Page 23

Chapter 23

Benji Morrison

I wanted to bash my skull against the brick wall.

A homeless woman shouted obscenities a couple of feet away from me. She stumbled toward me, yelling about someone named Susie. A speeding car slammed on its horn and nearly took out three tourists crossing the street without paying attention. A baby screeched from its stroller as an exhausted mother walked past me.

Chaos.

Hurt.

Guilt.

Anger.

It was like I stood in the center of an emotional tornado. My entire body hurt, down to my very soul.

I betrayed Eli. His rage—it was palpable. It was like heat blasting out of a furnace. I wanted it to disintegrate me. I deserved it. I was a fucking creep, an obsessed fucking asshole. I didn’t deserve Eli. He was too good of a person. He had his shit together, he had a life to look forward to, he had a heart of solid gold, a smile that was as bright as the sun. And then there was me, lurking in the shadows of his life, watching him, falling for him before he even knew my first name.

I tightened my hands into fists, digging my nails into my palms.

I shouldn’t have drunk before meeting him.

I wanted another shot. If I couldn’t melt my brain against the pavement, then I’d do it by finding the bottom of a tequila bottle. I wanted to get so fucking drunk I’d wake up in two days not remembering any of this. Maybe that could ease some of the pain I currently felt. It would be enough to at least get me to the weekend, where I could drink myself back into the dark until Monday.

Next week, I’d start fresh. I could figure things out next week. I could maybe come up with a way to fix this. Was there a way to fix this? How would I ever be able to build up Eli’s trust again? I certainly was motivated to do it, but there were no guarantees he’d ever even talk to me again, much less trust me again.

“Fuck!” I shouted. The homeless woman lifted her head up from the trash can. “Sorry.”

She went back to digging through the trash, collecting plastic bottles and tossing them into the bag she carried with her.

I’d fix this somehow. I had to try.

But for now, I needed a drink.

I started walking toward the subway station. I wanted to get home—fast. The longer I stood outside of Eli’s apartment building, the more I was tempted to go back in there and try to make it right. I knew that he needed space, and I needed a miracle, but fuck, I just wanted another chance. Just one more chance to prove to him I wasn’t some psychotic monster. I was just a human who made a series of terrible judgment calls.

My chest still felt tight as I reached the entrance to the station. The idea of going underground, waiting on a crowded platform, pushing my way into a packed train, it made me sick.

Fuck the subway. I needed an Uber. I grabbed my phone and opened the app, about to order my car, when suddenly a text message popped up across the screen.

My heart skipped a beat for a split second. I assumed it was Eli inviting me back inside to talk things out.

It wasn’t. It was Damon.

Yeah, I can meet. I’m getting off work now.

I had to read the text twice. I hadn’t been expecting Damon to reply to my messages hounding him for a meeting. I’d gotten his number after messaging him on the streaming website. I wasn’t entirely truthful (surprise) about why I wanted to meet with him, but I didn’t want to scare him off, either. I told him I was a scout looking for new talent for a modeling agency.

He took the bait. He fucking took the bait. Now, I just had to reel him in.

Maybe this was how I got back into Eli’s good graces? If I unmasked the real Nomad and showed Eli I had his best interests at heart, then maybe, just maybe, I had a chance of fixing things.

Great! I’m also available now. Where would be a good place to meet?

Good. This was good. This could turn my day around. I just had to click back into investigative mode. My mind was currently being pulled in a hundred different directions—drink, Eli, Nomad, getting drunk, Damon, Eli, Nomad, vodka, tequila, beer, Nomad.

Nomad.

Nomad.

Damon.

Damon.

….

Holy shit.

Damon. His name. Backward.

Nomad.

No… it couldn’t have been right there, right in front of my face the entire time.

I’m just leaving work. I can meet at the High Line. I’ll drop my pin.

The High Line wasn’t exactly the place I expected to meet, but at this point, it didn’t matter. I just had to get to Damon. Question him. Figure out just who the fuck this man was and how I could stop him.

Damon. Nomad.

Fuck.

The weight of this hit me harder the second time. I wanted to laugh at how blatantly obvious it had been. This entire time, his username had been right there, mocking me. Taunting me. The urge to wrap my hands around his throat tightened my fingers into fists.

But I couldn’t let my anger derail me. I had to stay calm. I had to remember why I was here.

Eli.

I needed to fix this—for him.

My heart stung as it beat, the ache growing deeper with every thought of Elijah’s face when he found out the truth. The hurt in his eyes was more painful than most things I’d experienced in my life, and I’d experienced some fucked-up shit.

I opened the pin Damon had sent me. He wasn’t too far.

I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.

I took a shaky breath and walked toward the curb, where I ordered an Uber and rode it through rush-hour traffic. The car smelled as if the driver had been chauffeuring a fucking corpse. I lowered the window and got hit with a blast of exhaust from the truck in front of us. I couldn’t get out of that Uber fast enough.

The late-afternoon sky was painted with shades of darkening lavender and orange. There was a beauty to the city at this time of day that really couldn’t be matched. The tall towers of glass and stone were lit up like torches, reflecting the last dying light of the day. The energy on the streets was also different, with people walking home from work with grocery bags or clicking their heels down the street on the way to happy hour.

I walked along the wooden planks until I saw him.

Damon sat on a bench, silhouetted against the sky. He wore a blue Yankees hoodie and ripped jeans and looked tense, his shoulders hunched forward. He spotted me and stood up, his expression shifting from wary to friendly as though he’d put on a mask.

“You Benji?” He sounded different in person, his tone higher-pitched. It was a surprising contrast to the heavier, bass-filled tone he used when he streamed.

“Yeah, thanks for meeting,” I replied. My pulse pounded inside my head. Everything I’d been going through could be culminating in this very moment. Damon could have all the answers we were looking for. I just had to crack him, had to play this right.

He narrowed his eyes. “You said something about a modeling gig? You scouting people off cam sites now?”

I decided to keep my cover going. For now. “Exactly. You’ve got the look.”

He scoffed but looked intrigued. Good.

“You been streaming for long?” I asked, studying him. I needed proof before I did anything drastic.

“Long enough.” Damon shrugged, flashing me a crooked smile. He really wasn’t bad-looking, although an actual modeling career may not have been in his future, but a restraining order and possible jail time? That was a different story. “Sorry I didn’t come more prepared. I’m taking my headshots next week.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I sat down on the bench and he followed my lead.

How could I fish this out of him? “To be transparent with you, you aren’t the first person I contacted off the website. I’ve also reached out to a few other models. There’s one who’s made it to the final rounds of casting, and we want you to do a chemistry test with him.” This was complete improv, but Damon appeared to be buying it.

“Is this for a commercial? TV show?”

“I’ll tell you a bit more once we get closer to the audition. For now, I want to know if you would work well with him. EliGoldStroke is his username.” I watched his face for any changes. He remained surprisingly neutral.

“I think we would get along. I mean, I’ve never met him in person. Just interacted with him a couple of times.”

He wasn’t exactly lying, but that wasn’t the full truth, either. Damon had interacted with Eli far more than just a “couple of times.” I had to push a little harder. “We’ve already chatted with him. He says that you two have a history but wouldn’t expand. And we really like your look, so we wanted to just make sure things were clear.”

He paused and started to bite his nails. “I mean… I guess? This is feeling a little invasive, honestly. Is this even part of the audition?”

Fuck. He was starting to catch on. Of course he was. I was drunk and emotionally drained, my mind fired on zero cylinders. I came unprepared. I fucked up. I was a terrible fucking detective.

I had to try and salvage this.

I had to cut straight to the chase.

“So you haven’t been stalking Eli through burner accounts named Nomad, then? Because the obsessive chats on different message boards, the long articles written about him, the DMs you sent to him asking him to collab first, then turning on him, all of that isn’t real? That’s a clever name, by the way. Did you pick it randomly?”

He hesitated, thick black brows slamming together. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s just interesting. It’s Damon spelled backwards, right?”

His expression hardened. I saw a spark of anger ignite behind his eyes. “Who the fuck are you, really?”

“Someone who’s done playing games,” I said, voice dropping dangerously low. My own anger was barely contained beneath the surface. Eli’s hurt face flashed before me, reigniting my rage. “Were you at the Broadway theater the night of the bomb threat?”

Damon’s eyes widened with shock, then narrowed with defensive fury. “What the fuck are you talking about? Broadway? Bomb threat? Are you insane?”

My chest was tight and breathing shallow. “Answer the fucking question.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snapped. “What night are you even talking about?”

“Last week. Sunday.” I clenched my fists, trying to stop the ground from spinning, both from anger and alcohol.

“I was streaming that night. I always stream on Sundays. Check my damn channel. Why the fuck would I even bother with a bomb threat?”

“Because you’re jealous of Eli. Jealous he’s always at the top. Jealous he’s got everything you don’t. And even though you’re jealous, you also want him. And now that you see he’s happy with someone else, you want to ruin that. It’s classic stalker behavior.”

He laughed bitterly, shaking his head. “You’ve got some serious fucking issues, man. I don’t like Eli, sure. He’s fucking annoying, always acting so goddamn perfect. But calling in a bomb threat? Hell fuck no.”

My jaw clenched, frustration mounting. Damon was clearly a dick, but his denial felt genuine. If he was lying, he was doing a damn good job.

“Go ahead,” Damon continued, pulling out his phone and shoving it toward me. “Check the timestamp. Check my stream history. I’ve got receipts, asshole.”

I snatched the phone from his hand and scrolled quickly, confirming exactly what Damon claimed. The time stamps matched. He’d been online, streaming, exactly when the bomb threat was called in.

Damon wasn’t Nomad. I’d gotten it wrong again.

“Fuck,” I muttered, handing him back his phone.

“Yeah, exactly. Fuck off.” Damon rose sharply and stormed off, leaving me sitting alone, feeling more lost than ever.

My phone buzzed. My heart leapt briefly before sinking again.

Not Eli.

A notification from a liquor store offering me a discount on tequila. Perfect.

I sat there for a long time, letting the dread and disappointment wash over me like an oil slick. I went from feeling on top of the world to being crushed by it.

At some point in the haze, I stood up and walked to the nearest subway station, body on autopilot.

I had one singular goal in mind.

Back at my apartment, I skipped the glass entirely, opening the tequila and chugging straight from the bottle. It burned beautifully, numbing everything inside of me. I collapsed onto my couch, the room already spinning. Eli’s eyes haunted me, the betrayal in his gaze slicing deeper than any blade could.

I’d failed him. Again.

The bottle clinked loudly as I set it down. I stared at the ceiling until it blurred, from tears or from the tequila, I wasn’t entirely sure.

I’d let him down. I’d ruined everything we were building together. I was the one person he felt he could trust. This rift—I never intended it. Never saw it coming.

Lucky leapt onto the couch. He curled into my side, rested his head on my lap.

Tomorrow, I’d figure something out. Tomorrow, I’d try to win Eli back.

Tonight, I’d sink into the black.