Chapter 36
Chapter thirty-six
JUDE GRAVES
I pull into the driveway on autopilot, not even sure how I made it from that warehouse back to the coast. My hands are still shaking on the wheel, knuckles raw and split from slamming some guy’s face into a concrete floor until he begged.
Alexei’s voice still rings inside my skull. “Get the message across. If he cries, good. If he bleeds, better.”
I put the car in park, engine rumbling under me, and drop my forehead to the steering wheel.
I never texted Emma back. It’s now one-thirty in the morning.
My goddamn ribs ache when I breathe, and my hands won’t stop trembling.
I can’t go inside like this. I can’t deal with Micah being scared for me anymore.
He’ll ask all about my night and what Alexei made me do. And I can’t talk about it.
“Down the Drain” by Marcy Playground hums softly through the speakers, the melody light and gentle.
I reach under the driver’s seat before I can think better of it. The baggie, plunger, and tourniquet wait for me in the car kit. Muscle memory takes over, the scent of heroin hitting my nostrils like some chemical goddess beckoning me into the darkness.
My ribs protest as I cinch the tourniquet, my eager pulse fluttering, waiting for the high my veins are screaming out for.
The needle slides in.
When I push the plunger, relief hits fast.
Too fast.
Warmth blooms up my arm, spilling into my chest, settling low in my stomach. My head falls back against the seat. The song keeps playing softly while the world dims, colors melting into syrupy, slow fragments crawling far away.
Fuck.
It feels like sinking into a hot bath. Or like being carried instead of holding yourself up. The music wraps around me, all cheerful and wrong, as if nothing bad is happening at all. As if I’m not putting my body through hell.
My eyelids grow heavy. Really heavy. My breaths stretch out lazily, drifting between notes. The steering wheel blurs, and the car tilts. My fingers slide from my lap and thud quietly against the seat.
“Mhm...fine,” I murmur, but it doesn’t sound like my voice. Who am I even talking to? My legs go numb, and my chest tightens. I try to inhale.
Try again.
The song keeps going.
The car feels ice-cold. Or maybe I’m the one going cold. My forehead slips sideways, cheek hitting the window. The sting doesn’t register. Nothing does. My vision tunnels, shrinking the world down to a pinpoint of light pulsing in time with the music.
Fuck.
Fuck, no, I didn’t mean—
The melody tangles with my thoughts. Words blur, the meaning of them slipping entirely. And I stop trying to breathe.
Something slams into the side of the car, and a muffled voice breaks through the haze. “Jude?”
Another hit. Harder.
“JUDE! Open the fucking door!”
Micah. Yeah. Micah.
I try to lift my head, say something, anything, but my body is dead weight. The world sways lazily, like I’m drifting in deep water. The door yanks open, cold air rushing in.
“Jesus—Jude.” His voice cracks. Hands grab my shoulders, shaking me. My head lolls forward, chin dropping to my chest. “Hey. HEY, look at me.” His breath is warm and panicked against my cheek. “Jude, wake up. Please. Oh my god—please.”
I want to tell him I’m fine. I want to lift my head. I want words.
Nothing comes.
He slaps my cheek—light at first, then harder. My eyelids flutter uselessly. My chest manages half a breath...then stalls.
“No. No, no, no—Jude, please.” He chokes on a sob. “Stay with me. Just—just breathe. Come on, man. Fucking breathe.” His hands cup my face. His thumbs are shaking. “Don’t you dare do this to me,” he cries. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
My body tilts as he hauls me up, one arm locked around my aching ribs. I groan, and it’s a broken, useless sound that doesn’t feel like it belongs to me.
“Okay, okay...come on.” He drags me out of the car, my feet scraping gravel. My head drops against his shoulder. Too heavy. Too gone. He half carries, half drags me toward the porch light.
“You’re okay,” he lies into my hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.” He says it fast and desperate, like repetition might force the universe to listen.
I know I’m not okay.
My knees buckle. He snarls a sob and tightens his grip, hauling me over the threshold. “Don’t die, man,” he whispers, voice shredding. “Don’t die on me. I swear to god—don’t.”
Everything inside me is sinking. Fast, cold, dark. I can’t tell where he is anymore. Next to me. Across the room. Inside my skull.
His hands shake me, trying to pull me back from the edge I know is reaching for me.
I try to lift my head, to show him I hear him, but my body won’t listen. My limbs hang uselessly. My tongue feels as heavy as a slab of stone.
Micah is crying.
I’m so sorry.
“Come on, come on. Pick up,” he stammers. “Fuck. Heather, please...it’s Jude. He’s—he’s barely breathing. He won’t—he won’t wake up.” He sounds like someone’s kicking the air out of him over and over.
I try to pry my eyes open...just a millimeter. The light above me blurs into a smear. My head rolls sideways.
Micah catches me like I’m fragile. “I don’t know what to do,” he sobs on the last word. “Heather, he won’t wake up. I can’t lose him. I can’t—”
Another violent sob tears out of him.
Some flicker sparks in my brain. Is the song still playing?
There’s shuffling. A sharp inhale. “Okay...yeah, okay. Bring it. Please, Heather. Hurry.”
He hangs up. Then he’s calling someone else.
“Emma?” His voice caves in on itself. “I need you. You have to come. Now. Jude, he—” He stumbles over the words. “He overdosed.” He leans over me, forehead against my temple, breath shaking. “Heather is on her way. Please hurry.”
He ends the call but won’t let go. His hand cups my jaw, thumb dragging over my cheek. Time stops meaning anything. I’m out, then back, then out again.
The door slams open so hard it rattles the walls. Heather is suddenly here. “Okay. He’s responsive enough. Get him upright. Narcan first. Keep talking to him.”
I can’t respond. I can’t reach them. My mind fractures, slipping between panic and void, like I’m falling through a floor that never ends.
A needle bites into my arm.
Fire follows, flooding my veins. The fog thins just enough to make everything hurt.
Then—
“Jude? Oh my god—oh my god, no!” She’s right there, I can feel her. “Heather—why isn’t he waking up? Why is he blue?”
Blue.
No. Don’t say that word.
Micah collapses into sobs, hands fisted in his hair. And Emma...Emma loses all control. She drops to the floor beside me, hands everywhere, shaking so badly she can’t hold still. “Jude, look at me. Look at me!” Her voice fractures completely. “Please, please, please—”
She keeps sobbing my name, as if it’s a prayer that could possibly be answered.
“Breathe,” she screams. “You have to fucking breathe. If you die—if you die—”
She chokes on a sound that’s ripping straight out of her soul. “I can’t bury you. I can’t. I won’t survive it.”
I won’t survive it.
My consciousness frantically claws upward. I reach for her in my mind, dragging myself toward the sound of her breaking. But my body stays heavy and useless.
Heather moves fast, hands steady on my pulse. “Narcan’s in. He’s breathing a little better now. Keep talking to him. Keep him awake.”
But Emma doesn’t hear her. She presses her forehead to mine, sobbing so hard her words smear together. “I love you,” she gasps, brushing sweaty strands of hair from my face. “I love you so much. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me like this.”
Shame violently tears through me. I want to grab her. I want to apologize. I want to undo everything that brought us here.
I don’t want her last memory of me to look like this.
I don’t want her screaming over my body.
I don’t want her to watch me die.
I try to speak, but what comes out is a wet, broken rasp. My throat feels like it’s been set on fire. Emma makes a sound that’s half sob, half scream, and collapses into Micah for a heartbeat before surging back to me, refusing to let go.
“Come back to me, baby, please,” she cries.
Heather’s voice threads through the chaos. “He’s stable. Mild overdose. The Narcan is working.”
Stable.
Mild.
The words don’t match the way Emma is crying, like the world has already ended. She wraps herself around me completely now, rocking me like she’s still afraid I’ll die.
My breaths scrape out, my lungs finally able to take in more air. The Narcan drags me back, and my body jerks. I flinch at my own movement, startled by being alive.
Emma sobs into my shoulder, and Micah presses against my other side. I’m surrounded, alive despite me.
And that line, I won’t survive it, lodges so deep inside my chest that I know with brutal certainty, it will follow me forever. No high will ever touch it. No silence will drown it out. It will be there every time I close my eyes.
I wish she never saw me in Portland. I wish I never let her back into my life. I wish I’d fucking died one of the dozens of times I almost did.
I don’t want to wake up, because I hate everything I’ve done. I hate everything I’m going to have to face. I’ve scarred them forever—and I don’t want to survive knowing how badly I’ve hurt them.