Page 16 of Broken

“You’re going to Black Diamond.” Her tone grates on my nerves but gets my attention.

“What?” I look at the screen. My mother’s disappointed, angry face staring back at me. Cold, clawing fear wraps itself around my insides. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“There’s a video all over the internet of you having sex with amanin a filthy alley behind a gay bar! Agaybar! I swear you don’t care at all about how any of this looks on the rest of us,” she shrieks, and my heart flutters somewhere behind my belly button. “So, you’re going to Black Diamond, right now! You’re going to hide out until this isn’t news anymore! The official story is you’re going to rehab, so don’t do anything else fucking stupid, or I’ll shut off your goddamn phone too!”

My hushed “What?” doesn’t stop her tirade as she really gets going. Threatening to cut me off and telling me how much of an embarrassment I am to the family and to Marcus’s memory.

I’ve been recorded doing a lot of shit over the last few years, faced homophobes and hate, had microphones shoved in my face while being asked all kinds of atrocious shit, but I’ve never had a sex tape go public. Never had a picture of my dick or anything like that be posted. I feel violated. My privacy was violated in the worst way, andshe’smad.

Mom is still ranting, but it’s just noise. I disconnect the call and head to the bathroom. Nausea rolling through me, the headache screaming, and the congestion making me want to cry is too much on top of this.

My body is tense and flushed, my chest tight like there’s a weight on it. Tears fill my eyes at the racing thoughts, and the anxiety spirals.

I can’t leave my house anymore. I’ll be attacked; the vultures will be even worse now, yelling questions at me in public that they have no business asking, hounding me even more about my parents and dating.

With a racing heart and busy head, I find my kit in the bathroom taped to the underside of the sink and sit on the floor. Tears stream down my face, my sobs hiccupping in my chest as I pull out the small black knife Asher gave me on my seventeenth birthday. It’s all scratched up from me learning to sharpen blades on a wet stone, but I can’t be without it long enough to send it out to be sharpened. Just having it makes me feel better. Knowing it’s there is comforting. And it’s all I have left of him.

My inner thigh is a mess of scarred lines, climbing like a ladder to the only part of me anyone cares about. Placing the tip of the blade against my flesh, I pierce my skin with just a little pressure and drag. The burn and welling up of blood dripping down my leg focuses me. Makes the buzzing in my head quiet, and it’s just as intoxicating as the high of cocaine.

I sit until the tile under me warms, the knife still in my hand, but the bleeding has stopped. My body has sagged against the wall, letting the heaviness in my chest ease just a little with the adrenaline of the moment sweeping it away. The pressure lessons until I feel like I can breathe again.

Forcing my eyes open, I grab a wipe from my kit and clean the blade and blood from the floor, then put it all away and get in the shower. The hot water is beating at my sore and exhausted body. I’m tired of fighting. Tired of fighting to be seen, fighting to be enough, fighting to be loved or even just liked. Is life this hard for everyone, or am I just a big baby? Is everyone else just better at pretending?

I don’t want to live like this anymore. Beaten down and lifeless. My life is jumbled shades of gray and has been for so long I don’t remember what anything else feels like. I don’t know how to find the bright colors anymore. The ghosts of my past dim the light of the flowers and the sun until all I see are the shadows left behind.

By the time I’m clean-ish and leave the shower, I’m numb. All I want to do is go back to bed. Through the open door, I can see my room but barely notice the mess of clothes thrown on the floor. When was the last time I did laundry? Or took a shower?

I find a baggy T-shirt that was Marcus’s and pull it on with some shorts. I’m almost back to my bed when someone bangs on the front door. Ugh. Who is bothering me now? Why can’t I just disappear into my head for a while?

“Elliot!” Ian’s voice carries through the apartment once he’s opened the door and come inside.

I drop heavily onto my bed and watch my bedroom door for him to come in.

“If you aren’t decent, cover up,” he says about five seconds before he opens the door to find me sitting on my messy bed. His shoulders droop when he sees me. “Time to pack. You have a plane to catch.”

CHAPTEREIGHT

Elliot

After hours on a plane I didn’t want to be on, we finally land on the private airstrip at Black Diamond—one of the previously uninhabited islands in the Windward Islands—and I’m past exhausted. I barely see the reception desk of the resort or remember the number of my villa, but the guy taking me out to it via fucking boat apparently knows. Why I have to take the stupid boat instead of walking down the dock, I have no damn idea. Ian got me on the plane, followed me to the island, and now that I’m checked in, he left. Fucker.

The driver is friendly enough, I guess. I don’t care. He’s talking about amenities or whatever, but I’m not paying attention. After a few minutes, he pulls up to a private dock and unloads my bag. I climb the few wooden steps to the entrance, shove my keyless entry wristband at the electronic lock, and shove open the door.

I make a beeline for the king-sized bed in the next room and face-plant onto it where I promptly fall asleep.

When my eyes open again, it’s because the lights are flicked on, and I moan as I roll onto my back. I just want to sleep for the next month with no one talking to me or in my space. At least out here I don’t have to worry about interacting with other people. My antics have lessened over the last year since I’m too depressed to leave my fucking apartment most of the time, so why is my damn babysitter here?

“What the fuck, Ian?” I groan as I cover my eyes with my arm.

“Uh. I think there’s been a mistake.”That’s not Ian!

I jerk upright, the world spinning for a minute as I stare at Asher fucking Vaughn. No. Absolutely not.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I demand with as much indignation as I can muster.

“The same thing you are.” He drops his bag on the seafoam green, velvet seashell chair on the other side of the bedroom, rubs a hand down the brown beard hiding his jawline, and crosses his arms, which only makes him look bigger and brings attention to the tribal tattoos on his skin. I’m minuscule next to him. He could snap me in half with two fingers. I hate it.

But I don’t.