Saving Rain(30)

That was the only thing that had changed about this place. The fucking couch.

I guessed she only gave a shit about the things she needed the most—drugs and a place to crash after the high.

“You’re never seeing me again,” I warned her, keeping my voice even. Unmoved as my heart ached incredibly. “The second I walk through that door, I am gone, and you will never see me again for the rest of your miserable fucking life. Do you understand that?”

She said nothing.

“You won’t know where I go. You won’t have any way to contact me. This is it. Tell me you understand that, tell me you’re good with it, and I’m gone forever.”

That was when she looked right into my hardened glare, her pupils missing from her eyes, and she said, “I should’ve aborted you.”

Levi laughed, grinning like she’d just told the funniest joke he had ever heard. “Man, our lives would’ve been easier. Think of everyone who’d still be alive. Imagine that.”

I could kill him. I wanted to, and you know what? Maybe I should. I could be thrown back into Wayward. I would have a place to live, eat, sleep …

But it was what he wanted.

He wanted the reaction, and I wasn’t going to give it to him. Because he might’ve chosen this piece-of-shit life for himself, but I was going to be better. I was better.

So, without another word, without looking back, I walked through the door and slammed it behind me.

***

“Harry?”

My voice cracked on his name, but I didn’t think Harry had noticed because he said, “Hey! I didn’t expect you to call me so soon. How’s it going?”

I wiped the snot pooling beneath my nose with the back of my frozen hand and said, “She didn’t change her tune.”

“What? Soldier—”

“Sh-she didn’t want me there, so I left.”

“Ah, man …” He sighed, sounding so far away now. Farther than I needed him to be. “I’m sorry, son.”

I sat on the side of the road, staring across at a patch of dirt. My ass was freezing, I couldn’t feel my fingers, and my teeth were chattering against the cold. But I couldn’t stop staring. I hadn’t stopped since leaving my mom’s apartment over an hour ago.

“Where are you?” Harry asked.

“I let him die for her,” I said as another round of tears began to soak my wind-stung face. “He’d still be alive if I hadn’t been so fucking busy saving her goddamn life.”

“Soldier, tell me where you are. I’m coming, okay? Just tell me where to go, and I’ll be there.”

So, I did, and he came. It had taken an hour for him to drive to me, but he had. It was more than I’d expected when I called. I could’ve walked down to the motel outside of town and gotten a room with the little bit of money in my pocket. But I had called Harry to have someone to talk to, and instead, he’d given me warmth.

But before he did anything else, he sat beside me on the side of the road and stared across at the last place I’d been in this shitty town before spending a third of my life behind bars.

“He died right there,” I said, pointing toward the patch of dirt that looked so much the same. Not like everything else around here.

Hell, even the woods had been plowed down. The Pit was gone, thank God.

Where do the kids pop their pills these days?

How is Levi doing business?

I cringed at the thought, and then I cringed at the idea that he, a guy only a handful of years older than me, was fucking my mom.

And why?

Harry nodded solemnly. “It’s an unfortunate thing that happened,” he said, his breath creating puffs of silvery clouds against the black sky.

“They were her pills.” It was a truth I hadn’t uttered to a single soul outside of my letters to a girl named Rain. And now, Harry knew too. “I had been swiping them from her for years to make some money to pay our bills and so she’d have fewer pills to take.” I laughed at that now, shaking my head and rolling my eyes. “I was such a fucking idiot for not realizing she’d just buy more. I just … I thought I was doing a good thing, you know? Like, the lesser of two evils or some stupid shit.”

Harry had turned to look at me, his mouth frozen with parted lips.

“We needed the money for rent and electric, and I was going to pull from my savings to pay it off. But she had stolen it all. Nine thousand dollars gone”—I snapped my aching fingers—“just like that. God, I hadn’t known she even knew about that fucking money, and she’d taken every last penny. I was going to use it to leave, to get us the hell out of here, and she had taken it.”

Harry released another silvery breath, closed his eyes, and hung his head, letting it shake a little.

“She had bought four fucking bottles, full of pills, and I took them from her. I was only going to sell enough to pay our rent—that’s all. I could’ve lived without lights—I’d done it before—but we needed the roof over our heads. That’s all I was gonna do, but f-fucking Billy …” I choked on a sob I thought I’d been holding for nearly ten years as my stomach clenched and heaved. “Fucking Billy had to go ahead and take one. Because fucking Billy had a problem. He’d been popping pills since we had been kids, but I never told anyone. I did nothing because I thought it was fine. I thought, as long as I was in control, it was okay. But it wasn’t okay, and I wasn’t in control. I couldn’t save him. I tried, and I tried, and I fucking tried, but I couldn’t save his stupid fucking life.”