Page 19 of Worthy

“Hey. Don’t be. I’ll protect you, okay? Just sleep. Dream of…rainbows and unicorns and shit. I’ll meet you there in a bit.” She gives me a weak smile before I toss the blanket over her head, blocking her from sight.

Just like she’s learned, she goes utterly still, shoulders barely shifting with each hesitant breath she takes.

Maybe she’ll make it.

I really hope she does.

“Get the fuck in here,” a raspy voice, one formed from years of smoking two packs a day, rakes down my spine.

It takes every ounce of energy I have left to force myself to stand. I sway as the room spins, eyes squinting as colorful spots flash in and out.

Fingers dig into my forearm, adding more bruises to the ones already there. I bite back a groan, swallowing it down along with my vexation.

It’s me or Mo.

And I’ll always choose me.

Besides, it seems like their friends like the twink boy better than any girl.

It’s bitter, my resentment. Not just for Mitch and Aime—my new foster parents for who fucking knows how long—but for all of them, the past, the future.

The system I’m trapped in, this broken fucking world.

“There he is,” a voice leers as I step into their smoke-infested room. Glass pipes lie scattered on the bed along with scraps of foil and mini torches. Ashtrays filled to the brim with butts. Yellow clings to what I’m sure were once white walls—the ceiling, too.

I’ve stared at that ceiling a lot, but as I watch Allen—at least, I think that’s his name; there are so many, they all blur together—unbuckle his pants before I’m more than a foot inside the room, I know what he wants instead.

I walk up to him without thinking, without feeling, and drop to my knees. I place my hands on my thighs, making sure to dig my nails in extra deep, straighten my spine, open my mouth, and close my fucking eyes.

Colorful shapes and lines dance behind my closed lids as a putrid lump of flesh enters my mouth. I focus on the abstract patterns, working them into geometry, pondering which one is an acute angle before it disappears.

Oh, those definitely shifted to form two parallel lines.

Is that one a…what’s is called? A heptagon. Fuck. It disappeared. But that one…that one isdefinitelya straight angle.

My hair is snatched, yanking my head back. I heave, resisting the urge to spew as I’m shoved to the floor.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

I don’t even realize I’m swallowing semen until some drips from between my parted lips as I crawl my way over the lumpy carpet, back out into the living room where all is quiet once again.

The door slams shut behind me, making me jump to my feet. I don’t give a fuck; I am not crawling the rest of the way. Not when they can’t see me.

I lean against the wall, listening to their conversation for a while, willing the blood to leave my half-hard dick. I can’t even remember when that started happening…my body just taking over like that. Like I actually fuckinglike it.

But maybe I fucking do—who knows. It’s been so long, happened too much. I’m pretty sure I’m conditioned to like it now.

None of their conversation makes much sense, as it’s all over the place. There’s talk of drugs, of FBI agents stalking them, preparing to ambush. Their plans to jump someone. Wires the government has planted in the T.V., in the fucking walls.

It’s so chaotic, it makes my head hurt more than it already does.

When something knocks against the wall, I jolt, scurrying back into the living room. I find Mo exactly as I left her, curled up so small and innocent.

I’d do it a thousand times just to protect her.

I sit down beside her, back to the wall, eyes staring forward, catching my soiled reflection in the glass door of the stove. I hate the vague form that stares back at me. I hate the bitter taste stuck in the back of my throat. I hate the awful smell clinging to the both of us.

I hate that I have to make a choice—and that I can’t ever choose me.

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