Page 119 of Shrapnel

“I’m…this is me pulling off the Band-Aid, ok? There’s no going back after this.” Jamie warned.

Owen made a ripping motion with his hand. “I’ve been warned.”

“It’s like…after I ran away for the second time everything was too much. I couldn’t cope. so I just shut it all out.”

“You turned off your trauma?”

Jamie winced. “I hate that word,” he muttered. “It’s more like I turnedeverythingoff. Like a light switch. If I couldn’t see anything, it couldn’t hurt me. And it worked for a while.”

“But you missed it.”

He shrugged, looking up at the ceiling. “I guess. One day it was just so quiet. So empty. I realized I couldn’t get back when I’d turned off. When I killed I could kind of feel it again, feel like I was alive. Sex, too.”

Owen snuggled in a little closer, sliding his arm around Jamie’s chest. “The sex stopped working?”

Jamie turned to him, his wet hair falling across eyes Owen could never quite pinpoint. They shifted so much that they were like a funhouse mirror, he never knew if they were showing the whole truth.

“I found something better.”

It took a moment to realize Jamie meant him. “M-Me?”

That crooked smile returned. That smile that Owenknewwas real. If Jamie’s eyes lied, if his words were half-truths hidden behind stupid jokes, that smile was it.

“You said I made you feel safe, but Owen, you make me feel.”

He wasn’t sure who started the kissing. It was slow but not tentative. Owen just knew he needed to kiss that smile. Their last kiss had been about comfort, and maybe this one was too. But it was more. A kiss because they wanted to.

There was no space between them now—not for doubts, not for insecurities, and not for haunted pasts and baggage. It was just them and the thousands of kisses they would share.

22

This is Life Until Death, Could be My Last Dying Breath

Splayed out like a starfish,Noah stared up at the recessed ceiling and blinked. Blinking was all he felt like he could do. Everything was heavy. His arms, his legs, his brain. Even the air felt weighted like it pressed down on his skin. An endless battle between the atmosphere and the gravity that kept them all firmly planted. Noah was slowly being sucked into the earth.

He had the energy to drink though. Noah lifted the bottle to his lips and let the liquid flow into his mouth. Stretching his cheeks until the alcohol burned the shredded insides of his cheek. There wasn’t an inch he hadn’t worried—picking and pulling at the thin skin until he tasted blood. The blood tasted better than the bitter tang of guilt. Of hopelessness. Of Noah’s slowly slipping sanity.

The bottle was foreign to him. Whatever top shelf nonsense Luther left behind in his office. It was clear and it punched through Noah like a heavyweight boxer. Relaxing his throat, he let it trickle down. It stung and he choked his throat opening and allowing the thorny flood to burn. Tears rolled down his cheek as he gasped for air, rolling onto his side in a last-ditch effort not to asphyxiate.

His chest ached. That was new. Noah’s chest hadn’t ached for days. It hurt before, back when he was still anxious and worried. But then it all went away. Faded until all he felt was exhaustion. There was something restful in feeling the weight of his bones and nothing else.

Tears continued to streak down his cheeks, but he didn’t think it was because of the alcohol anymore. He cried a lot now that he was alone all the time. Jackson had been annoying, but at least he was a presence. Someone to remind Noah that he was alive. Now he was gone. Harvey was gone.

No, Harvey wasn’t gone. He was dead.

Noah flung his hand out for the bottle, fingers knocking it aside. The gentleglug glugof its contents spilling onto the floor should have alarmed him, but he didn’t care. Harvey would have cared. He would have rolled his eyes and shifted Noah so he could clean up after him.

One time Noah asked why he took such good care of him. He thought there would be some bullshit reason, but Harvey surprised him.

“I went to school with your father,” he answered simply, and Noah hadn’t asked for details. He should have. He should have begged for information, anything that he could use to make his father something besides the imposing personification of perfection.

He curled up into a ball with his knees pressing to his chest. Maybe Harvey knew his mom, too. A bitter laugh bubbled past his lips. Maybe Harvey was in love with her, and this was some kind of fucked upHarry Pottersituation.

Papers were scattered around his room. Some had footprints on them, some had Legos on top of them. A few were soaking up whatever alcohol Noah had been imbibing for the last few hours.

Noah wouldn’t feel so bad if he hadn’t given a shit. If he had just foisted this investigation on someone else. Failure didn’t sting when you didn’t try. But Noah had tried. He had done everything in his power.

And that was the saddest part, wasn’t it? Failing when you really tried.