Page 73 of Bulletproof Love

The baggie feels like an iron weight in my pocket. Every last dollar I had, wasted and for what? I feel like shit.

I pull out my phone and stare at the black screen. She shouldn’t have this number, but somehow she got it. Rows of missed calls fill the screen. Texts too.

Waiting on that sandwich… you get lost?

Okay, for real. You good?

JASPER SHEA CALL ME BACK

Guilt gnaws away at my gut. Why am I like this? A loser. Fuck up. Junkie. She deserves better.

The water calls to me. Cold and calm. I could walk right into its depths, clench my eyes shut and sink to the bottom. It would be so easy. So much easier than living like this.

The phone vibrates in my hand, her number flashing across the screen. For a second, I have this urge to chuck the thing into the river, but I stop myself. I can’t do that to her. My reflection in the glass shows a stranger—pale, bloodshot eyes, hollow. Ugly.

“Fuck!”

I pound my fist into the sand.

“Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!”

My chest heaves as thick crimson drips between my fingers. The sting barely registers through everything else I’m feeling.

I deserve every bit of this pain.

My phone vibrates again and I finally answer, a plan in my mind.

“Baby,” I rasp, throat full of gravel. “Punish me.”

The words hang there, a plea and a prayer. I need her to give me what I deserve. What I’m too much of a coward to give myself.

She finally answers, her voice thick with emotion. “What did you do?”

I used.

I can’t admit it. If I say the words out loud, they become real. No more dreamland. My own guilt is more than I can take.

“Please,” I beg.

A siren wails in the distance, and I’m grateful for the noise. Maybe she can’t hear the choked sob that escapes my lips.

I stand, glancing at my blood dripping onto the sand. Her voice is my salvation. My judgement. “Get home.”

“I will—I?—”

“Now.” Her tone promises I’m going to get exactly what I deserve.

Getting home was difficult in more ways than one. Myborrowedcredit card declined so I had to panhandle for cash to ride the subway back. I have no fucking clue how I’d gotten so far south to begin with. After I met with that plug, everything was a blur. The whispers and stares as I begged commuters will play in my head for days to come. The little kid asking his mom, “Why does that man need our money? Doesn’t he have a job?” cut deeper than the glass did.

I curled into a ball the entire ride home, trying to become invisible. My insides feeling as filthy as I must look. My clothes stained with seagull shit and blood, reeking like the river.

Falin’s waiting for me outside the apartment. She doesn’t see me yet, and I’m happy I get to prolong that moment. Her hair is tied up in a knot above her head, and she’s thrown on a pair of my sweats that hang off her much smaller frame. She’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

She’s reading her phone, brows furrowed, shoulders almost touching her ears. I wonder what she’s looking at. When she sees me, her expression won’t change for the better and I hate myself for that.

Our gazes meet when I’m a few feet away, hers wide and questioning, mine vacant and ashamed. Her lips move as she says something too low for me to hear.What the fuck?I think.

In that moment something about her posture shifts. She stands up straight, arms crossed. Her brows narrow and mouth becomes a straight line.

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