Page 3 of Loverboy

“You could never bother me,” he snapped. “Not with something like this.”

My bottom lip quivered. “I’m sorry.”

The moment was too charged. I thought I might die right there, his agonizing expression the last thing I’d ever see. If Oliver never said anything, I could’ve gone home, let the dust settle, and then reached out.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Painful silence rolled over us, and Jasper withdrew from my bedside. He rubbed his hands over his face and sighed before removing his glasses to wipe the lenses on his sweater. Once he regained his composure, he looked my way again.

“Alright, come on.” He sliced through the tension with gentle teasing. “Let’s get out of here, loverboy. Before the narcotics start going missing.”

“Things do go missing in hospitals.” I grinned and sat up to face him.

It wasn’t our first time in the hospital together. It was our second or third. The last time, I’d gone because I actually wanted help. I remembered it clearly. The nurse took one look at my arms and asked me if I knew that I couldn’t kill myself by cutting where I had.

I never asked for help again.

Even though he’d resumed our usual joking around, Jasper’s thick brows were knit together with concern, and his jaw was clenched. Deep brown eyes peered at me from behind his glasses, too easy to read despite the way he tried to keep the conversation light. Being serious was hard for him—for me, for us. It was a space we didn’t navigate well.

He pushed his damp, dishevelled hair back and out of his face, and it was evident from the way some of those chestnut strands clung stubbornly to his cheeks that he’d hurried here. The guilt hit me like a freight train.

“No more being a fucking idiot,” he said sharply, sounding desperate even as he gave me a stern look. “Please, Milo.”

“I’ll try.”

Liar.

2

Milo

THE DRIVE BACK to my apartment was anything but quiet. I staked my claim on the car’s Bluetooth connection and blared the most depressing music I had on rotation, loud enough for my insides to vibrate with the bass and to cancel out any intrusive thoughts that might otherwise have taken hold.

Jasper gave me some side-eye from the driver’s seat. Usually, he would complain about the volume and my so-called shit taste, but this time, I had a free pass. I was in a delicate place, and I’d be damned if I didn’t use it to my advantage. Dissociating alongside the music came easily, and for the last half of the drive, I even fell asleep.

I startled awake to the sound of the driver’s door closing, my heart beating erratically. Whatever nightmare had snuck up on me was already slipping away, details fuzzy. Only the fear lingered, and even that faded when my door was pulled open, forcing me to meet the lines of quiet concern etched into my brother’s tired face.

“Let’s go.” He motioned with his head.

“Yeah, yeah,” I mocked, unclipping my seatbelt and swinging my legs to the ground.

Once we were inside the apartment building and climbing the stairs, every step felt heavier than the last, like my shoes were filling with sand. I didn’t want to go inside. I wanted to go back to my real home, the one where I’d shared birthdays and holidays with my two adoptive siblings. The one I’d built for myself after my own fell apart.

The one where I was safe.

The door wasn’t locked, of course. There was no time for that when they carried me away. I pushed it open and was greeted by the warm glow of sunset pooling in through the balcony window and spilling across the living room floor. The space had no business looking so cozy after the last forty-eight hours.

I wished I’d succeeded. Failing was worse. If I’d died, I would have been spared the humiliation of Oliver seeing me at my lowest, covered in vomit, trying to end it all over a girl who didn’t want me.

Sofia wasn’t the root cause. She was simply the final straw. A therapist might tell me it was really about my sister’s overdose when I was fifteen, or the way my birth mother chose drugs over her children. Maybe it was the abuse that followed me into adulthood, threading itself into every relationship I touched.

Or maybe it was nothing more than good old fatherless behaviour?

The apartment was silent, and my legs refused to cooperate. Jasper’s hand pressed into the small of my back, urging me forward. He didn’t understand the gravity of my despair. This wasn’t my home. It was a prison.

“Milo?” he coaxed.

“I’m fucking working on it,” I snapped, wrapping my arms around myself and forcing my feet inside. It was like returning to the scene of a crime.