7. Diego
DIEGO
Fuck.
“Mindy, what the hell are you doing here?” Balancing Amber’s exhausted form against me gets slightly trickier with Mindy storming toward us down the path, but I grit my teeth and keep all my focus on helping Amber approach the stairs.
“Oh, so now you want to talk?” she snarls once she’s close enough. “I had to find out from fucking Tech that you’ve got some fucking whore here. Is that really how you want to do things? You ain’t got the balls to break up with me so you just cheat on me?! How is he, huh?”
The moment Mindy goes for Amber, I lift my shoulder and use it to push her away while we walk past. “Mindy, just fuck off!”
“Are you fucking him?!” she screams. “Is that wrinkled little rat between his legs worth it, fucking someone else’s man, huh? You look like the type, that’s for sure!”
“I’m so sorry,” I murmur to Amber as we reach the door.
She flashes me a tired, sympathetic smile but doesn’t speak.
The walk’s taken it out of her, and right now, all I care about is getting her inside and into bed where she can rest before she collapses.
I wouldn’t put it past Mindy to call the cops if she witnessed something like that and then I really would end up with a kidnapping charge on my record.
“Later, Mindy,” I yell back at her, scrambling with my keys to get inside. “Call me later and we can talk.”
“No fucking chance am I leaving your cheating ass when I’ve caught you red-handed,” she snaps at me. “I’m staying and we’re talking right here, right now!”
She means it since the moment I have my door open, Mindy shoves herself past Amber and me and storms into my apartment like she owns the place.
“Mindy, you can’t— Fucking hell. I’m sorry, Amber.”
“S’fine,” she murmurs with heavy blinks. “I’m tired.”
“I know. I know. Come on.”
It doesn’t take me long to carry Amber back to bed.
After ensuring she’s got painkillers and water, she sinks back into the pillows with her eyes closed.
I’d wait and watch her sleep to make sure she’s okay, but a crash from the lounge draws me out of the bedroom.
I close the door softly, not that it’ll do much good with how thin these walls are, and track down Mindy.
“Ooh look who it is!” she yells, throwing her hands in the air when she sees me. A vase of fake flowers lies shattered at her feet and my wall clock is in pieces. “My cheating fucking scumbag of a lover!”
“Mindy, are you fucking insane? Get the hell out of my house!”
“No!” she screams, grabbing an old coffee mug from the table and brandishing it high. “How could you do this to me? Do I mean nothing to you? Do you hate me that much that you’d rather cheat on me than break up with me? What kind of fucked up move is that, huh?!”
“Mindy!” I raise both hands, eyes on the mug. “Put it down.”
“Answer me!”
“We broke up years ago!” I yell back. “You know this! We’ve talked about this!”
“No!” Mindy launches the mug at the wall and it shatters into a hundred pieces on impact. “You’re a liar!”
“No, I’m not. We broke up, remember? I got clean and I spent three years trying to help you get clean.
But you refused. Do you remember that? You kept telling me I was an asshole for acting better than you because I didn’t want to live like that anymore.
We argued a lot. And then you went and got high and I didn’t see you for three fucking months.
I thought you’d died! So when you came back, I ended it. We’re not together anymore!”
“Liar!” She frantically scans the room, but the bare surroundings offer her no other weapons. With a snarl, Mindy storms through to the kitchen and I hurry after her, my heart hammering.
“Mindy, please— Stop! What the hell are you doing?!”
She stands in the middle of the kitchen, chest heaving and lips twisted while brandishing a sharp knife snatched from the kitchen drawer. The blade presses into the soft flesh of her wrist and a single droplet of crimson wells against her pale skin.
“You did this!” she screeches, her eyes wide and bloodshot. “You betrayed me!”
“No, Mindy. No! We’re not together anymore. We haven’t been for years and even—even if we were, okay? That woman? She’s just a friend. We’re not together and I’m not sleeping with her, okay?”
“I don’t believe you! You always do this! You don’t call. You don’t text. You don’t even send a fucking email.”
“The last number I had for you is disconnected, Mindy,” I reply, panting slightly as I inch my way toward her. “I have no way to call you.”
“You could have asked Tech!” Fat tears well in her pale eyes. “I thought you loved me. I thought we were going to be together forever!”
Once upon a time, that was the plan. A messy plan born from a string of days being so high, I couldn’t even spell my own name.
Getting married to Mindy felt like the smartest idea I’d ever come up with but deep down, I knew it wouldn’t work.
We weren’t together because of any romantic reason.
It was pure convenience. She wanted to get high and I had a steady supply.
“Mindy…” Another shuffle forward and my heart pounds harder.
One wrong move and that blade will cause serious damage.
I don’t need another life-or-death situation on my hands.
“You’re right, okay? I should have called.
We haven’t spoken in months and I missed you.
I should have called. Time got away from me. My fault, Mindy. It’s my fault.”
“Yes, it is!” she sobs, blinking furiously through the tears. “Do you know how much it hurts to see you with another woman? To come here thinking you’re waiting for me, only to see you with another whore?”
“Don’t call her that,” I snap before I can stop myself.
Mindy’s jaw tenses and she lifts her chin, but before she can do anything more with that knife, I surge forward and grab her wrist. With one twist, I wrench her wrist backward and she drops the knife with a cry, then immediately breaks into loud, frantic wails and collapses against my chest.
“Why did you do this?!” she sobs against me. “Why did you hurt me like this?!”
“I’m sorry, Mindy,” I reply, embracing her tightly despite the lick of anger warming under my ribs. “I’m sorry.”
She sags against me and curls both her hands into the back of my shirt, clinging on as if her life depends on it. This isn’t the first time we’ve ended up like this, and it likely won’t be the last.
Maybe I should move.
Mindy sniffles suddenly and leans away from me while wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “I need money.”
“What?” It’s not surprising but what hurts is that, despite the tears coating her cheeks and sparkling against her eyelashes, she doesn’t seem all that upset up close.
“I need money. Tech said you had some rich lookin’ bitch here, so I’ve come for help. You said you’d help me.” Accusation weighs heavily in her eyes. “You said you were sorry, so help me and give me what I need.”
My lips part, but anything I want to say catches in the back of my throat. It was all an act. Of course it was. The yelling and threatening her life, the tears and hugging… all part of her twisted fucking game to get money out of me.
I should have known.
But the day I try to catch her out in one of these games is the day the knife cuts deep and I’ll drown under another death on my conscience.
“How much?” I say quietly, defeat weighing down my shoulders.
“Couple of hundred.” With a deep sniff and a dab at her eyes, all evidence of Mindy’s tears have completely dried up.
She tucks a few messy strands of blonde hair behind her ear and smiles at me.
“Maybe a couple more for the emotional distress of catching you with another woman and all the shit you’ve put me through. ”
“The shit I’ve put you through?” Anger builds inside me like a furnace. “How can you stand there knowing two minutes ago, you were threatening to take your own life?”
Mindy smirks. “You never should have told me about your brother. A sad sack like you? You’re so fucking easy.”
In a single, white-hot rage-inducing second, I contemplate grabbing the knife from the floor and killing her.
I shot those two men. What’s one more murder on my conscience?
I’m already not sleeping and so stressed that I feel sick.
I might as well double down and free myself from someone like her, right?
But then who would help Amber?
She’d be alone with no memories, no way of getting help, and no one to take care of her.
“I don’t have cash on me,” comes my strained reply as that murderous fantasy fades.
“That’s fine, you got an app?” She pulls her phone from her pocket and wiggles it at me. “Transfer is fine.”
Getting her out of here and away from Amber becomes the priority, so I log into my account and transfer her my last four hundred dollars.
“That’s it?” Mindy sucks on her teeth.
“That’s all I’ve got. Now get out.”
“Hmm?” She glances up from her phone. “No kiss goodbye?”
“I never want to see you again,” I reply quietly. “Ever. Don’t ever come back here. Don’t call. Don’t text. Don’t even think about me.”
“Sure.” Mindy snorts and she wiggles her long fingers at me. “See you soon, darling!” With that, she’s gone and a smothering silence drifts through my apartment after she slams the door.
The knife remains on the floor like a quiet threat of what could have been had I not talked her down.
She wants that money for drugs, I know that much.
She definitely would have gone through with it if I hadn’t helped her because that’s who she is.
Who I was. An addict knows no limits on what to do to get their next fix.
My chest hurts.
I sink down into the weak wooden chair at my kitchen table and my shoulders sag as a wave of hopelessness crashes over me, sending chills up and down my arms.
There was a point in my life when I trusted Mindy. I told her about my brother during a high, thinking we were bonding. Turns out, all I did was give her ammo against me to get what she wants.
Now she’s gone with almost all of my money, my car’s vanished from that crime scene, Tech won’t stop hassling me about selling, and there’s an amnesiac in my bedroom.
“God…” I croak and sink forward with my head in my hands. How has my life turned out like this? Exhaustion throbs through my skull, my mind aching from a lack of sleep, a lack of food, and far too much stress.
I killed two people. I survived a car crash. There are people who may or may not want to kill me. A beautiful woman in my room needs my help but still may potentially become a danger. Mindy just tried to kill herself in front of me for money.
And the cops haven’t come by.
That’s weird, right?
If they cleaned up the crime scene, why haven’t they come looking for me? Unless it wasn’t cops, but who else has that kind of power?
I blink slowly and bite back a yawn, then freeze as soft, warm lips suddenly press lightly to the back of my neck.