Milo
I CRAWLED ON my hands and knees up the stairs, the wood slick beneath me. Each time I dragged myself higher, a red torrent swept me back down, erasing my progress. There was too much blood. My muscles ached and my chest burned, but I couldn’t give up.
They were at the top—a shadow, merely a silhouette, unaffected by the flood that was determined to drown me. I didn’t know who it was, but I had to reach them.
Please, please, please.
I stretched my fingertips forward, grazing their feet before my nails scraped the floor. It was too slippery. My knees smacked against the steps twice, and then I was weightless, tumbling into a sea of red. It filled my mouth, my nose, and my ears. I was going to the bottom.
I jolted upright upon the imagined impact, tremors rocking my body. My skin was damp with sweat, and my heart was hammering wildly against my ribs.
“Jasper?” I rasped, scrambling to my feet.
I stumbled toward the bedroom door where the light spilled in through the cracks, the warm glow doing nothing to dampen my panic.
The darkness against my back felt threatening, like something would sneak up from behind me and I’d never escape.
Unable to get a good grip, I struggled with the knob.
I was going to die.
Finally, the door opened, and I flung myself into the hallway.
My lungs screamed like I’d run a marathon, my tightly wound muscles suddenly loose and uncooperative.
I wanted to lie on the floor, but my lingering fear urged me forward on unsteady legs.
I needed to see Jasper’s face to know I was safe.
My imagination ran rampant as I moved around the apartment, looping through the kitchen to check the windows and balcony door. Even after seeing that they were closed and locked, I still tried to pull on them. Visuals weren’t enough; I needed the physical proof.
I circled into the living room, where Oliver would have been sleeping on the couch. It was dark and dead silent, and nobody was there. He should have been there. It didn’t make sense to leave in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.
“Jasper? Oliver?” I called out hoarsely, my heart rate climbing all over again.
Jasper’s door was closed. He never shut it the whole way, and something about it made me feel uninvited. Locked out. Like suddenly, I was no longer welcome in his orbit. I was terrified that he’d drawn his line in the sand—that he needed space. Or worse… that I’d done something wrong.
I wanted to rip the door off its hinges.
But I didn’t. I wasn’t supposed to be crazy on the outside. I had to keep it on the inside to make sure nobody would leave me. The whole scenario I was cooking up wasn’t even real. It was just a fucking closed door.
I pressed my ear hard against the wood, holding my breath until I got light-headed. I needed to hear something to know he wasn’t avoiding me on purpose, to know that he was in there, and that just because I couldn’t see him, it didn’t mean he’d disappeared.
Sound slipped through the wood: quick, breathy gasps.
Maybe he was getting himself off. The idea made my cheeks burn with a heady combination of guilt and shame. I crawled into bed with him nearly every night since he moved in, clinging to him like a lifeline. He had no privacy, and it would be wrong to interrupt. I didn’t want to push him away.
But there was more.
“Fuck, Jasper—”
Not my brother.
The air was stolen from my lungs so violently that black spots bled into the edges of my vision.
“Shut up, Oli.” Jasper’s voice was unmistakable, his tone rough.
My blood felt like ice in my veins, understanding hitting me in horrible, jagged pieces. Oliver’s absence from the living room suddenly made sense, and the door being closed over meant something else entirely.
It was obvious. The gasping and moaning, the obscene sound of skin slapping against skin. Something sick and foreign twisted in my gut, and my earlier trembling paled compared to how every inch of me vibrated now.
No, no, no.
My hand hovered over the doorknob, my vision so blurry I barely recognized it as mine. I touched my forehead to the door to steady myself, but it was no use. The floor swayed beneath me, like I was on a ship, only this one was capsizing.
Jasper moved here to be with me.
To keep me safe.
To take care of me.
My lungs shrank with every passing second, and I couldn’t get enough air.
Oli. He was calling him a pet name, and he didn’t even fucking like the guy.
It should have been me in his room. He should have been rubbing my back, running his fingers through my hair and telling me that my nightmares weren’t real. Telling me I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t take it.
I gripped the doorknob with both hands and ripped it open.
My eyes snapped to Jasper immediately—the creasing of his brows, the parted lips, the rise and fall of his chest. He was plastered to Oliver’s arched back, his jeans bunched around his knees, and his cock—fuck—I was going to puke.
My world came to a grinding halt as their heads swivelled toward me, and all I saw was red.
My knees buckled, and I gripped the sides of the door frame to steady myself. For a beat, it felt like my heart had stopped working before going into overdrive and pumping so hard and fast that I thought I was going to pass out.
“Get off of him!” I spat, grabbing the back of Jasper’s shirt and yanking him as hard as I could.
I could feel my lips moving and repeating the line over and over again, but I was teetering on the edge of delirium.
Maybe I wasn’t saying anything at all. It was impossible to tell because the inside of my head sounded like someone had turned the volume on a white noise machine to maximum.
The next moments weren’t all that clear. Oliver was desperately trying to put his clothes back on, sputtering something to me that sounded like a whole lot of bullshit.
That was my brother.
My fucking brother.
I grabbed Oliver by the ankle and dragged him across the floor, his half-clothed body catching on the carpet, and my heart nearly shattering my ribs from its violent pounding. All of my movements felt mechanical, my entire body taut and rigid, and my skin burning with heat.
Oliver had a girlfriend. There was no reason for him to be in my brother’s bed. My thoughts overlapped, a jumbled mess of dangerous things I wanted to do, and it didn’t matter that Oliver was my best friend. Not right now.
“Milo!” Jasper grabbed my shoulder with one hand, and I zeroed in on how his other hand was holding up his jeans. His touch wasn’t soothing the way I remembered it. It didn’t make me shiver or calm me down. It felt tainted, dirty, and revolting. The taste of betrayal was acid on my tongue.
“Get away from me!” I snapped, straddling Oliver on the floor.
I didn’t hesitate. I punched him in the face, over and over and over, until I heard an awful crack and the red bled past the edges of my vision and began pouring out of his nose like a faucet.
“Milo—” Oliver tried to speak. The sound was awful. I didn’t want to hear it.
I wrapped my hands around his throat and started choking him, rage reaching a fever pitch. His face was bright red, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. If it weren’t for Jasper hooking his arms under my armpits to pull me off, I might have kept going until Oliver was unconscious.
Worse. I would have fucking killed him.
“Seriously, Milo—what the fuck are you doing?” Jasper shouted over the ringing in my ears, dragging me to the other side of the hallway and away from Oliver while I kicked out wildly.
“What do you mean, what am I doing?” I barked, a choked sob rising in my throat. “Why are you fucking my friend?”
“It’s not that goddamn serious, Milo. It’s just sex.
” Jasper held me from behind, his breath ragged against the back of my neck.
I could feel the hard line of his erection straining against his jeans, pressing into my back, and I had to resist the urge to gag as the image of him buried in Oliver seared itself into my memory.
I wanted to believe I was this angry because it was bad etiquette to fuck your brother’s best friend, or that it was because it meant Oliver was cheating on his girlfriend again, and it went against my rigid morals.
But those answers didn’t feel right; they didn’t feel honest. The ache of betrayal was more profound than that. It was bone deep and personal.
“It’s wrong,” I blurted. “He has a girlfriend.”
“So? We’re two consenting adults.”
“You know how I feel about cheating!” I shouted. “Why are you being a fucking homewrecker?”
“His relationship is none of my business. If he decides he wants to cheat on his girlfriend, that’s on him.” His voice was eerily cool now, his grip dangerously tight. “You aren’t making any sense right now. I don’t know why you’re so mad.”
I was about to yell at him some more when I noticed Oliver across the hall, fully dressed, face smeared with blood, hastily collecting his things.
“Where the fuck are you going?” I hissed.
“Just go, Oliver. I’ll deal with him.” Jasper held me steady, even as I thrashed in his arms.
Oliver didn’t look at me the entire time; his head hung low with shame as he put on his shoes at the door. He didn’t have the balls to say anything to me—not that it mattered. I wasn’t about to see reason when the only thing I wanted to do was throw him off the fucking balcony.
Jasper released me from his hold as soon as Oliver was through the door, and I turned toward him, my fists clenched.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” Jasper asked breathlessly, blowing sweat-damp hair out of his eyes.
The adrenaline was already waning, and my limbs felt heavy with exhaustion. My mouth opened uselessly, but no words came. I couldn’t look at his face. I didn’t want him to see me like this.
“Don’t fuck my friends.” My voice cracked, and I wanted to disappear.
“Why does it matter who I fuck?” Jasper challenged, his gaze intense, as though he were digging for something deeper.
It mattered because I thought his whole world revolved around me. He said I was his most important person, that it was us against the world. Why was he looking at someone else, touching someone else, giving someone else his attention while I was fucking falling apart?
“You’re supposed to be focused on me.” I covered my face with my hands, wiping at the onslaught of tears that I couldn’t keep at bay. “I feel like I’m drowning, and you’re off fucking my best friend when I fucking need you.”
“I’m always focused on you,” he rasped.
“Only me,” I sobbed, my chest heaving. “If you aren’t looking at me, I might—”
Arms wrapped around me, and the familiar scent of menthol and pot enveloped my senses. I wasn’t done being angry yet. I hit his chest wildly, and he only squeezed me tighter, making it harder to move.
“Milo.”
“Go away!” I pleaded, clinging to the remnants of my outrage and fighting every instinct to melt into his embrace.
My eyes stung and snot poured out of my nose, but I pushed at his chest harder this time, and he released me. Glaring, I shoved past him to go to my bedroom, only to be yanked back.
“Quit screwing around,” he said, this time wrapping his arms around my waist from behind and pressing my back flush against his chest. I could still feel the outline of his cock pressing into me, keeping me trapped in the moment where I opened that stupid fucking door.
“I hate you!” I cried, trying to pry his arms away.
“You can pretend you hate me all you want, but I’m not going anywhere.” He rested his chin on my shoulder, his breathing matching my own, erratic and out of control.
“Fuck you,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “Leave me alone.”
I wasn’t ready to give in. I peeled away from him once more, and this time he didn’t try to keep me. I ran straight to my room, slamming the door shut with my back, sliding down it until I hit the floor.