37. Nia

37

NIA

The social worker is an asshole with no empathy, making me wonder if, one day, I'll become desensitized to the very people I want to help once I'm in my field.

It's the first time I've had a thought about my future since…

Since finding out about Lonnie.

I've held myself in a permanent state of limbo ever since, unsure if my place was here in Devil Town or if I was ready to bolt once more and start new.

Discharge takes hours, and by the time Cat has me in the passenger seat of her car again, it's dark. "What time is it?" I ask her.

"One in the morning," she says, sliding the key into the ignition.

"What day is it?" I ask the better question, my teeth starting to chatter, and while I'm convincing myself it's from the brisk chill of the night wind, I'm not stupid.

I'm already withdrawing now that the Narcan has run its course.

"Sunday now," she tells me.

"It was Slam Night." The realization is meant to be internal, but it comes out of my mouth anyway.

She missed a bout.

"Let's get you home, Nia," she says, as if the rest isn't important.

She says it like I have a home.

Fighting her words is an impossible task. The leather collar still grips at my neck, proof that, without her, I can't even undo what we've become.

I don't know what we've become, so I lean my head on the window and wish the thoughts away.

It doesn't work.

I'm standing awkwardly at the door, unsure where to go from here. She's already in the kitchen doing whatever Cat Harvey thing is next on her never-ending list of things to get done.

There's an entire planet between us, hundreds of conversations we haven't had yet, a galaxy of things we've both shattered that need mending.

But all I want is to be held by her again.

No—all I want is for her to want to hold me again.

She's wiping the counters, clearly amped-up from dealing with my shit all day, and it's running through her now like three cups of coffee.

"Harvey?" I say her name, but it's quiet. I'm not fully sure myself that I want her to hear me.

The emptiness inside of me finally explodes.

I drop to my knees, only to brace myself with my casted hand—a new, searing pain reminding me of the giant crack splitting along the side of the plastic. I'm hyperaware of every single ache and throb in my body, and this one is no joke.

The thing with Bobby is already a fuzzy memory in my mind, but the break in the cast reminds me that it might have saved my life.

That's when I piece together that it took no time for the same environment I had safely grown up in to turn hostile. The difference? Ryan Lee. His name scratches at my throat now that I know it in its entirety. Ryan Lee Harvey.

Seeing them there, in the room together, I don't know how I didn't see it before. They could have been twins, with just a slight difference of hair color and the scruff on his chin to set them apart.

It makes the guilt I'm already drowning in even more unbearable to swim through.

"Cat," I call to her once more, this time a little louder.

When she finally turns to me, she freezes.

"No." Her voice is harsh, and it stings.

She's walking towards me, and I swallow a hard lump, waiting for her on my knees. "There's no point in doing this," she waves her hand over me, "if you're just going to self-destruct every time things get hard."

"You lied to me," I remind her, still staying on my knees.

I wanna scratch, I need to puke, and I can tell I'm three words away from tears falling.

It doesn't matter.

I have to heal this.

She squats with one knee on the ground as she looks me over, the disappointment on her face is so fucking sobering that if the naloxone hadn't already done it, she could. She reaches toward my neck, like she's gonna take the collar off.

I slap her hand out of the way with my cast, wincing at the sharp pain, my teeth clenched when the words come out. "You said I'm yours until I throw it at your feet." Her eyebrows raise, and she pulls her hand back with a nod.

"Do you trust me?" she asks, like nothing else matters but that.

"No." It's the truth; there's no point in lying. "But that doesn't mean I don't want to figure this out."

"Because you have no other option?" She's defensive, and I deserve it.

I still laugh anyway, as if I'm not the one in control of my mouth. "I always have an option. That's the thing about me, babe." I throw the nickname at her the same way she uses it with me. "I'm resilient. I don't need you," I remind her.

Hating that I'm already going to that dark place, but unable to stop myself when I'm there. The jabs, the hurting her so I can ignore what's hurting me—but I'm also not wrong. I've survived everything that has been shoved my way; what was once my biggest fears are now monsters slain at my feet.

"Stop it." She's grabbing at my face, holding my cheeks in her hands. "Just let me fucking love you." Her voice cracks as she pulls me into her chest.

I fall into her, enveloped into her grandness once again, and the overwhelming hot light in my head finally dims, even if it's just for a little bit. I'm sobbing, but I can feel her shaking too.

"I ruin everything good," I warn her between hiccups.

"Who said I was anything good?" Her words are muffled, her mouth pressed to my temple, every part of her body touching mine, like she can't get closer, but wants to try.

I pull away, just enough to look at her face again, before I speak. "I'm not a hyperfixation. Some day, you might just have to accept that you can't fix me."

"Fix you?" she asks, a small smile on her face, like she can't believe what I just said. "You were never broken."

I wish I could believe her.

"You sure this isn't just your next hobby?" The wounded look on her face makes me almost regret what I've said, but I need to know.

We need to do this. All of it.

She shakes my shoulder like she's trying to knock some sense into me. "Just the same way that I'm sure you aren't meant to be an addict. You're lost. We all get a little lost in the dark, Ant?nia. Even me."

"Even you?" I laugh a little in disbelief.

She's the perfect picture of composed, organized, kept together. She's everything I could never be, and that's when I remember who her brother is, what growing up with that might do to someone. But maybe we're more alike than I realized, it makes sense. Everything that she does is a coping mechanism.

Overcompensating to prevent the past from repeating.

"You will never get past this, not until you let yourself grieve for Lonnie." Each word hits like a six-foot blocker and leaves a sweltering bruise.

She's right. We wear the same cuts, but a wound never heals the same twice.

I'm just not sure I'm ready to feel the full impact of that pain.

No choice.

I'll be feeling everything in:

three

two

one.

The rush of nausea comes so fast, I'm borderline violent pushing her off me. With a higher power on my side, I make it to the bathroom, the shirt stuck to my back from sweat and saliva pooling at my mouth as I hold back the next wave. Nothing but bile comes out. I'm scrambling, grabbing at every piece of fabric glued to me. Pulling the shirt over my head, I toss it behind me, ripping the sleeve when it snags on the sharp, exposed pieces of my broken cast. I'm shuffling my socks off and trying the same with the pants, so uncomfortable inside my own skin that all I can do is take things off, take things off until all that's left is me.

But I can't take me off me, and it's goddamn agony to be trapped in this body.

I lay on my side, pulling my knees into my chest, the cool bathroom tile somehow soothing just enough for me to close my eyes, but there's no urge to sleep. I shake—not from cold, not from hunger, not from fear. I just shake.

Because it's all my body can do.

Naked.

On the floor.

Of her bathroom.

The remainder of my dignity down the toilet.

A sliver of hope somehow still remains in the shape of a tiny bag of powder I've hidden in a jeans pocket.

That feeling turns into self-loathing, and I despise myself for knowing that I will use it. It doesn't matter what she does. I've never gone this far, never walked so far into the tunnel, and now, it's too dark for me to see how long of a walk back it is to get out. There is no light on the other side.

I keep walking toward the luring abyss anyway.

My muscles clench and release painfully as I crunch into a smaller ball.

I try to disappear.

I want my fucking mom.

The thought is worse than a pill, worse than the powder, and twice as lethal as both combined. Calling her at my lowest only proves everything she's been saying all along.

I don't grow up.

"Nia?" Harvey's voice is soft outside the door.

"No." I drag the word out with a pathetic whine.

The last thing I want is for her to see me like this.

"Can I come in?" Harvey's voice has never been so gentle, so tender, and it only worsens the pressure bubbling inside me.

Guilt.

"Please don't." It feels like a sob, but I think I'm too dehydrated to actually cry.

"Nia." It feels as if she's right there beside me, but I know she's not.

"I just—" It's pathetic and weak and I don't have the energy to finish.

She opens the door anyway and drops to her knees, bringing me into her lap and cradling me in her arms like I'm not this disgusting, sweaty thing.

"I'm gonna take over now, okay?" she says, smoothing my hair out of my face in a way that almost forces me to look up at her.

Cat Harvey is the entire universe. I've known it all along, from the first time I saw her. I think I saw her in my dreams when I laid in that hospital, my brain broken and unsure if it wanted me to come back to this.

What a wasted chance.

Lonnie should have had this, not me.

I'm sobbing in her arms again like the pathetic fucking shit I am. She's moving slowly, unwrapping me and peeling me off her as she comes back to a stand. "What's going to make you comfortable?"

My face is leaking from every possible crevice, my entire body hurts, and I'm nearly positive that if I had eaten in the last twenty-four hours, I'd be in a pool of my own liquid shit.

"Nothing," I manage to groan out, but I'm not sure it's even audible.

Breathing takes effort.

I should have died.

I'd been saying the words like a thankful prayer for weeks now, gratitude to whatever deity could hear me for letting me survive that crash.

I should have died.

I should have died when my car wrapped around that tree and my brain almost came spilling out of the side of my head.

I should have died.

Maybe this is what happens when we cheat fate. Maybe the universe is just righting the course and putting me back on my path.

I should have died.

Except the words are no longer a call for thanks, but an angry rupture, the feeling of missing what was destined for me. I should have died. Maybe my death guaranteed Lonnie's life. I robbed them of it when it was meant to be theirs.

I'm so lost in my thoughts, I don't notice she turned the shower on and is sitting on the edge of the tub, staring at me. There's so much kindness in her eyes, and it only makes it worse.

The sobbing is beyond ugly, every piece of me picked raw by my own nails. "Why are you doing this?"

Falling for Cat becomes the largest obstacle in my path.

Because I see what I'm doing to myself reflected in her.

"Doing what?" She's upset too, in her own right. I can hear it in her voice.

"Why are you bothering? You could have just had the rink." I look up to see her eyes narrowed on my throat.

At the collar.

She reaches out and tugs at the loop, pulling me just a hair toward her. "I didn't lie when I said you were mine," she says in a hushed tone. "I fucked up. So bad. I didn't tell you in the beginning because I didn't know you, didn't trust you, and then I hated you." She laughs, but it's a nervous kind of laugh. "Then I thought I could take away the need to tell you, and it wasn't because I was trying to keep Skateland from you, Nia."

Her hands reach behind my neck, and finally, she undoes the buckle and removes the leather from my neck. It's been on for at least three days now. My hands reach up to soothe, but hers are there first, caressing the sides of my throat with thumbs that gently graze my jaw.

"I made a bad call because I let my history with my brother interfere with how I treated you and how I saw you. You deserved to know the minute you came back. I'll apologize for that until the day I die if it keeps you next to me."

Somehow, her saying sorry only makes me feel worse. Undeserving.

She picks me up as if I'm nothing and places me inside the tub. It's the shower that's running, the water the perfect temperature, and with me on the ground, it's just gentle enough for my sore body to tolerate. The comfort it provides me is short, and soon, the room is filled with hot, dense steam, and the nausea hits me again.

My breathing turns shallow, rapid, and I close my eyes, hugging my knees to my chest with my head under the water.

"Is it too much?" Cat asks like she's in my head, opening the door again.

She swings it open and shut a few times, like she's fanning out some of the steam, and the rush of cold air is exactly what I need to settle back into my body. Some of my muscles unclench from the warmth, and for a second, I feel relief.

"I can't do this." It's meant to be internal, but there's no filter anymore.

"You can." She says it like I haven't proved her wrong before, her confidence a fifty pound sledgehammer shattering my humiliated pieces.

"I should have died, Cat." I don't know which time I mean. This time, that time. At this point, I'm simply acknowledging I've lived past my expiration date.

She cuts me a look through hardened eyes, the line of her jaw becoming more pronounced as she clenches her teeth. Within a few seconds, she pulls her shirt over her head, and her pants are on the floor. The sight of Harvey in nothing but a sports bra and boxers has become top three in my head, but even right now, it's just a reminder that I'm not worthy of her.

Stepping into the stream of the shower, she pulls me into her lap, and I melt in the comfort of her hold. I close my eyes, but I feel her tug at my chin, the same cold look still plastered to her face as her gaze burns into me. "Is that what this was?"

I don't answer. I know I don't need to. When I try to shift my gaze, lower my chin, anything to escape the pain of her stare, she instead holds tighter, then speaks. "If you go, I'll go too."

That's all she says.

But that's all it takes.

"In my backpack," I tell her, watching the way her eyebrows scrunch in confusion. "The rest of it."

She squeezes me hard, like I've just given her the world back.

Maybe I have.