Page 20 of My Best Friend Is Broken
The realization settles in my chest like a weight, heavy but also somehow liberating. For the first time in years, I know exactly what I want, exactly where my loyaltieslie. The only question is whether I’ll have the courage to choose love over fear when the moment comes.
The warehouse district looms ahead, all shadows and broken promises. Somewhere in one of those buildings, Dante is waiting with his knives and his questions and his complete absence of mercy. Somewhere behind me, in a penthouse apartment bought with blood money, the person I love most in the world is falling apart.
And I’m driving toward the thing that might destroy us both, knowing that I have no choice but hoping that somehow, against all odds, we’ll find a way through this night intact.
The city blurs past my windows, and I think about promises that might be lies, about love that feels like drowning, about the weight of choices we can never unmake.
Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower chimes midnight, and I know there’s no turning back.
Chapter seven
Liam
The front door clicks shut, and the sound echoes through the apartment like a gunshot. I flinch, my whole body jerking against the wall where I’m still pressed like I’m trying to become part of the plaster itself.
He’s gone.
Nicky is gone, and I’m alone with the lie that’s been clawing at my chest since that man, the one called Dante, looked at me like I was something he might enjoy breaking.
Your little friend from your school days. The pretty boy who killed that girl.
The words circle in my head like vultures, picking at the wounds I thought had started to heal. But it’s not what Dante said that’s destroying me. It’s what Nicky didn’t deny. What he couldn’t deny.
Because he doesn’t know. He can’t ever know.
And if that wasn’t painful enough, there is also the truth of what he is. One lie, one truth, two ends of the scale that are eating me up. A conversation that is going around and around my head.
Sometimes.
Do you kill people, Nicky?
Sometimes.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on the floor, my knees drawn up to my chest. The expensive carpet is soft under me, it probably costs more than most people make in a month. Everything in this place screams wealth, success, the kind of life we used to dream about under that overpass with our stolen beer and impossible plans.
Blood money. All of it.
My hands are shaking. I try to stop them, pressing my palms against my thighs the way I learned to do in my cell when the walls felt like they were closing in. Control the breathing. Count to ten. Find something to focus on that isn’t the panic crawling up my throat like bile.
But it’s not working. Nothing is working. Because the walls aren’t closing in, they’re too far away, too open, too much space and too many windows and too many ways for danger to get in. In prison, at least I knew where the threats were coming from. I knew the rules, the hierarchy, the careful balance that kept you alive if you were smart and quiet and invisible.
I knew what I needed to do to survive.
Here, I don’t know anything.
I don’t know who Nicky really is. I don’t know what he’s done, what he’s capable of. I don’t know if the boy I loved ever really existed, or if he was just a mask worn by someone who was always going to become a killer.
The apartment is too quiet. In Brixton, there was always noise, men talking, arguing, crying in the dark. Guards walking their rounds. The constant hum of fluorescent lights that never went out. Here, the silence is oppressive, broken only by the distant sound of traffic and my own ragged breathing.
I force myself to stand, my legs unsteady beneath me. I need to move. Need to do something with my hands, my body, before the panic takes over completely.
I walk through the apartment like I’m seeing it for the first time. The sleek kitchen, with its marble countertops and expensive appliances. The living room with its cream-colored sofa and massive television. The dining table that could seat six but has only ever been used by two.
Everything is perfect. Everything is clean. Everything is paid for with other people’s blood.
In the bathroom, I catch sight of myself in the mirror and barely recognize the person staring back. Pale, hollow-eyed, wearing clothes that don’t belong to me in a life I don’t understand. My hair is too long, hanging in my face like I’m trying to hide from the world. Maybe I am.
I look like a ghost. Like someone who died five years ago and just hasn’t figured it out yet.
