Twenty-Four
Kyle
“No!” I shouted as I stared at what was left of Garin, slamming my back into the chair, trying to thrash my arms and legs, even though they were bound. “How could you do this? How could you take him from me?” I dragged my gaze over to the man who was responsible for this. “I hope you die. I hope your babies come out here and eat your flesh and chew off your fucking face and—”
Breath grabbed my lips and twisted them. “And what, puta? If I’m gone, there’s no one here to take care of you. And do you know what would happen then?”
He may have been holding on to my lips, but I kept on screaming. I screamed because they had put us in this prison and had done horrible, sadistic things to us. I screamed because we were still in here, and I knew I was never getting out. I screamed because Breath had tortured Garin to death and taken away the one man I loved.
And I screamed, “Garin,” again and again because I just wanted him to lift his head and look at me, but I knew he wouldn’t. “Open your eyes, Garin.” My words were so muffled, but that didn’t stop me. “Come back to me. You can’t leave me, not after all this. Garin…”
“Do you see his flesh?” Breath spoke close to my ear and held me so tightly I couldn’t move. “That’s what your pussy is going to look like. Torn up and bloody in a way that can’t be fixed.”
His flesh…or what was left of it.
Breath had placed Garin in a chair, two ropes crisscrossed over his chest and tied around the metal spine of the chair. His hands and ankles were shackled. His skin had been chopped, as though a butcher had been sharpening his knife across Garin’s entire body. All of him dripped blood. I couldn’t see a piece that hadn’t been slashed. His wounds were spread open; some so deep, there was raw muscle sticking out. The blood dripped, dripped, dripped down his body, forming a pool beneath him.
A pool like the one that had gathered around Paulie.
“Why did you do this?” I seethed, glaring at the man I hated more than anything in this world. “Why did you kill him?” Killing Garin killed me. Emptied me. Destroyed me. There was no reason for me to be here anymore. “Garin didn’t know about Paulie’s murderer. Only I did. You should have killed me, not him.” I looked down at the knife that was in Breath’s hand. “Slit my throat. Do it. Get it over with. I can’t live another second.”
“I’m getting real tired of your screams, puta.” Two of his fingers slipped inside my mouth and clamped around my tongue. “If you look close enough, you’ll see his chest rising and falling.” He turned my head, so I faced Garin, and then he squeezed my tongue even harder. “Your boyfriend isn’t dead…yet,” he snarled.
He’s alive?
The tears, the screams, the anxiety, the guilt, the dread, the weight—it all lightened.
Garin…was really alive?
The sobs I wept were out of happiness as I finally saw the movement in Garin’s chest. His inhales were shallow, but he was breathing. And, suddenly, I was breathing, too. I was breathing for the both of us. I was breathing because, despite how terribly mangled he looked, my Garin was still with me.
“Levanta la cara del prisionero,” Breath barked at Beard, who I now noticed was standing in the front of the room.
Beard moved over to Garin and grabbed his hair, lifting Garin’s head so that I could finally see his face. There were slashes across his cheeks, his forehead, his nose. His lips were so beaten; they looked like hamburger meat.
“Kyle,” Garin moaned.
His voice was so soft. I almost didn’t hear him.
“I’m here, Garin.”
I tasted the tears on my lips. I tasted bile. I tasted plastic.
I tasted guilt.
Garin opened his eyes, stopping when they were just tiny slits of white. “Kyle,” he groaned. “Kyle…Kyle.”
It sounded like when he was being beaten, when Breath had made me listen to Garin whispering my name over and over. I had thought those were going to be his last words. Now, I feared they truly would be.
“He needs to go to the hospital,” I snapped at Breath. “He needs surgery and blood. He needs to be fixed.”
“He’ll have all that,” Breath spit in my ear.
“Then, take him.”
Breath didn’t move. Beard didn’t either.
“Take him right fucking now!”
Breath walked around to my side, gently resting his hand on my shoulder. It was too late for gentle. Gentle wasn’t a language Breath spoke. I didn’t like it. And I didn’t know what it meant.
“He’s not going anywhere until you give me what I want,” Breath said. “Then, puta, I’ll take him to the hospital, and he’ll get all the care he needs.”
“And me?”
He smiled, like I had just told him I loved him. “You’ll get the punishment you deserve.”
I knew what it all meant now.
“Confess and save Garin, or I’m going to kill you both. The choice is yours,” he said.
I’d known all along I was going to die in this prison. Life beyond this cell was simply a fantasy. The two of us walking out of here, Garin’s hand clasped in mine, living the life I’d always wanted—that was fiction.
It wasn’t what I deserved.
Not after what I’d done.
“Do you promise me?” My voice was loud and stern. “Do you promise that, if I tell you what you want, you’ll take Garin to the hospital?”
I didn’t know if I could trust Breath, but I had no other choice. Garin was getting weaker by the second. He was losing more blood. He was slipping further away from me.
I couldn’t drag this out any longer.
“I promise you, puta.”
This was the confession I should have made back then. This was what I should have voiced every time Garin and Billy had banged on my front door, when they’d waited for me in the hallway outside my classes, when Garin had cornered me in the alley.
This was my second chance.
“Garin, I’m so sorry.”
His eyes opened again, looking at me through those tiny slits.
“I could tell you why I lied to you and Billy, but it doesn’t matter anymore. There’s no excuse for what I did. I was wrong. I know that. I’ve paid for it every day since. It’s eaten me up, and the guilt has never once let me go. I don’t deserve forgiveness. Just know that I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
Breath stuck something sharp in the side of my neck. “Spit it out. I’m tired of listening to this bullshit. You’ve tested my patience long enough.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered again.
I watched Garin’s face as the name of the murderer slipped through my lips. Even in his state, even with all the blood and all his wounds, I saw it—the anger, the resentment.
The hatred.
And then all I saw was black.