Page 46 of Bloom: Part 1

Saint strode over to the couch bed, yanked the sheet over Winter’s waist to cover him up, and brushed Winter’s hair away from his face.

“Win?”

Silence greeted us. Saint leaned closer, pressing his hand against Winter’s neck. “He’s still breathing. Barely. I’ll call 9-1-1.”

“You can’t call 9-1-1,” Poe cried. “Let me get my shit out of here first.”

I laughed, the sound ringing through the dingy room, filling it with the bitterness inside me. The lube…Winter’s nakedness…I wasn’t as naïve as Saint had implied earlier. I knew enough that a man in Winter’s position could not consent to sex.

“You don’t have to worry about the authorities. You’ll be dead long before they arrive.”

“They’re on their way,” Saint said. He lashed out his hand, smacking the gun across Poe’s face. The man crashed to the floor with a strangled cry.

“It’s not my fault!” he groaned. “He doesn’t know when to stop. I told him he’d had enough, but he kept shooting up.”

“So you fuck him while he’s unconscious?” I stomped on his face, his jawbone cracking under my boot. A splash of blood sprayed across the grimy floor, pooling beneath his distorted features. “Instead of getting him help, you use him, humiliate him, over and over again? You fucking pussy!” I plunged my knife between his legs, the blade slicing into his cock with accuracy.

A guttural scream echoed through the room, bouncing off the grimy walls as the man writhed.

Even though I wasn’t looking at him, Winter’s naked body, used and left to die like an animal, was seared into my mind. I didn’t care how many drugs he took or how irresponsible he was. None of that mattered. No one had the right to hurt him this way. No one had a right to hurt us, to make us fight dogs for food, to make us sleep in boxes and on the cold, hard concrete. No one should treat us like we were subhuman, like we deserved all the rotten things they did to us because we were weak and helpless to know better.

“Bloom!” A sharp slap to the face brought me back from my thoughts. In the distance, a siren wailed, getting closer and closer. “Fucking shit.”

I stared at the dead man on the floor, his body mangled from multiple stab wounds and my knife still buried in his neck. The gloves on my hands were covered in blood, as were my boots.

“The ambulance is here already.” He glanced from Winter, who was convulsing, to the body on the floor. “We can’t hide the body. It’s too late.”

I yanked the knife out of the man’s throat, even though I didn’t recall burying it there. Slowly I climbed to my feet. Was it normal to feel this sense of calm and peace after taking a life?

“You can’t stay here, Bloom,” Saint said. “You have to leave. Now.”

Outside, the ambulance pulled up. I shook my head. “No, I’m not leaving you.” All my life, they’d protected me. Now that Winter needed us, I wouldn’t run. “Brothers till the end. That’s what we pledged.”

12

LOGAN

Don’t do it, man. Don’t do it.

“Dr. Simms!” Fuck it. The psychiatrist stopped and turned around, giving me time to hand a prescription to the nurse and catching up with him. I’d been a doctor long enough to know what I was doing was ethically wrong, but it’d been eight days with no sign of Bloom. No glimpse of him in the parking lot. No showing up at my office unannounced. No sending me creepy, inappropriate, and juvenile gifts.

When I woke up the morning after I’d given him a blow job, he was gone. He’d disappeared from my life in the same way he’d appeared. Abruptly. I’d told myself countless times that Bloom keeping his distance was for the best. Maybe he’d finally come to his senses and realized there was no future for us.

But every second my mind wasn’t occupied with work, my thoughts strayed to him and that last night we’d spent together. Why hadn’t he given me a chance to comfort him the next day?

“Dr. Collier, what can I do for you?”

Dr. Simms was a new psychiatrist at the hospital and kept mostly to himself. He didn’t make any effort to get to know thestaff and build a working relationship with them, but who was I to judge when I was the same?

“How are you getting on at the hospital?” I fell into step with him as he resumed walking briskly.

“I get along fine, Dr. Collier.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “All the patients I have to see keep me busy. That’s all I can ask for.”

“I don’t recall seeing you at the charity event a week ago.”

He halted, furrowing his brow. “Dr. Collier, is there a reason for you delaying me? I do have patients to attend to.”

“Actually, yes, and this is going to seem unconventional, but I’d like to talk to you about a patient of yours—Bloom.”

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