“Dolophine,” he says, putting the bottle back in his pocket.
I take a deep breath. I know what that is. Fucking methadone.
Not only am I a fucking addict, but I’ve just swallowed the drug my mother was given countless times to curb her own dependence, a drug she loathed because it didn’t give her that same instantaneous bliss the smack guaranteed.
I burst into tears.
“Hey, mamacita,” Luis says softly, coming to sit beside me. He pats my back, maybe in an attempt to snap me out of my own wallowing.
I catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror at the end of the bed, and what I see disgusts me. Where is the strong girl, the girl who dealt with her enemies in poison and fire? Where is the girl who thrived on pain, the girl who got off on the suffering of her foes, who tasted the salty tears of Dornan Ross and declared herself the winner? Where am I under the layers of trauma and scarring?
Who am I anymore?
I look away from the mirror. I can’t bear to see any more. The weak, thin girl with the swollen belly, the girl who carries the weight of her lies inside her like a toxic virus. I’m tired. I’m desperate.
“Please,” I beg Luis. “Please, I can’t. I need the real thing.”
His blue eyes darken, and he shakes his head emphatically. “Think of your mama,” he says.
“I don’t want to think about that bitch,” I snap. “It was better when I thought she was dead.”
I press a hand to my mouth as I hear my own words.
“I didn’t mean that,” I whisper, taking my hand away just long enough to let those four words out before clamping it back down. I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean that. What is happening to me? My desperation, my utter despair at needing what I cannot have, just one little hit, curls around me like poison ivy, dragging me down to the earth. Suddenly, I am so heavy I could sleep.
“A few weeks, bebé,” he says, reaching underneath his shirt and taking out a chain, black rosary beads and gold with a black and gold cross hanging from one end. He drapes the long chain over my head, letting it fall onto my chest.
“Are you going to tell them?” I whisper, fingering the delicate cross. I feel bad, taking this from him. I don’t believe in God, not anymore.
“Nah,” Luis says. “We can do this, Giulietta. You’ll be all right in a couple weeks.”
I feel guilty. Taking his rosary beads. “I can’t take these,” I say, hiking the beads back off myself and holding them out to him, tangled up in my fist. “I’m not even remotely religious. It wouldn’t be right to take your beads like this.”
He shakes his head, his eyes soft, and pushes my fist back toward me.
“It’s a loan,” he clarifies, giving me a wink. “You need something to fidget with when you’re thinking of the smack, bebe. You get past that, you give them back to me then.”
He’s got a point. I remember my mother digging at her own skin until it bled on the few occasions she either tried to quit cold turkey or had run out of her beloved heroin. “Thank you,” I whisper, untangling the beads and putting them back around my neck.
“Hey, Julz?” Elliot calls from the kitchen. “Where you at?”
I look toward Luis, who shrugs.
Time to face the music.
Luis excuses himself to pick up more supplies, tearing off in his jeep with the guy who looks just like him. He’s said his father is dead, murdered by Emilio, so I have to assume that he is another relative. Mariana’s relative? The obsession with figuring out how it had all gone down all those years ago is killing me. I want to know.
The three of us sit around a scuffed laminate table that rocks on the floor. I’m not sure what’s at fault - the table or the uneven floor itself. I rest my elbows on the table, a dull warmth forming in my stomach, and survey Jase and Elliot as they sit across from me.
Elliot looks relieved, Jase worried. They wear matching poker faces, but I’ve known these boys a long time, and even in their blank looks I find the truth.
I can tell what they’re thinking. Elliot thinks now I’ve been rescued, the horror is over. Happily ever after. He rescued the girl, he made the deal, and he made it out alive. I know Elliot McRae, and I know he thinks this is finished.
I glance to the left, to where Jase is grinding his jaw noiselessly, and I know what he’s thinking: It’s only just begun.
I reach my hands across the table, wiggling my fingers at them. “Hands,” I say softly, and they each slowly break out of their own worlds. Jase darts his hand over to mine, crushing it with his.
Elliot watches as Jase’s hand hits mine and hesitates.