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All my struggles. All my desires. All that wasted time.
I’d never see Neri again. Never find happiness with her or learn how to hide from this soul-sucking shadow that hunted me.
I was dead, and there was nothing I—
“Evening.”
I jerked out of my bleak desolation and licked my dry lips. “Evening.” Splinters of self-preservation made me rush, “Eh, did I do something wrong, officer?”
“Why? Did you do something wrong?” The youngish cop cocked his head, his police issued baseball cap catching the blue and red flashing lights. He might be young, but he was shrewd, and he studied me intently.
The first frissons of fear wracked down my spine.
I’d dealt with police before.
I knew their mind games and tricks to make you trip.
I might be already dead, but I wouldn’t make it easy for him.
“Not at all. Just...just picking up a friend.”
“Have you been drinking tonight?”
“No.”
Holding up a black device with a tiny screen and funnel out the side, he commanded, “Count to ten directly into the breathalyser.”
My hands shook as my heart finally got the fucking memo that I was one wrong answer away from never seeing Neri again. It took all my control to keep my voice stable as I did as he commanded. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”
The many numbers I’d learned in different languages echoed in my head. Thanks to the app I’d been using, I’d mastered quite a few. But now it seemed I’d learned too many as my head swam with digits.
My mind felt crowded. Thick. Sick. Foggy.
Stark fear crawled through the blanket of my depression, feeding me images of Neri.
Of her smiling. Laughing. Swimming.
Of the way she used to touch me, watch me, want me.
My chest tightened. Agony lanced through my ribs.
I sucked in a thin breath as my heart stuttered and failed.
Could a twenty-one-year-old guy die of a heart attack?
If I ran from this cop before he could arrest me, was it better to die with a bullet in my back or die where Neri would never know what happened? Would Australia be a better tomb or Turkey?
The longer I sat there, the more I struggled with syrupy sadness and savage salvation.
I didn’t want to die.
I didn’t want to keep feeling this way.
I wanted to live.
I wanted Neri.
I want—
