Page 35 of This Might Hurt

ANDREW

I open my eyes in the pinkish dawn light and stare at the striped green wallpaper a few inches from my face.

I’ve always found stripes calming in their geometry and tidiness.

My rooms at Carrick House are papered in wide pale gray stripes.

When I was young, I thought maybe my grandfather chose them because he knew they made me happy.

One of the stupidest things I’ve ever believed.

I reach up and rest my fingertips against the clean lines, imagining the man everyone worshipped and obeyed counting pumps of a machine until he’s allowed to die.

His oxygen levels plummeted the night after I spoke with him, and now in less than a day his empire will turn into so many wolves fighting for scraps.

When I notice that it hurts to breathe, I realize Jude’s arms are wrapped so firmly around my chest that he couldn’t possibly be asleep—except for the soft, snoring breaths stirring the back of my hair.

I try to pull away, but he tightens his grip without waking up.

Last night feels very confused in my head, sweat and darkness and flashes of lightning.

The only things I remember clearly are his spit slipping down my throat and the knowledge that we said mad things which are much too large and dangerous to grasp in the light.

I meant everything I told him. As soon as I saw him again, I knew he was inevitable to me, a fixed point in the universe I’ll never be able to walk away from.

But this is the worst possible time to be figuring out what that means.

I don’t have the strength to explore my connection to a complete stranger at the same time I’m trying to fuck over my family.

Part of me is afraid he won’t understand, not after the way he consumed me last night.

He doesn’t even twitch when I start struggling.

Pressing my hands into the lumpy mattress, I drag myself up to lean against the headboard with his arms still locked around my waist and his face pressed into my naked hip.

Without those feral eyes and his constant, uneasy energy, his profile looks strangely sweet with his turned-up nose and long eyelashes.

I rest my hand in his boyish, messy hair for one long breath of stillness, then pry myself out of his grip and stumble upright onto the faded rug patterned with twining yellow roses.

It’s still suffocatingly warm in here, but my skin feels chilled.

When I stretch out my back, my thighs stick together and another piece of last night clicks into place.

Holding my breath, I crane my neck to try and search around Jude’s naked sprawl for a cum stain on the sheets.

I can’t find it, and every option—from leaving it for Ramona to find, to asking Jude what to do, to stumbling around the house trying to find and operate a washing machine—sounds like hell.

The last thing I need today is more hell.

Forcing myself to forget about it for now, I grab my phone off the bedside table and turn it on.

The number of missed calls has climbed well over a hundred.

My stomach drops when I wonder if he somehow died early, even with the vent, but I know the three of them will do anything in their power to keep him alive until they find me and marry me off or the DNR forces them to give up.

With one last glance at Jude, I cross to the open window and study the worn shingles where he clearly sits and smokes.

They’re not too hot, so I pull on the denim shorts from last night and crawl clumsily onto the gentle slant of the back porch roof.

I scoot all the way around one of the eaves and settle my ass in a thin strip of shade outside of the bathroom window.

Avoiding the call log and text messages, I tap Grant’s name and put the phone to my ear.

The line picks up immediately. I can hear breathing, but Grant doesn’t say anything.

After what feels like minutes, I close my eyes and tip my head back against the dusty siding.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur. I don’t know how many of the hundred calls were from him.

He’s always been such a fixture in my life that it didn’t occur to me that I could have gotten him fired by disappearing yesterday. “Grant…I’m so sorry.”

“Where are you?” he asks finally, his voice flat and exhausted.

From here I can see the top of the hill we climbed yesterday, with a glimpse of the tall pines that watched over our vandalism.

I keep my voice low, in case one of these windows belongs to Ramona.

“I need to ask you something first.” He doesn’t try to interrupt, so I keep going before I can lose my nerve.

“If you have to choose between me or my family, who are you going to follow? Please tell me the truth, for the sake of how long we’ve been together.

I’ll understand no matter what, but if you stick with me, you’re going to act against the people who hired you. ”

After a terrifying pause, he sighs. “You already know, Andrew.”

“Say it out loud. Promise me.”

His curt voice, the one I spent so long trying to befriend, softens. “It’s always going to be you.”

Something tight in me unwinds a little. “Thank you. I need you to set up a plane departing from Yellowstone International for eight tomorrow morning and meet us at LaGuardia four hours after that. Don’t say anything to anyone.”

I can hear the sound of him walking quickly over gravel. “Us?”

“I can’t…you’ll see. I know what I’m doing.” That’s such a fucking lie I almost laugh at myself, but maybe if I say it enough times it will become true. “Stay ready for more calls from me today. I’ll use a different phone, so answer any unknown numbers.”

“Yes, sir. Be safe.”

I turn off my service and set the phone on the shingles beside me, then pull up my knees and rest my chin on my arms. Part of me already wants to give up.

I’m so tired I can barely remember the conversation with my grandfather, like I’m not even sure why it mattered so much at the time.

All I have is the fear if I give up and go home, I’ll disappear forever into a place so dark it won’t matter if I’m alive or dead.

Ramona has a chicken coop out back I didn’t notice before—six or seven big, healthy birds clucking contentedly and strutting around a clean coop larger than Jude’s room.

This woman has loved these random chickens more than I’ve ever been loved, maybe more than Jude has ever been loved, based on what he told me last night.

Perhaps that’s why we’re in such a fucking mess.

I struggle to my feet, keeping one hand on the upper roof, and crouch-walk back to the window. When I scoot through on my ass and drop onto the carpet, Jude’s sitting up in bed rubbing his sleep-swollen face. He lowers his hands and eyes me uneasily, like he’s waiting to see how much I remember.

“We’re leaving in forty minutes,” I say, holding up my phone screen so he can squint at the time. “If Ramona wants to make breakfast for her favorite boy or whatever, that’s how long she has.”

He grimaces. “Should we—”

“Is there another shower I can use? We don’t have much time.”

“Andrew.”

My stomach clenches at the memory of how it felt to drop to my knees last night.

Safer and easier than any of this. “Listen, I don’t…

I mean, I can’t—” His shoulders deflate a little more with every word, and I hate myself.

“We made a plan. I need us to follow the plan. My entire life hinges on it. After the plan is over, whenever that is, we can talk. Until then, I just want to concentrate on getting through this.”

His face stays blank, but something complicated flickers behind his eyes as he glances away.

I wouldn’t be able to identify it if I hadn’t felt it every day of my life—resignation, like you knew someone was going to hit you, but that didn’t make it any less painful.

It disappears as quickly as it came, leaving behind his usual simmering energy.

He scrambles out of bed, holding the sheet over his junk.

“Don’t worry so much. I promised I’ll get you through this. Yeah?”

I nod gratefully.

“You can shower in the hall bathroom. I’ll use the one in Ramona’s room and put the sheets in the washer,” he offers, smirking at the relief on my face. “She’s like my grandma. I’m not gonna traumatize her.”

Once I’ve taken a quick shower, scrubbing my thighs and back savagely, I put on my pink dress shirt and jeans from yesterday because I don’t feel like going down to the car for my overnight bag.

After hunting around the drawers, I brush my teeth with Jude’s toothpaste and a new toothbrush I find in a stash of still-packaged samples from the dentist. I stare at his deodorant stick for a long time, weighing the pros and cons of sweating through my shirt versus watching him stare at me like a dog in heat all day because there’s no way he won’t notice his scent on me.

In the end I reluctantly swipe some under my arms and emerge exactly seven minutes after I went in.

“Thirty-three minutes,” I say when I come back to find Jude stuffing clothes into his backpack, the bed stripped bare.

“Please don’t do that,” he groans when I sit down on the chair by the window and start checking my phone every few seconds.

“Each minute we aren’t getting married is a minute he could die early and ruin everything.”

“I know.” He drags a loose black hoodie over his head that says I Believe under an illustration of Mothman and squints at me from beneath the hair dripping down over his forehead. “Doesn’t mean you get to chase me in circles with a stopwatch before I even have pants on.”

I study his backpack lying open on the bed. “Did you pack the gun? We’ll be taking a private plane, so there’s no security.”