On a twin bed pushed against the wall, a lone occupant lay still and unmoving. My breath stuttered.
“Johnny!” Cori whisper-shouted, pushing past me to kneel beside her brother. “Johnny.” She ran her fingers through his hair. Tears began streaking down her face as she rasped, “Johnny, can you hear me?” She frantically slapped his cheek, lightly at first, and then a few times with more force. “Johnny, wake up…please.”
Her brother lay on his side, legs curled up. He had on his hoodie and boxers but no pants. As Cori continued to plead with him, I discreetly pulled the needle she hadn’t noticed out of his toes.
I saw her stick two fingers on his neck and press her other hand against his chest. I held my breath as her face went pale, but then an expression of pure relief washed over her. “He’s alive, Deck. He’s not waking up, but he’s breathing.”
Thank fuck. “We need to get him out of here.”
I found Johnny’s pants shoved behind the bed and slid them on him quickly. I still had the sense we were on borrowed time. It would have been helpful if Johnny could have woken up a bit, but he was basically in a coma. Cori and I needed to make do.
We hoisted him up between us, and I bore the brunt of it as we draped his arms over our shoulders. Johnny probably weighed fifty pounds less than me, butmaldita sea, dios, he felt heavy. Pure dead weight. His bare feet dragged on the carpet as we carried him down the hallway, but there was no help for it. As we passed the other bedroom, I was grateful the man inside had forced us to shut the door.
No one on the couches looked up as we went back through the living room, but the woman in the kitchen—now drinking a Gatorade—cocked her head at us.
“J okay?” she drawled.
“Yeah,está bien. We got him.”
She nodded, and I exhaled shakily as we hobbled outside. It had only been twenty minutes, but the sun already felt foreign.
Cori must have sensed it too. “It’s like coming out from another dimension,” she said.
“Hundred percent.”
Her face twisted. “A horrible dimension with needles and naked girls and nobody giving a crap about anything. Just the drugs.” She spat out the raw words.
“Cori—”
“The world where my brother lives.” She shook her head, even as she did her part to keep Johnny steady between us. “I didn’t know, Deck.” Lifting her shoulder to wipe a tear from the bottom of her jaw, she continued softly, “I mean, I knew, but…not really. Not like this.”
We got to the truck, and I hoisted Johnny into the back seat. He seemed fine there, uncaring when I buckled him into the middle with just enough slack to lay him down. He let out a small grunt when his head brushed up against the door, the first sign he was coming down.
“What do you want to do, Cori?”
She remained stonelike for a moment, hunched in the passenger seat with her hands clasped in her lap. Eventually, she asked, “Can you take us to the hospital?”
Johnny would hate it, but it was the right call. “Yeah.”
“And Deck?”
“Hmm?”
“If the doctors have questions, I’m not sure how much help I can be. Will you stay with me there for a while? Just until I havean idea of what’s next. Maybe you can tell me more about him, what you know about his situation.”
At that moment, it dawned on me. I wouldn’t be able to keep pushing her away. Not entirely. For Johnny to survive, he needed as many people as possible in his corner. And it wouldn’t happen overnight. I thought I’d been helping him this past year. I got the feeling Cori thought she’d been doing the same thing. But we’d just been passing time.
This didn’t mean we had to be back in each other’s lives. I didn’t want that for Cori, didn’t want to risk hurting her again. But we needed to work together to save Johnny. I owed her that much. Then I could stay away for good.
Chapter seven
Cori
PRESENT DAY
Deck stayed with me at the hospital through the day and into the night.
When we first arrived, he gave me the rundown on the time he’d spent with my brother over the past year. It sounded like his experience had been similar to mine. Lots of hopeful conversations and episodes of Johnny camping on his couch for a few days, only to be followed by the disappointment of Johnny leaving to score, and then radio silence.
