“I never saw the journal,” Nate mutters, following me with his golden gaze as I check the nightstand. “But he told me about it.”
“It was here.” I lift a pen and an ancient paperback copy of the Lord of the Rings. Below I find a small key, and an old receipt, but no journal.
Where is it? Last I saw it, it was right here.
“He said he thought it could help with his panic attacks,” Nate mutters. “But that it didn’t.”
I wave a hand at him. “That makes it even more important, because…” I open the nightstand drawer. Empty. “…if it was a therapy of sorts, he might have written about things that happened to him. In the past.”
Another round of the room coughs up nothing but some dusty socks that had fallen behind the bed, and a Russian textbook, presumably for his tutoring lessons.
I don’t want to believe it. Did Kash take the journal with him? Did he really plan this?
Did I get this all wrong?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Nate
Kash is gone.
Days pass. A week. More days.
He’s gone.
No way am I letting the others see how hard this has hit me. What a hole it’s left in my chest. In my life.
I can’t fucking believe he’s not here. His absence is an ache, worse than the bruises, worse than the migraines. This void where he used to be is killing me, mocking me everywhere I turn. I can still see him in my mind’s eye.
Making coffee in the kitchen.
Smoking on the balcony.
Curled up in our bed.
Goddammit. If he just up and walked away from this, from us… I’m gonna go medieval on his ass. If he’s disgusted with what he found out about me, no matter what West and Sydney think, then…
Then what, genius? You gonna drag him back into your life by force? Insist he learns to live with someone like you? A filthy whore. A used-up body. A shattered mind.
I’m supposed to be asleep, but I can’t relax enough for that. It’s been a week since that night, since Kash vanished into thin air. I glance at Sydney and West, asleep, arms and legs entangled, and step out of our room.
He saved me. The dickwad saved me, twice. I don’t fucking wanna know what would’ve happened to me if Kash hadn’t stepped in, both times.
My back hurts like hell, my sides even worse. The pain burns, deep inside, all the way to my bones, a hot blade carving me.
I remember my dad laughing in my face, I remember his buddy Rick holding me as I fought to escape, cursing myself for deciding to go check on West after Sydney told me he was back at the old apartment, going through his things. I remember Sal Fuckface yanking my pants open, the other two assholes talking about how they’d take turns.
My gorge rises, and I swallow hard, pacing the living room.
Kash saved me. Saved my soul in the nick of time. I’m pretty sure I’d have lost it completely if those motherfuckers got me for good.
What if Sydney is right? What if he didn’t leave of his own free will? If he was kidnapped, then this is… fucked up, too fucked up to make sense of. Too damn scary, because what if he’s hurt, what if he’s dead…
Fuck, no, can’t think about that or I’ll go out of my mind.
Between the doubts, the uneasiness, the migraines and the damn nightmares, it’s a miracle I can still function.
My phone dings, and I check it compulsively. Guess I’m still hoping Kash is out there, doing fuck knows what, completing some task he felt was important, and ready to come back to us.