Page 33 of Vital Signs

"That's what scares me most." He turned his head to look at me, pupils still pinpoints of black in dark brown eyes. "I know you're dangerous. Know you're using me. And I'm still here. Still letting you." His words slurred slightly at the edges. "What does that make me?"

I should start the van. Drive to the clinic. Get this done while he was functional.

Instead, I stayed exactly where I was, inches from him, close enough to see his pulse beating slowly and steadily in his throat.

"You don't look scared," I said.

"I am." His hand drifted up, fingers grazing my jaw in a touch so light I might have imagined it. "But fear's just another kind of want, isn't it?"

His thumb traced my lower lip, clumsy but deliberate.

I caught his wrist and held it. His pulse beat rabbit-fast despite the depressants in his system.

"What do you want, Hunter?"

The question came out rougher than I intended, loaded with everything we weren't saying.

"Everything." The word was barely a whisper, his eyes never leaving mine. "I want you to want me more than I want this." He gestured vaguely at his arm, at the fresh injection site. "I want to be your addiction instead of..." He laughed, bitter and chemical-soft. "But that's not how it works, is it?"

"No," I agreed. Because honesty deserved honesty, even when it hurt. "That's not how it works."

His face did something complicated. Pain and acceptance and a desperate kind of hope that made my chest tighten.

"But I could want you anyway," he said. "Even knowing I'll always need this more. Even knowing you'll never own me the way the drugs do. I could still want you."

The admission cost him. I could see it in the way his jaw worked, the way his eyes went bright with something that might have been tears if he were sober enough to cry.

"You said I was beautiful when I was cruel." I leaned closer, close enough that our breaths mixed in the small space between us. "Was that the fentanyl talking?"

"No." His free hand found my face, palm warm against my cheek. The touch was unpracticed, made clumsy by chemicals, but achingly genuine. "That was me. Real me. The part that knows we're the same kind of broken."

"We're not the same."

"No?" His smile was sharp despite the soft edges the drug gave him. "You just got off on having total control over whether I suffered or found relief. You made me beg. You made me tell you about Tyler just to prove you could. That's not normal, Misha. That's not healthy."

"And you loved every second of it."

"Yeah." No shame in the admission. No apology. "Because I'm fucked up too. Because part of me wants someone to have that kind of power over me. Because trusting you with the needle means trusting you with everything."

The weight of that settled between us, heavy and terrifying and perfect.

I pulled his hand away from my face, but didn't let go. Just held it, studying the scarred knuckles, the track marks, the evidence of everything he'd survived.

"I'm not a good person, Hunter."

"Neither am I." He squeezed my fingers. "Maybe that's the point."

The van's heater hummed. Outside, the truck stop carried on, oblivious to the shift happening in this small space.

"We should go," I said finally, not moving.

"Yeah." He didn't move either.

"The clinic—"

"I know."

But neither of us reached for our seatbelts. Neither of us broke eye contact. Neither of us wanted to end this moment, this honesty, this recognition of what we were to each other.