Everyone's Mate (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 35

The thing about drowning is that the act of holding on, of holding your breath, hurts the most. Eventually, when you give in and the fire in your lungs is just too much, and you take your first gasp of icy water, the pain leaves. You float, and you float, until you get dizzy. And then it all fades away. All that pain and suffering – gone. Like it was a bad dream. Like the whole life you lived was made up, fictional.

It's sort of what I imagined as I surrendered myself to my fate. I didn't know what they were going to do to me. Why they wanted me. Or if they would kill me. And silently I wondered: Did that even matter? Was my life, this great struggle, nothing more than holding my breath before the calm?

And I was. I was calm. Eric had me in a steely hold, crushing me to him. I could barely breathe inside the rucksack. The whole world was a blurry fabric texture – seeing just a little between all the tiny squares. I thought silently about Riordan, of Allie, of Alex, of Gabriel, of Dani. I even thought of Eric a bit – why he'd done this. Why he'd sacrificed his family.

I realized in some twisted way he thought he was saving me. That these people would hold to any word they'd given him. I wasn't to be harmed, but I doubted heavily that fact.

Eventually the arguing died down. The people in the car were silent. I could tell that man with the missing lip was in the front seat – someone unnamed in the driver's side. They didn't smell of a unique scent. They smelt wild; foreign.

Despite my many wounds, I was numb. I'd left Riordan in that parking lot. I'd left him. And just like that, that morning in bed felt made up – fictional. Like a bad dream. Because the only dreams where I ever loved someone always went bad.

One of them lit a cigarette, rolling down the car window. The first gasp of icy forest air filtered through my rucksack and burned my lungs, but only for a bit. The scents are familiar – they smell like home. Like my home before this nightmare, me and Allie sitting on the couch, watching old re-runs of golden girls, eating fried chicken and popcorn.

No-man's land.

Before I'd known anyone. When I still had to worry about SAT's and Calculus. I'd barely had the time to say a word to Jeremy. It had been so long since I'd seen him last – sitting alone and terrified on a sofa, surrounded by wolves.

He looked different, looking back, remembering how he approached Allie and I on that hospital bed. Less of a stutter, more of a resolute fear in his evergreen eyes. He may not have been taller or broader, but he was definitely more sure of himself as he led us down those hallways and into a trap.

I was maybe too wounded, too tired, to care much for his answer. But I asked anyway.

"Why?"

I felt him stiffen, his arms around me becoming more possessive and less consoling.

"I had to," Eric answers, a bite in his tone. "You were dying."

"I wasn't."

"They didn't care. None of them did. You were dying and I found the only ones who could help."

I took a deep breath of icy air. "No. No you didn't."

"Shut up back there!" I heard the man grimace, flicking his cigarette, leaning back in the leather seat. "I'm trying to get some rest before we meet the big boss man."

"Kids these days." Says the driver.

"You know it," The scarred man chuckles, taking a last toke of his cigarette before flicking it out the window.