Page 25 of The Tex Hex (Bitches With Stitches #3)

TEX

I tell myself it’s routine. Just a precaution. A box to check every six months.

But it’s a lie. The truth is, I fucking hate going to get tested.

I’ve done it enough times that it shouldn’t rattle me anymore. But every time I step through the clinic doors, I feel like I’m walking into court, and I’m about to be sentenced all over again. My skin itches with shame, my stomach knots with guilt I thought I left behind.

And today’s worse. Because now there’s Mandy.

Mandy, with his slow, guarded smile and hands that tremble when they reach for mine. Mandy, who lets me hold him even when he shies away. Who let me lie in his bed, skin to skin, and tell him a story I’ve never told another soul.

I don’t want to ruin that.

I don’t want to infect him with my filth.

Even the idea of it—of being the reason he hurts again—makes me nauseous.

The waiting room is mostly empty, and I sit with my hands clenched in my lap, rehearsing all the ways this won’t matter. Just a check-up. A quick in and out.

The nurse calls me back, and my heart pounds as if I’m walking toward my execution.

The exam room is cold. Not just in temperature, though the air conditioning hums with all the empathy of a meat locker, but in that sterile, impersonal way that makes everything feel clinical.

The walls are a washed-out beige, the kind of color meant to calm you, though it only sets my teeth on edge.

The paper lining crinkles beneath me as I sit on the exam table, and I swear I can feel every wrinkle and fold of it pressing into my skin through the thin fabric of my jeans.

The nurse—a woman in her fifties with an efficient manner and eyes that don’t quite meet mine—asks the usual questions.

“Any new partners since your last test?”

“Are you currently experiencing any symptoms?”

“When was your last sexual encounter?”

I answer with a fake smile. That same practiced, polite tilt of the mouth I use at work when serving my customers. The kind that hides my nerves. That says I’m fine when I’m anything but.

She taps things into a tablet, nods, and asks me to undress from the waist down. Jokes spew from my mouth about how cold the room is and how she shouldn’t judge. She smiles back, just as fake.

That’s when it starts. The panic. The buzzing in my ears that sounds like a swarm of bees.

My face feels hot, like maybe I’m glowing. Not in some metaphorical, romantic way. No. Like there’s a neon fucking sign hanging over my head: DAMAGED GOODS. VICTIM. WHORE.

Like every person I’ve ever touched—every man I’ve let use me, everyone I used right back—is written on my skin in invisible ink that glows under the clinic lights.

They know.

She knows.

I imagine her stepping out of the room and whispering to the doctor. Imagine the file marked with a quiet little asterisk, a private note that says watch him, he’s been through something.

I fucking hate it.

Is this the kind of shit Mandy goes through when he’s at the doctor? Not that he has something to be ashamed of or hide, but this anxiety? This feeling of gloom and doom?

I get it now, I really get it.

The vulnerability. The feelings of helplessness. Like my fate is already sealed.

The nurse hands me a small cup and points toward the bathroom. I can barely walk steadily. My legs feel stiff and heavy. On my way down the hall, I catch my reflection in a metal panel and don’t even recognize myself. Not because I look different. But because I feel so small. So stripped down.

Like I’m still eighteen.

Still the smallest kid in the communal barracks showers with soap in his eyes and laughter echoing down the tile walls to cover the sounds coming from me involuntarily as they force themselves inside my body and use me like a dirty washcloth.

Still waiting for it to stop.

Still wondering what I did to deserve it.

With a cup full of warm piss, I head back to the room. My fingers tremble, and I have to clasp them in my lap to keep from fidgeting. When the doctor finally walks in, all white coat and clipboard, I flash the smile again.

The one that says, Don’t worry about me, doc. I’m fine. Just here for the usual.

The one that hides the truth. That every second I’m in this room, I’m barely holding it together.

Where’s my BALLS buddy when I need one? Who's here to hold my hand?

No one. And that’s how I wanted it, right?

I didn’t tell Mandy. I didn’t tell Nash. Didn’t want anyone fussing over me. Didn’t want their overly bright, positive smiles telling me I have nothing to worry about. Because I do. If they only knew my body count. If they knew the things I’ve done…

But now? Now I’d give anything for a hand to hold.

For someone to be here. Someone to say my name the way Mandy does when I’m spiraling, like it’s a tether. A lifeline. Because right now I’m drifting. And I can’t even remember what I said last. What the doctor asked. What I answered.

He writes a prescription for PrEP, and I nod when they tell me they’ll call in a few days. I nod when they say you can get dressed now. I nod because it’s all I can do.

I pull on my jeans with shaking fingers and don’t bother with my belt. My shirt’s half-buttoned, wrinkled and uneven, but I don’t care.

I just need to get out. When I step outside, the sunlight hits me like an accusation. Too bright. Too warm. Too clean. Everything I feel like I’m not right now.

My hands tremble on the steering wheel when I climb into the car. I shouldn't have come alone. But it’s too late for that now.

I can’t focus for shit. Messing up orders at work. Blew off my NA meeting because I couldn’t sit still for sixty straight minutes. And when I caught a shift with Nacho, I spilled a container of freshly made salsa all over the inside of his truck.

In fact, the call comes in when I’m on my hands and knees, mopping it up. When I finally check my phone, there’s a message from the receptionist at the clinic, asking me to come back in because there was a problem with my tests and the results weren’t clear.

My hands shake as I end the recording. My heart pounds.

My first thought is: Mandy.

Followed by: fuck this shit.

Nothing good ever comes from anything. Not hope. Not vulnerability. Not all the hard work I’ve done. Not the therapy. The clean time. The meetings. What’s the fucking point?

I try to breathe. Try to tell myself it’s just protocol, a simple callback, not a diagnosis. But the fear doesn’t listen. The fear has teeth.

With every hour that passes, my thoughts become darker.

What if I’ve been wrong this whole time?

What if I’ve been lying to myself, walking around thinking I’m negative, thinking I’m safe, that the worst is behind me, when I’ve been carrying something this whole time?

Something I could’ve given Mandy.

Something that could hurt him.

All of my past deeds and regrets mount in a growing pile, filling my head with dark clouds and loud noise. I can’t think, I can’t reason. All I want is to escape.

Before the sun has fully set, I find myself parked outside the liquor store. The neon sign buzzes above the door like it’s calling to me. I haven’t set foot inside one in years. But it’s still there, in the back of my brain. That ugly little voice.

You’re filth. You always have been. Why pretend otherwise?

I grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turn white. And I try not to cry.

But I also don’t go inside. Not yet.

My palms sweat against the wheel. I feel like a ghost of the man I used to be.

The guy who used to roll his windows down and blast music to drown out his conscience.

Who used to spend hours staring at bottle labels, memorizing the curve of the glass.

I can taste it, the malt whiskey, the bitter, sharp bite of tequila.

The way the vodka numbed my tongue and pickled my brain.

I’d give anything to feel that numb right now.

There’s a bottle behind that door with my name on it. And a voice in my head whispering: You’re filthy. Broken. You don’t deserve someone like him, and there’s only one way to drown it.

I punch the steering wheel. Once. Twice. Hard enough to make my knuckles scream. But it doesn’t quiet the voice.

It just makes it harder not to believe it.

After sitting there for two hours, the only thing going numb is my ass. Not the guilt. Not the panic. Not the tight coil of shame that’s wound so deep in my gut, I think it might be fused to my spine.

I rest my forehead against the wheel, close my eyes, and try to breathe through my nose, but all I catch is the stale scent of sweat and desperation.

I hate this.

I hate myself.

For not being brave enough to go inside.

For not being strong enough to walk away.

For even thinking about walking inside that store.

I’m supposed to call Brewer in moments like this, when I’m walking that fine line between surrender and relapse, between survival and self-destruction.

But my phone’s face-down in the passenger seat, and I can’t bring myself to pick it up. Not when I know I’ll hear his voice and fall apart.

Not when the part of me that needs help is being strangled by the part of me that doesn’t think I deserve it.

Brewer would say, “You’re not filth. You’re not broken.” But I don’t believe that right now. I can’t.

Because all I see when I look at myself is every hand that took without asking. Every time I didn’t say no. Every time I didn’t fight hard enough. Every moment that taught me my body was never mine.

And now I’m supposed to protect Mandy? What if I hurt him? What if I give him something I don’t even know I have?

What if everything good between us crumbles under the weight of everything bad I still carry?

What if… What if I’m going to wither up and die a terrible death, all alone? Like I deserve.

Maybe I’m punishing myself on purpose. Like penance. Though if that’s true, when have I finally paid the price? When am I squared with my past?