Saving Quinton (Nova #2)(67)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

Her eyes are filled with horror. “Quinton, I—”

“Get in your f**king car and go, Nova!” I shout venomously. “Leave, like I’ve been telling you to do from the start!”

She starts to cry, tears rolling down her cheeks, and I want to comfort her, but I know it’ll make things worse if I do.

“I’ll be fine,” I say in a low voice. “I’m going to go pay this guy back and then everything’s going to be fine.” I feel like such a dick for lying to her, but I’m doing what I have to to get her away from this.

“But how will I know if you’re okay?” she asks, glancing at the guy.

“I still have your number and I’ll call you later,” I tell her, touching my back pocket, where the piece of paper with the phone number on it rests inside my wallet. “I promise.” Another lie, but I don’t feel bad because I can see in her eyes that it works.

She leans forward and gives me a kiss on the mouth. I barely kiss her back, even though I desperately want to. But I make myself hold on to the image of Lexi, like I should have been doing the entire time—make myself suffer for loving Nova and putting her into this mess.

Everything is all my fault.

“This is all your fault,” Ryder’s dad says to me while her mother sobs in the background. “Dammit, you shouldn’t have been driving that car so damn fast.”

My dad stands in the background, watching him yell at me, letting him vent, because everything he says is right. It is my fault. I was driving too fast. “Why couldn’t you have just driven slower?” he asks, and then he starts to cry, sorrow haunting his face, and even though I want to cry, I don’t because I don’t deserve to. I don’t get to hurt like they’re hurting, because I put the hurt there.

I caused this.

As Nova drives away, I feel strangely calm, sedated, dead inside. I turn to Donny, who’s waiting for me just a few strides away. I could run, out into the desert or down the street. But then I’d be bailing out on Tristan. I’ve already f**ked up on paying Lexi back for killing her, the last thing I need to do is f**k up on paying Ryder back.

So I follow Donny upstairs, listening to him ramble about what he’ll do if I mess this up. Maybe if I weren’t crashing so badly, I’d feel the pain of what lies ahead for me a little bit more. I’m only half focused on it, the need to get a hit or two taking up the other part of my mind. But when I step inside the apartment, reality sort of just crashes over me, like a violent waterfall. The entire place is trashed, even more than it normally is. There’s broken glass all over the floor, holes in the walls, the table in the kitchen has been tipped over, along with the sofas, like someone went on a rampage.

I can also hear loud crying in one of the back rooms and a lot of banging. It sounds like someone is being tortured.

I glance at Donny, who’s still got his tire iron out. “Where’s Tristan?”

A sly grin curves up on his face. “I’ll tell you just as soon as you show me where the drugs are.”

More violent water crashes over me because I think they’ve already done something to Tristan. The water’s about to push me down, bury me alive. Yet I somehow keep walking, keep breathing, keep living this piece-of-shit life.

Donny follows me down the hallway and toward my room. I pause beside Delilah’s door, the crying and banging coming from the other side.

“Your friend Dylan gave up his girlfriend pretty easy to get himself out of this mess,” Donny says, nodding toward the door. “Something you maybe should have considered.”

I force back the vomit in my throat as the crying gets louder and louder, then suddenly stops. How did I get to this place? How did I think living this life would be better than being dead?

Donny nudges me along and I go into my room, feeling this strange numbness wash over me, like my mind’s trying to shut down. As I’m getting the crystal out from under my mattress, I notice that a small area of my roof has caved in, right where the water stain used to be, and now there’s a giant hole in its place. Everything’s falling apart and I don’t want to fix it anymore.

I get what crystal I have left and toss it to Donny. “Here you go.”

He catches it and then stares down at the small quantity in his hand. “Are you f**king kidding me? You said you had a few ounces.” He holds up the bag. “This is barely a f**king line.”

I shrug. “I guess I miscalculated how much I had.”

He clutches the bag in one hand and the tire iron in the other. “You said you knew where Dylan’s stash was.”

“I lied.” I’m surprisingly composed.

He stares at me for a moment, baffled that I’d screw him over, although I have no idea why, since that’s what everyone seems to do to everyone else around here. His bafflement shifts to anger, his face tinting red as he raises the tire iron to hit me. I’m disappointed that he doesn’t grab the gun, because it’d be over more quickly. But instead he hammers his fist into my face. I don’t even flinch as he collides with my jaw. When I fall to the floor, I don’t get up, even when he kicks me in the rib cage repeatedly, steps on my hand, stomps on my face, asking me why I seem to enjoy getting my ass kicked. I keep waiting for him to pull the gun out, but he never does. I wonder if he knows just how much I want this to all be over, that that’s why I don’t run. Maybe he can see it in my eyes that I want to die and that by not killing me he’s making this even more painful. I don’t know, but what I do know is that when he walks away without killing me, I feel disappointed. I lie there for a while on the floor before I finally sit up, my lip bleeding, my whole body feeling exactly how it did the first time Donny beat me up.

After a while Delilah appears in my doorway. Her shirt ripped and her shorts unbuttoned. Her face is smeared with mascara, her lip is split open, and large welts cover her arms and thighs.

“You should go,” she says numbly. “Dylan’s not going to let you walk out of here breathing, if you’re here when he gets back.”

I put one of my hands down on the floor and ungracefully push myself to my feet, my body aching in protest. “Where is he?” I ask, hunching over.

She shrugs, her face emotionless. “He took off after he offered me up, but I’m sure he’ll be back.”

I brace my hand on the wall for support, feeling sorry for her. “Do you need any help with anything?” It sounds so lame when she looks so broken and I can barely stand.