Page 208 of I’m The Worst

His throat bobs. “AJ. If you’re gonna shoot somebody…” he trails off, exhaling. “You point that gun at me.”

My eyes open.

He’s standing in the middle of my living room, rainwater dripping from his clothes, blood running down his arm in thin rivulets.

“I mean it. Put it on me.”

“You raped me.” My voice splinters. “You hurt Jackal… You…”

His entire face hardens. “It wasn’t me.”

“You’re lying.”

“I swear to⁠—”

“Stop lying!” I cry out.

“AJ, I never came here that night.”

“I saw you.”

“You saw my mask.”

“I screamed the safeword… our safeword… and you didn’t stop. You just kept…” My throat closes, the memory of his hand on my throat, choking me all over again.

His eyes squeeze shut for one impossible second, looking pained.

“It wasn’t me, AJ.”

“You expect me to believe that? After everything you said to me? You told me⁠—”

“I know. I know what I said.” His voice is rough, almost broken. “I know every fucking word. And I hate that I said them. But I’m telling you the truth.”

“So why are you here?!” I sob. “Why now? Why do you always come back after you’ve already broken me?” The room slowly starts to tilt. Vodka and too many pills catching up, my words and thoughts hazy. The gun suddenly feels impossibly heavy. “It doesn’t even matter. You could rape me a hundred more times…still wouldn’t matter. I don’t want to do this anymore… I can’t do this anymore.”

He inhales deeply, his eyes never leaving mine. “I was four minutes late.”

“…What?”

“There was a truck outside Novosibirsk.” He takes another slow step. “I missed it…missed you. By four minutes.” Rain drums against the roof so powerfully, I can barely hear him. “A motel in Omsk. The sheets were still warm when I got there.”

Another step.

“I watched a black-market stream long enough to hear the bidding start before the feed cut. I tracked the IP. Burned the building down. Cut three men open looking for where they’d taken you.”

Another step.

“The information was already two days old.”

I don’t understand… I don’t understand any of this. My chest tightens, breaths coming in shallow gasps. The gun wavers.

“I kept finding pieces of you. Your blood. The clothes they kept you in. Strands of your hair.” His throat works hard as he swallows. “Every room I walked into…was empty.”

Another step.

“Every time I thought I’d finally found you, I’d kick in another goddamn door, and you still wouldn’t be there.”

My hand starts shaking harder.