Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
Yosh
The water from the shower beats down on my shoulders like sharp needles.
I lean my full weight against the metal rod, forehead pressed against the cool tiles as my legs tremble beneath me. They’re not just tired. They’re done.
I’ve already scrubbed myself five times. Maybe six.
There were streaks of blood down my arms, dried patches on my neck. A faint smear on my cheek I hadn’t noticed until I got back to Arcadia.
I wash again.
And again.
My hands are dry and cracked, my nail beds bleeding. The soap stings now, but I keep going.
I know I’m clean. I know it.
There’s nothing left to see, but every time I close my eyes, it still feels like I’m covered in blood.
The images come back in flashes. Patients being triaged. The cries of families. The chaos of the E.R.
A mother screaming her daughter’s name.
She was on my table.
She died.
We couldn’t save her.
I couldn’t save her.
My breathing turns shallow. I try to ground myself. I count in my head, feel the coolness of the tile under my palms, but nothing works.
I squeeze my eyes shut, take a deep breath, and gather what’s left of myself to shut off the water.
I need to get out of here.
I move forward and grab a towel.
Drying off is hard, and it takes me fifteen minutes to pull on my linen pyjamas.
Then I walk into my practice and drop onto the couch.
I cross my arms, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
I search for patterns in the texture, like trying to find animals in clouds. Anything to keep today’s images out of my mind.
I turn my head left, and there I find the book on trigger points, still open at the exact same page Tom had left it on.
A bittersweet scoff escapes me, thinking about this morning, at how oblivious I’d been at the start of the day.
I was ready to do the unthinkable the moment he said it. Just that one sentence of him begging me not to stop was all I’d needed.
I wanted to undo his shorts with my teeth, trace the tip of my tongue along his length, feel him twitch in my hands. Then take him slow, so slow he’d beg. Or maybe I would. Beg for more of those physical reactions.
I wanted to hear my name breaking into a moan every time I took him deep in my throat.
On that damn table, without a thought about anything but tasting him, feeling his fingers tangled desperately and possessively in my hair.
And I wouldn’t stop. Not until his whole body arched, and I had him shaking in my hands as I swallowed his cum.
Fuck.
That would’ve been so bad.
Scandalous doesn’t even begin to cover it. What the hell had I been thinking? I’m a disaster. I thought I had things under control with my meds, but I’m still a fucking disaster.
I grip my hair and let out a grunt.
But I loved every moment of it.
It’s insane that the only thing keeping the darkness from crashing in right now is the thought of how we lose ourselves in each other. Over and over again, but never all the way.
Just for a moment, the flashes stay away. No chaos. No screams.
Just him and that stupid table, our hands connected and him looking at me like he was done keeping things decent.
I press the heels of my palms into my eyes until colours bloom behind my lids. When I open them again, the book is still there.
Trigger points, right.
I shut the cover. The thud feels oddly satisfying to my ear. Then something catches my eye.
A guava.
On my glass table.
Why is there a guava on my table?
I narrow my eyes. There’s a note, and next to it… a set of suspicious sticky fingerprints.
Thought you’d fancy something sweet and juicy. Try this. I’ll volunteer later. – T.
My hands tremble as I curl the edges of the note between my fingers. The longer I stare, the more his handwriting smears into a blur.
And then it lands.
The words knock the air out of me. I drag in a breath that burns, like one lung’s on fire and the other forgot how to work. I don’t fight it.
The tears spill out faster than I can stop them.
I don’t want to be alone right now. I need him. Not just anyone, him. But that’s out of the question. He shouldn’t see me like this.
Still… God, I need a friend.
I pull out my phone, fingers hovering over his name in my contact list. I stare, hesitate. Then I set it down again. I can’t. I need to set boundaries. I just can’t.
I’ll be fine. Maybe not tonight, but the sun will rise tomorrow, and with it, the illusion that time heals everything.
So I distract myself with a breathing exercise. It helps. It always does.
Seven seconds to inhale. Seven seconds hold. Seven seconds to exhale. Repeat.
Inhale, hold. Then exhale. Repeat. Again. And again. One more time. Exhale.
I dry my tears, swallowing the last one down. Then I sink lower into the couch, letting my head rest against the crook of my folded elbow. I lie on my side, facing the book and the guava on the table. A wry smile tugs at my lips.
These silent witnesses hold good memories to ground me, and that’s enough for now to feel a little peace.
My eyes fall shut, the physical exhaustion taking over.
It’s only when I’m nearly asleep that a knock at the door wakes me up.
My eyes flutter open. I hold my breath.
A second round of knocking follows. This time it sounds faster, and certainly more urgent.
I sit up fast. What do I need to do?
It feels like a truck ran over my head, the last thing I want right now is to get a pile of administration handed to me from the back office.
“Yosh, can you please let me in? I know you’re there.”
My heart skips at the sound of his voice. Okay, this is different. It’s him. It’s him!
My body’s generator suddenly kicks in, and before I realize it, I’m sprinting to the door, afraid he’ll be gone if I’m not there fast enough.
I take a few seconds to adjust my hair, to part it the right way and tug a loose strand behind my ear. My palm wipes the last traces of dried tears and exhaustion from my eyes.
I open the door, forcing a smile with all the effort I have left, but the moment I see the fury on his face, I’m frozen to the ground.
Something is terribly wrong.
Tom storms inside and stops in the middle of the room, his eyes darting around, filled with rage, but landing on nothing in particular.
This isn’t the Tom I know at all.
His gaze is always soft, usually fixed on me like my playful puppy. Now he’s showing me the flipside.
The inferno in his eyes warns me he’s seconds away from tearing this place down.
“Tom?” My voice cracks. “Are you alright? What’s going on?”
I set my hands on his shoulders. He shrugs me off.
“You tell me.”
He pins me with a stare cold enough to frost the entire Caribbean.
I try to speak, but no words make it past my throat. I don’t know what to do.
I’ve never seen him in this state and it scares the hell out of me.
“Alright, I’m not going to waste time. Have you been using me to get that position?”
“Wait, what?”
Fuck. Erin handed Tom to me because… How did he find out?
The floor seems to vanish beneath my feet. I want to step forward, to reassure him, to make him understand it’s not true, but my body feels too exhausted. My body feels like stone.
“Who… who said that?”
“You’re avoiding my question.” He raises his voice. “Is it true?”
“But who told you that?”
I try to sound indignant, but my voice breaks. It’s too soft. Too weak.
He smashes his fist into my desk and screams.
“IS IT TRUE!?”
My breath stutters. My hands fly to my hair, fingers digging into my scalp.
No, no, no. That’s not true.
How can I tell him? I can’t.
He starts laughing, dark and cynical.
“What a fucking Greek tragedy. I trusted you. I showed you the deepest parts of myself. My pain, my fear. I’ve never told anyone, any of that. Now I understand why Jay always warned me about this. No one outside the pack can be trusted. No one.”
His words twist around my throat like a noose. I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing a hot tear to glide down my cheek. This is too much. All of this is too much.
“You know, I’m not even mad at you,” he says. “You mean nothing. I’m mad at myself, for thinking things would be different this time.”
You mean nothing.
The words are arrows, each one embedded in my gut, bleeding me dry.
“Tom, please… it’s not like that. Really, it’s not,” I stammer, but I don’t have any power in my voice.
It feels like I’ve lost before I can even say anything.
He’s already made up his mind, and I can’t deny any of it. Not without telling him my side of the story, the truth as it is, but there’s only a broken sound coming out of my troat. I feel powerless.
“Surprising,” he mutters, cynically shaking his head.
He turns to the door, and just before he leaves the room, he looks at me one more time, his eyes cold.
“I thought we had something, but I’m sure that was part of your plan too.”
The door slams shut behind him.
I break.
Everything in me gives out.
My legs go weak. I reach for the edge of the desk, but even my arms give up. I collapse hard onto the floor.
Tears are streaming freely down my face now, each breath a battle against the rising panic.
I want to scream, scream endlessly, but my voice is still stuck.
My hair falls forward, hiding my face as I curl into myself, wrapping my arms around my body to keep warm.
Except, it doesn’t work like that when the frost comes from deep inside.
The floor is as hard and cold as my veins. It bites into my skin. I let it.
Maybe this is exactly what I deserve. Maybe this is how it always had to end.
It feels cruel. So unfair.
With the last pieces of myself, I let go of all my thoughts, allowing myself to drown into a darkness deeper than anything I’ve ever known.
Black waves carry me under. The storm in my head goes quiet.
Just stillness.
Calm.
Even as I feel the shadow slowly rising, first at my neck, then my ears, I don’t resist.
I close my eyes as it drowns me.
Then there’s nothing but darkness and its dangerous comfort.