“Then, take him.”
Breath didn’t move. Beard didn’t either.
“Take him right fucking now!”
Breath walked around to my side, gently resting his hand on my shoulder. It was too late for gentle. Gentle wasn’t a language Breath spoke. I didn’t like it. And I didn’t know what it meant.
“He’s not going anywhere until you give me what I want,” Breath said. “Then,
puta
, I’ll take him to the hospital, and he’ll get all the care he needs.”
“And me?”
He smiled, like I had just told him I loved him. “You’ll get the punishment you deserve.”
I knew what it all meant now.
“Confess and save Garin, or I’m going to kill you both. The choice is yours,” he said.
I’d known all along I was going to die in this prison. Life beyond this cell was simply a fantasy. The two of us walking out of here, Garin’s hand clasped in mine, living the life I’d always wanted—that was fiction.
It wasn’t what I deserved.
Not after what I’d done.
“Do you promise me?” My voice was loud and stern. “Do you promise that, if I tell you what you want, you’ll take Garin to the hospital?”
I didn’t know if I could trust Breath, but I had no other choice. Garin was getting weaker by the second. He was losing more blood. He was slipping further away from me.
I couldn’t drag this out any longer.
“I promise you,
puta
.”
This was the confession I should have made back then. This was what I should have voiced every time Garin and Billy had banged on my front door, when they’d waited for me in the hallway outside my classes, when Garin had cornered me in the alley.
This was my second chance.
“Garin, I’m so sorry.”
His eyes opened again, looking at me through those tiny slits.
“I could tell you why I lied to you and Billy, but it doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no excuse for what I did. I was wrong. I know that. I’ve paid for it every day since. It’s eaten me up, and the guilt has never once let me go. I don’t deserve forgiveness. Just know that I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
Breath stuck something sharp in the side of my neck. “Spit it out. I’m tired of listening to this bullshit. You’ve tested my patience long enough.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered again.
I watched Garin’s face as the name of the murderer slipped through my lips. Even in his state, even with all the blood and all his wounds, I saw it—the anger, the resentment.
The hatred.
And then all I saw was black.
Twenty-Five
Kyle
Twelve Years Ago
“Roll up the fucking window,” the murderer hissed. “You have to be done puking by now.”
It had been at least a minute since I heaved. My stomach was empty, my body still shaking. But the cool night air felt good against my burning skin, and the wind that blew past my face seemed to pause the nightmare that kept replaying in my mind. It was the nightmare that had made me throw up in the first place.
Unfortunately, the pause was short-lived.
He rolled up the window, and he yanked my face back in the car.
“You’re a monster,” I spit. “Why don’t you let me out, so I can get the hell away from you?”
He slammed his fist into the steering wheel. “You weren’t supposed to be outside. Why the fuck weren’t you home? Asleep? What were you doing out there?”
“I was walking home from Garin’s.”
“Why didn’t you just stay the night there?”
I wanted to.
I should have fought Garin. I should have begged him to let me stay. Then, I wouldn’t have seen Paulie or the gun or the shot that took him to the ground. Or the blood.
But I wasn’t going to say that to him. I doubted he was looking for an answer anyway.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Kyle…I almost killed you.”
I’d heard him say something similar to that before. But, back then, we were just kids, and I was teasing him about something stupid, like the ridiculous porn he liked to watch in his room, and he would rant about how he wanted to kill me. It was a joke. All of that talk had been a joke back then. Meaningless banter that didn’t deserve a second thought.
But there was nothing funny about what he’d said just now. There were no more jokes, no more teasing. There could never be again.
Kill
. He’d made that word come true. He’d pulled the trigger. He’d murdered a friend, a best friend. The guy to my left, the one who had the same eyes as mine, had become a killer.
The drugs, the girls, The Heart. Whatever it was that had changed him, he wasn’t my brother anymore.
“Maybe you should have killed me,” I said.
“Don’t joke about that, Kyle.”
“I’m not joking, Anthony.”
I looked out the windshield as we passed through green light after green light. How was he not swerving all over the road? Not puking out his window? How did he not have tears running down his face, like mine?
Did he not understand what he did? Was he high? Too high?
Maybe he needed to be reminded.
“Do you know how many people you just damaged? Including me?”
He glanced at me quickly, his lip curled like something smelled terrible in the car. Not even the smallest bit of remorse was in his eyes. “I know what I did, and I don’t give a fuck. I told you, he deserved it. It’s been a long time coming. He’s fucking lucky I didn’t pull the trigger months ago.”
A monster.
“No one deserves to be killed. Especially not Paulie.”
“Stop running your mouth, Kyle. I don’t want to be schooled. I don’t want to hear how you don’t approve. I’m not in the mood to listen to you at all, so shut the fuck up or—”
“Or you’ll kill me?”
He jerked the car to the right, and the tires screeched. We hit grass and then pavement. Anthony slammed on the brakes. I gripped the handle on the door, trying to brace myself for what was about to come. I didn’t know if he was aiming for the pole up ahead or if he just wanted to scare me or if he was going to open my door and throw me out. He dodged a fire hydrant and two curbs, coming to a stop at the side of a strip mall.
He panted, but I knew he wasn’t out of breath. That was his way of trying to control his anger.
“Look at me.”
I waited a few seconds before I released the door. My body was so tense that it ached. My head pounded to the point of nausea, and every time I blinked, I saw the pool of blood. If I wasn’t so empty, I would have been projecting bile straight to the floor.
“Fucking
look at me
!”
I wrapped my arms around my churning stomach and glared at him. He didn’t even look the same. His eyes were hollow. His lips spread too thin. His cheeks sunken in.
“What have you done with my brother?”
“What have I done with him? I’m in the best place of my life right now. I have over twenty girls working for me, and I’m making a shit-ton of money. I’m about to hire twenty more. Do you know how much cash that’s going to bring in—in
one night
?”
That was what he considered a success? Employing women who sucked dick and spread their legs for cash?
He wasn’t just lost.
He was gone.
“I don’t care, Anthony. I don’t care about money, and I definitely don’t care about yours.”
“You’re going to care because I’m going to give you plenty of it to keep your mouth shut.”
“You can’t buy me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, sister. I can do whatever the fuck I want because I’m the one holding the gun.” He slapped the gun on the armrest, keeping his hand on the butt and his finger on the trigger.
It wasn’t pointed at me, but it may as well have been.
“What the—ow!” I yelled as his other hand clamped my cheek. “Get off me.”
“You’re going to shut the fuck up and listen to me. I’m not going to fight with you, and I’m sure as hell not going to repeat myself.” He traced the gun down the side of my face.
I shivered—not just from the feel of the metal on my skin, but also from the power he had over me.
“You’re going to leave Atlantic City the second you graduate. You’re going to get yourself set up down south somewhere, somewhere like Florida. You’re going to go to college that I’m going to pay for. You’re going to open a business that I’m going to fund. You’re going to get a house that I’m going to purchase in cash. And, every month I’m going to drive down to Florida to check on you, and since my money isn’t safe in Jersey, you’re going to launder it for me. You’re my investment, Kyle. That’s your reward for keeping your mouth shut.” He released my cheek, but the gun stayed close.
“What if I say no?”
“Then, I’ll kill you.”
There was no hesitation in his voice. He said it as though he were announcing the weather forecast. And he looked at me as though I were trash on an already littered sidewalk. He could just point a gun at me and shoot.
His way or death.
It was all so simple for him.
“How am I supposed to face Garin and Billy? How can I act like I don’t know it was you who killed Paulie?”
“Stop being friends with them if you can’t handle it.”
“They’ll know something is wrong—” I cut myself off when I saw his eyes turn rabid.
“Make sure they don’t know.” He glanced down at the gun. “There’s only two people who were able to see inside this stolen car tonight. One of them is dead; the other is you. If anyone finds out about this, if I hear so much as my name whispered, it will be the end of you.”
The end of me…
He might as well have pulled the trigger right then.
Garin and Billy were my whole world. They were all I had. They were my best friends, my family. They kept me safe, fed, clothed.
But there was more.
I loved Garin. Things were going to happen between us. They were about to happen. We were taking it slow, but our relationship was moving forward.
And now?
Now, I had to give that up.
Give everything up.
Give them up.
I looked out the window, at the city outside the glass. Once I stepped out there, things were going to be so different.
They were going to be cold.
Dark.
Lonely.
Every day, I would be ravaged with guilt for not speaking the truth. For allowing Paulie’s murderer to roam the streets, the crime remaining unsolved. For being a coward.
I was no longer Kyle.
I was the person Anthony wanted me to be.
Twenty-Six
Kyle
Plastic—that was all I could taste. My tongue was so dry that it felt like it was made of paper. My teeth were fuzzy, like mold was growing over the enamel. I hoped this prison wouldn’t give me Breath’s teeth, his rotted gums, his rancid breath. I hoped that, whatever damage had been done, I’d be able to recover from it.
Because, maybe one day, I would get out of here. Breath would open the bars, and Garin and I would walk out with
…his hand clasped in mine, living the life I’d always wanted.
Why did that thought feel so familiar?
Why was I so groggy?
As I swam through the fog in my brain, it slowly started coming back to me, the very last memory I had. I’d told Breath that Anthony was the murderer…and then everything had turned to black.
Everything was still black. My eyes were closed, my lids feeling much too heavy to open. And there was beeping in my ears. Lots of high-pitched beeping…
Where was it coming from? That noise hadn’t been in our cell before.
But the differences didn’t stop there.
There was softness, too. The wool blanket we’d used as a pillow wasn’t this feathery. It had been hard, cement hard. Our bed was the same, but whatever was underneath me now was cozy, plush, delicate even. And it wasn’t cold in here, like it typically was in our cell. If anything, I was warm. Too warm. Sticky…hot.
It must have been from the needle that Breath had stuck in my neck. Those drugs he gave me always made me feel loopy. Garin had said it took at least a day for the meds to work their way out of my system.
Had it been a day?
A day since—
GARIN
.
More memories started to come back to me. Breath had slashed Garin’s entire body. Garin had barely been breathing. He needed help. He needed to go to a hospital. Breath promised he would take him but only if I confessed. Giving him that confession also meant…
“You’ll get the punishment you deserve. Confess and save Garin, or I’m going to kill you both. The choice is yours.”
I’d given him the confession.
Was this death?
Something still beeped not too far from my ear.
“What’s beeping?” The sound of my own voice surprised me. It was hoarse, a little deep. So scratchy.
“Relax, Kyle.”
Relax…Kyle?
I’d heard that voice before. It was the one I’d been hearing since I was put in that cell. It sounded like Garin but up until today it had been a little hazy and muffled. It wasn’t either of those now. It was clear.
“Kyle…”
“Garin?”
“I’m right here.”
I felt him squeeze my hand, but I still didn’t see him. My eyelids were too heavy to open just yet. Everything was heavy. My muscles ached; my skin tingled. Every thought felt like it needed to swim through a sea of peanut butter before it surfaced and actually made sense.
“I need to see you, Garin. I need to see how you’re healing. Did Breath make good on his promise? Did he take you to the hospital?”
“Just relax, Kyle. They gave you some heavy medication, so if you’re going to open your eyes, do it slowly.”
Was it heavier than what Breath had given me in the past? My lids certainly hadn’t felt this heavy before. My body definitely hadn’t felt this tingly.
“I thought that whatever Breath had put in that needle…I thought it was going to kill me,” I said.
I lifted my arm to try and cover my eyes, but it was hard to move. Something was around my wrist, and another something was attached to it.
Wires. It felt like wires.
I finally got my arm up and blocked out the light. Slowly, so slowly, I shifted it down to let in a little at a time. I took a breath after each shift.
A little bit of light and then a little bit of air.