Page 6 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

I shift my gaze, and that’s when I see the tiny bag of coke sitting there. Waiting. Daring me. Whispering the same promise the powder always does: escape. Oblivion in powdered form.

I’ve thought about it more times than I can count. One breath. One goddamn sniff. And I’d be gone.

No more pain.

No more past.

Drowning in the same hollow, fucked-up world that’s already swallowed him whole.

Some nights, the weight almost passes for mercy.

To stop the fighting. To stop clawing at the walls when every path out of here, leads straight back to him.

I want to let the rot crawl into my bones, let the numbness smother everything until I don’t have to feel, don’t have to remember all the shit that’s been done to me.

Let it pull me under until I disappear completely.

No more screaming in my head. No more bruises I can’t cover.

No more waking up and wishing I hadn’t. Where I don’t have to be me anymore.

But then, always, without fail, Nate’s face cuts through the dark. And suddenly, I can’t.

Nate, my best friend, my anchor.

The only person who knows the truth. Every bit of the story. Who’s seen me broken, bleeding, wrecked and never once looked away. He doesn’t flinch at the bruises. Doesn’t pretend the scars don’t exist. He just stares straight through the mess and looks at me like I’m still worth something.

That’s why he’s the only thing that feels real.

The only thing that cuts through the static.

He’s my out when it all gets too loud. My grip on the edge when I’m one breath from letting go.

He’s my escape… my fucking lifeline. The last thread holding me above water while everything else drags me under.

Nate’s the one who tells me I’m more than this. More than the shit my father beat into me. More than the rage I’ve swallowed. All the blood I’ve choked down and the numbness I’ve learned to live with.

So I fight, because of him.

Even when it fucking hurts.

Because Nate is the only thing keeping me from shattering.

A fist bangs hard on the front door—the kind of knock that doesn’t ask. It slices through the room, straight down my spine, leaving the air strung tight and ready to snap.

Another follows.

Louder.

Meaner.

The door jumps in its frame as if it’s barely holding back the storm behind it.

I freeze. Breath caught. Muscles locked.

That sound isn’t just noise; it’s a fucking warning. And I feel the vibration everywhere. In my chest. My teeth. My bones.

I see him flinch. Quick. Subtle. That split-second crack in his mask. A flicker of panic in his bloodshot eyes before something colder rolls in and buries it. He knows and so do I that someone’s here to collect.

And in that sick, twisted mind of his, I know the decision’s already made. I’m not a son. I’m a fucking transaction. The debt. The payment.

There’s some hollow-eyed, desperate bastard on the other side of that door, broken in all the worst ways, and he’s about to throw me straight at them.

Some of them didn’t want me.

Some did. The ones who liked little boys.

Their hands, voice and God their fucking eyes.

They still live inside me, buried in my skin like splinters I can’t dig out.

Crawling. Infecting. Rotting. They steal the air from my lungs.

Poison the silence. Hijack every quiet moment and twist it into something filthy.

No matter how many times I drag my nails down my arms, across my throat, over my chest, scratching, clawing, trying to scrape them off. I never come out clean. Never come out free. Their dirt stays. Their stains are too fucking deep.

Now I know exactly why he dragged me back. He fucked up, and he was certain only a matter of time remained before someone came knocking. The guys he owes are done playing nice. Empty promises and blood-stained IOUs don’t cut it anymore.

He needed someone to toss to the wolves when they arrived.

“Stay the fuck there,” he snarls, and before I can blink, he shoves me.

My body jerks sideways, useless against the force, and my head whips back before cracking against the hardwood of the coffee table with a sick thud.

Pain bursts through my skull like a flashbang. It’s white-hot, disorienting, shooting down my spine, locking up every nerve like I’ve been short-circuited. I’m gasping, blinking, trying to stop myself from slipping under, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ache.

Every instinct inside me roars to move.

To crawl.

To drag myself to the fucking window and disappear before that door gets kicked in and it’s too late. My fingers twitch. My lungs stutter. Everything in me begs to run.

But I don’t.

Because I already see how this ends. There’s no getting out. No fighting back. No waking up. Only me on the floor, waiting for the next monster to walk through that door.

So I stay down. And I do the only thing I’ve got left.

I fucking pray that today isn’t the day he hands me over again. That I don’t get shoved into the arms of another fucking monster with dead eyes and hungry hands. That I don’t lose whatever fight is still flickering inside me as I think of Nate.

Please let me survive this. One more time. That’s all I’m asking.

The pounding gets worse.

Louder, more intense, each one hits like a fucking gunshot.

My breath seizes in my chest, pulse thundering in my ears as my father storms toward the door like he’s ready to rip it off the hinges. I stay down. Frozen. Muscles pulled tight, every part of me wired and shaking.

The door bursts open.

I don’t move. I can’t.

That’s when I see him.

Wes. Nate’s dad.

And I’m torn between crying and crawling toward him.

He barrels in like a fucking storm. Wild and unstoppable, too big for these rotting walls to hold. The second he steps inside, the air shifts, like the entire room knows who’s in charge now.

My chest loosens like I’ve been drowning for years and finally broke the surface.

“Where the fuck is he?” Wes roars, voice burning with a rage that doesn’t whisper or simmer. The fury devours. The fire wraps around everything, swallowing the fear, the silence, the stench of control.

And for the first time in a long fucking time, I’m not the one who’s scared. He is.

Wes is a force of nature—a wall of muscle and ink, his tattoos screaming stories no one dares to ask about.

Violence. Survival. Shit, you don’t come back from clean.

You feel it before he speaks. He doesn’t need to raise his voice to own a room.

The ink, the scars, the weight of everything he’s survived — it speaks louder than any words ever could.

I’ve never told him what goes on behind these walls.

Never let a word slip. But I think he knows.

Maybe he’s seen the truth—in the way I flinch when someone moves too fast, in the bruises I try to laugh off like they don’t mean shit.

Maybe he hears the cracks in the way I go quiet when I should speak.

How my voice never carries the way it’s supposed to.

Or perhaps this place is to blame. This whole fucking neighborhood full of cowards who know exactly what happens here and do nothing.

They turn away. Whisper behind locked doors.

Pretend the screams are TV static; the bruises nothing more than bad luck.

They’re too scared to cross the man who’s kept me caged my whole life.

But not Wes.

Wes doesn’t flinch.

He walks straight into the fire like he’s been waiting for this moment his whole goddamn life.

My eyes snap from Wes’s fury to the doorway where Nate stands. His face is tight, shoulders tense, worry carved into every line. His eyes find mine, and in that split second, I know.

He told him.

Nate told Wes everything. Laid it all bare, every sick, fucked-up thing my father’s done, and the reasons as to why he probably dragged me back here.

For once, I’m not ashamed. I’m not small. Not some broken fucking secret.

I just feel… relief. Like I can finally breathe, and now I don’t have to carry this weight alone anymore.

My father steps into Wes’s path, puffed up and pretending he can stop him. As if he’s some immovable force instead of the pathetic, worthless piece of shit he’s always been. But he doesn’t stand a chance.

Not against Wes who doesn’t even blink. His arm swings out, shoving my father so hard his knees buckle, and he crumples to the floor in a graceless heap of shit. No fight. No power. Just a man who was never as strong as he pretended to be.

“Come on, son.” Wes’s voice is steady. Solid. Iron in a place built on splinters. His hand wraps around my arm, firm but careful, and pulls me to my feet like I’m something worth holding onto instead of some broken thing meant to be thrown away.

For the first time, there’s something solid beneath my feet. Something that isn’t cruel. It’s safe.

Wes has never treated me as if I’m nothing.

Not once has he ever made me feel like I was only the fallout of someone else’s fuck-up, the scraps left behind in a life I didn’t choose.

With Wes, there’s no flinching, no pretending.

Only this solid presence that makes it harder to keep pretending I don’t need it.

Around him, I’m not merely the bruises or the silence I carry.

I’m something more than I ever thought I could be.

“He’s not your fucking son!” My father’s words slur, thick with rage and the stink of cheap booze, his breath curling in the air like poison. His eyes are wild, burning with a fury that’s all show-because deep down, he knows the truth. He’s a coward. He has always been. All bark, no fucking bite.

He staggers forward, still pretending he has a shot at stopping this, but Wes tightens his hand around my arm, a silent promise, solid as steel, and then he moves.

Pushes right past my father like he’s not even there.

As if the pathetic, washed-out bastard blocking the doorway is nothing more but a shadow.