The door unlocks with a soft click and Kai fills the doorway like a calm nightmare—bare feet, loose black sweats, hair tied back, dark eyes dragging over me slow and unforgiving.
Then that smirk. Slow, cruel and surgical. “Feeling tingly, golden boy?” he asks, voice smooth as a scalpel slidingacross skin.
I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. “You gonna fix it or not?!”
Kai tilts his head, eyes gleaming with professional interest. “Depends,” he murmurs, stepping aside. “Come in.”
Finn pushes me through the doorway, hands still gripping my arms until he’s sure I won’t face-plant. Kai’s container is nothing like mine. Not even close.
It’s clean. Stainless steel counters. Shelves lined with glass vials, pill bottles, powders sealed in labeled bags. Syringes in neat, perfect rows. Medical monitors, a cot, a sink, atray with alcohol wipes. It smells like antiseptic and quiet death.
I freeze in the center of the room, sweat dripping from my chin, shaking so hard I can barely stand. My eyes dart from vial to vial, needle to needle, like my body already knows which one it wants.
Kai closes the door behind us, then steps in front of me, one hand lifting my chin with two fingers, forcing my eyes up to his. “Tell me what you want.”
I swallow hard. “You know what I want.”
His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth, tilting my head slightly. “Oh, I do,” he purrs. “But I want to hear you say it.”
My breath shatters. hate myself for it, but I’m past pride. Past dignity. “I need a fix,” I whisper, voice breaking. “Please.”
Kai’s smile widens. “Beg.”
I stare at him, eyes burning, throat raw. Finn shifts behind me, silent now, watching like he wants to intervene but knows better.
My hands shake as I curl my fingers into the fabric of Kai’s shirt, pulling myself closer just to stay upright. “Please,” I choke out. “Kai, please—I’m losing my mind—I—please, please—just—give me something—anything—”
Kai leans in, lips near my ear, breath ghosting down my neck. “There it is,” he whispers. “Good boy.”
My stomach drops. And for the first time in days—I feel hope. Or something twisted enough to mimic it.
Kai’s fingers trail down my arm, stopping at my inner elbow, assessing veins, pressure points. But he still hasn’t picked up a needle.
Kai’s fingers are still on my arm, cool and precise, but suddenly something shifts—his face flickers, the sharp lines softening into something I know too well, something I can’t outrun even in the dark. Nathan’s jaw. Nathan’s mouth. Nathan’s fucking eyes, smug and calm and cruel, staring down at me like I never left his bed, like he still owns the air in mylungs. The room tilts sideways, sliding out from under me, and my breath catches in my throat so hard it hurts. For a second, I’m back in that locker room. Back in the moment everything ended. Back at the cubby. Back at the tape. Back in his hands.
I stagger back, hitting the counter with my hip, vision going white at the edges. “Shit—shit—make it stop—make it stop!” The words tear out of me raw and ripping, nothing controlled anymore, nothing sharp or clever—just panic twisted into sound. My heart is a fist squeezing itself to death. My skin is too tight. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t see anything excepthim.
Finn grabs me from behind, arms locking around my chest in a hold that’s meant to steady me but feels like another trap. I thrash anyway, uselessly, trying to shove myself backward out of my own body. His voice is by my ear, low and furious, snarled at Kai, but it’s all muffled, distorted, like I’m hearing it through water. The edges of everything blur—Finn’s grip, Kai’s silhouette, the room tilting like a sinking ship.
Kai doesn’t rush. He moves like he’s working on a corpse, calm and measured, opening drawers, selecting something small and clear and unmistakable. I see the glint of the vial for half a heartbeat before another wave of panic crashes into me and I’m clawing at my own arms again, trying to peel the hallucination off my skin. Finn’s hold tightens; I go slack, then thrash, then shake so violently my teeth clack together.
Kai steps in front of me, pushes my head to the side with a firm hand, finds a vein with terrifying ease, and drives the needle in. I don’t even know what it is. I don’t care. I just want Nathan’s face gone. I want silence. I want the static in my skull to stop tearing me apart. I want to stop feeling like I’m drowning in my own fucking memories.
The drug hits like a door slamming shut. Everything jerks once—vision, breath, heartbeat—then loosens, melts and blurs. The panic breaks first, then the shaking, then the edges of the world soften until I’m not fighting, not running, not breathing knives anymore. Finn’s arms become gravity instead of a cage. Kai’s hands become distant, cold shapes. Nathan’s face fractures into nothing.
The room steadies, my blood slows. And for the first time in days, the screaming stops.
My knees buckle and Finn goes down with me, catching my weight before I hit the concrete. We land in a heap, but he holds me steady, one arm locked around my ribs, the other braced behind my shoulders. He shifts until I’m half in his lap, half against his chest, and the motion is so gentle, so steady, it almost doesn’t fit the feral chaos I know he is.
My breath comes in harsh pulls at first, like I’ve been drowning and someone just ripped me to the surface. Finn rocks me without saying a word—slow, rhythmic. Hisheartbeat hammers against my ear, quick but steady, like he’s trying to lend me some of it. My head tips onto his shoulder, eyes dragging upward until they land on Kai, who’s standing over us with all the softness of a scalpel.
The panic dissolves in slow waves. The static clears. My chest stops caving in. A lazy smile creeps up on me. My muscles finally release. My fingers uncurl. The world stops trying to kill me for a second.
Kai crouches in front of us, elbows on his knees, dark eyes sharp and knowing. He tilts his head like he’s studying a specimen he just brought back from the edge. “Next time,” he says, voice low and maddeningly calm, “come before the hallucinations start.”
I blink at him, breath still ragged, brain floating somewhere pleasantly high and far away.
Kai reaches into a drawer, pulls out a small plastic bag filled with fine white powder and slips it into the pocket of my sweatpants with the delicate precision of someone placing a gift into a child’s hands. “Just enough,” he murmurs. “For tonight.”
