitched. The image of my adorable little brainiac having a tiny tantrum outside my door because I was being a little bitch and hiding from my problems was enough to bring me back.
Always saving me…
My hero.
“Let him in,” I sighed, crossing the room and flopping down onto the couch with my bottle of booze.
The second the door swung open, Milo came storming in, a tiny angry scowl painted across his cherub-like features.
“We need to talk, buddy,” he snapped, coming to stand in front of me and folding his arms tightly over his chest.
I slid my eyes up to meet his, already feeling loose and tipsy from the alcohol. His gaze dropped to the bottle I was balancing on my knee, and his scowl deepened.
“You’re drunk,” he accused, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Yeah.”
“Why are you here drinking by yourself? Why didn’t you come get me?”
Because I can’t do this to you anymore. I’ve already hurt you enough.
“Milo—” I sighed, trying to brush him off. My eyebrows rose as he immediately grew more irritated.
“No! Answer me! You dismissed me earlier like I was no better than freaking Melanie, and then you didn’t even come by to explain why! I thought we… You can’t do this to me, Jay. You know what that guy did to me at school… I’ve been worried sick that you’re breaking up with me or something…”
My eyes widened in surprise as guilt crashed through me. It hadn’t even occurred to me that my avoidance would trigger him to think I didn’t want him anymore.
The issue wasn’t that I didn’t want him. The issue was that I wanted him so bad that I was putting him in danger.
“Milo… I just…” I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. The room spun slightly, and I regretted drinking as much as I had. “I’m too drunk for this conversation.”
“Well, too bad!” Milo snapped, and he reached forward to grab my wrist, pulling my hand away from my face so he could look at me.
I froze, staring at where his fingers had wrapped around my wrist, and I held my breath.
‘He winced when he touched my arm on the walk over here.’ Seb’s words swirled through my intoxicated mind as I waited to see if what he suspected was true.
Sure enough, after a long, pregnant moment, Milo gasped and ripped his hand away from me.
He hissed in pain and clutched the spot on his arm where I knew Luke had injected him with a key tag.
“Wh-what? What the heck?” he muttered, fear and confusion flickering across his perfect face.
My heart broke as the reality of our situation sank in, and as much as I wanted to wrap him up in my arms to comfort him, I knew it would just hurt him more.
All I ever did was fucking hurt him.
“Yeah,” I slurred, tilting my whiskey bottle in his direction knowingly. “That’s why I’m here, drinking alone. That’s why I didn’t come to see you. I don’t want to hurt you… and now… now everything is all fucked up, and it’s my fault.”
I could almost see the wheels turning in Milo’s brain as his wide eyes flicked from his arm to my face.