**TRIGGERS. THIS IS MY TRIGGER WARNING FOR ALL OF YOU. PLEASE READ CAUTIOUSLY.

❝barely conscious in the door where you stand, your eyes are fighting sleep but your mouth makes your demands. you laugh at every word, trying hard to be cute. i almost feel sorry for what i'm gonna do.❞

❘❘

"YOU EVER DONE HEROIN?"

Numbly, I shake my head.

Jesse smiles. "You'll love it."

Butterflies storm through my chest, an unstoppable stampede of anxiety and excitement fluttering free. "More than I love snow?"

"Snow," he snickers, mischief glinting in his dark eyes, light caressing sheets of black ice. "It's cute that you call it that."

A gentle breeze weaves through my hair, spilling onto bare shoulders and sinking into brittle bones. I shiver. "Why?"

"Because it's not cold, Neva." Slowly, fingertips trace up my wrist, a chill chasing the soft motion. "It makes you feel like you're on fire."

Jesse hums lazily, catching a lock of my hair between his fingers, twisting, tugging, teasing me closer to him. My breath catches, and when our eyes lock, I'm stuck swimming in the faint tendrils of air billowing between us in a wild clash of calor y hielo.

"It's cold, isn't it?" he drawls so fucking softly, lips moving, pero las palabras shifting, slipping... away... "It's cold tonight, Neva."

Draping an arm around my shoulder, he tugs me into the dim, dirty corner. Together, tucking the iron table against the bricks, shielding it from the wind, Jesse and I are a wall. We're still and strong—baring weather and worry, gazes falling to the untouched lines cut across a black surface.

"It is cold," I finally exhale, a weak whisper withering into nothing. "It feels... cold, and creo que... I think I..."

Creo que me encanta; creo que me encanta más de lo que nunca he amado nada.

Jesse doesn't even look at me. "You do. You love it so much that nothing else exists."

My cheeks warm. "I..."

"It's supposed to snow next week, Neva."

Another flutter erupts in my chest, stirring my heart into those fucked up romanticized expectations of invierno. ¿Es sólo otra mentira? "Really?"

"That's what they're saying."

I don't know who they are, pero se siente como una promesa, a stinging, self-destructive sentiment for something surreal. Still wandering in the haze of crisp air, blinking dreamily, all the cold, cut shadows sink and skew into fantasies of endless snowstorms.

I shiver again, but it's raw and unfiltered, ready for a brutal blizzard, or... anything to ice over the lingering memories of warmth, abandoned in a Florida thunderstorm.

Anything to steal the taste, that trace of gravel on my tongue.

Jesse snatches the straw from my shaky hand, separating to saunter around the brick wall. Alone, a little afraid, I let my gaze drift over the backyard, vision sharpening to take in the empty picnic tables beneath trembling umbrellas and the iron black tables that close the gaps in a labyrinth of empty space.

"Everyone cleared out."

I whip my head around to find him, lost and lunging for our little corner, palms trembling and bloodshot eyes darkening. Darkness dances across hollow cheekbones; shards of light catch twisted strands of hair. A smile surges from the shadows.

"Everyone... everyone left." My head feels foggy. "Is the party over?"

"No, baby," he drawls. "The party is just getting started."

A laziness captures him, driving him forward at a groggy pace, sleepwalking through seas, wading into ice cold waters to seize me from the storm.

That cut straw is pressed into my palm, and then I'm drowning, and we're drowning together, and we're willingly shipwrecking ourselves to the messy little lines of powder on the surface of a black ocean. Midnight crawls under my skin, a riptide of impulses and desires killing a million lukewarm feelings of regret or pain, and drunk, dizzy, delirious, I snort, sniff, and then still.

Esto es lo que quiero.

"You know," I slur, passing him the straw. "You're the person I hate the least right now."

"Yeah?"

"Because I always knew you were an asshole."

Jesse shoots me a sideways smirk. "And somehow, I'm still the one you end up with, señorita."

I snicker. "Yeah. Okay."

As he dips to the table to snort, I watch from beyond a veil, distraída, distant, feeling... nothing. It's not the same; it doesn't hit. Jesse sniffs, reels back up, tips his chin to the sky with fluttering lashes and parted lips.

"It's pure shit, Neva."

I nod numbly, still wasting away in that sensual swell of anticipation. If it's so fucking pure, why do I still see that flicker of hurt in my brother's eyes... every time I fucking blink? Why do I still feel like shit?

When Jesse swings back to me, his dark eyes sparking in the late-night glow, I bite my bottom lip cautiously. "What?"

"Just wait for it," he whispers, like it's... a secret. Our dirty little fucking secret. "You'll feel it."

My hand crawls across the matte black surface of the table, cold fingertips, sharp nails, and as our shoulders brush, Jesse stills.

We're not a wall; we're a cage.

He flicks the straw up for me to steal, y por una fracción de segundo, I know that we're both doomed, damaged and desesperado, and somehow, perfect for each other. Aquí y ahora.

We're both looking for this.

Maybe we both need this.

I peer up at him slowly. Seductively. "What will I feel?"

His lips spike up into a grin—violent and vicious, so fucking cutthroat that I feel it like the edge of a blade, metal, steel, pressing against my windpipe. "Everything, Neva."

My breath hitches. Everything. ¿Puedo manejar todo?

Gently, Jesse clasps my wrist and leads me down, down, down, into another dauntless descent, ducking to snort and sniff, and then blink, blink, blink, blink.

"Everything," I breathe, like it's endless and eternal, like it's infinite, like a million stars in a vast universe, like... we are everything. "Es todo."

Jesse chuckles, and the sound is loose, but lethal, a soft assault of a million warnings that I should run from. "I always knew you were wild, Neva."

I catch the words with a dizzy kiss, and when we collide, when the world falls away, my body starts to drift. I feel him, or something, in my veins, cauterizing the leftover memories and the traces of tension and the breathless desperation of death.

Nada se puede comparar.

I think I'm real; I think I'm surging from the sky, melting into a missing memory, motions and moments bleeding out into... into life.

The world exists inside of me, and I'm... everything. Todo.

Fingertips trace lines of fire, breathing, blistering, burning, and palms start to smooth into singular sensations of touch, tender, tortured, trapped. Like life and death crashing into a fleeting fracture of fucking fantasies that have never been felt.

Until now.

I feel him, I feel his fingers, and I feel his heartbeat, and suddenly, we're trashed and tormented, tumbling into blissful sighs, ensnared into an ascent of euphoria.

Thoughts don't make sense, and time doesn't stop, but in each jagged, broken breach of contact, we fall into the high, and we... we sink... we drown...

My stomach lurches.

My head spins.

My heart reels.

"Jesse, I..."

I don't feel... right. This isn't right.

There are hands, fingers, nails, on bare thighs, sweeping up skin and stealing the spaces that I can't understand. Fragmented friction, like gaps of fragile air and wires, these thinly built wires, stringing together bones and breath... and... I...

I'm... I'm not me.

I grab his wrist, but nothing stops.

We're still moving.

"Hey," I try to say, but his lips are against mine. Crushing. "Hey, Jesse..."

A groan vibrates down my throat, but it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not me, it's not... lo que quiero. Fabric hitches, and then my pulse spikes, and then Jesse is mumbling something incoherently, and I'm whimpering, or I'm—

"Mmm. Neva."

"Jesse, stop."

It's confusing, honing in on sensations of need and the frantic motions of desperation. My heart drags behind, and as I blink groggily, the delay feels dangerous. I can't find my legs or my chest or my head; I can only feel things that don't feel the way I want them to feel.

Palms on knees, spreading, fingers on thighs, digging, and teeth on throats, biting, and lines in a vision of a cut silhouette, blurring, blurring... blurring?

Us.

There's an us, there's a person with me, and he's touching me, and his fingers are between my legs, and I'm high, and I'm hopeless, and I'm... I'm scared.

I didn't want to feel like this.

"Jesse, no, no," I slur, wriggling in his grip, lightheaded, lost. "I think you got the wrong idea. I—"

"Well, it's not free, babe," he rasps, the words like crunching gravel and midnight concrete, unraveling into something hazy, something foggy, algo pinche malo.

So fucking wrong.

"I... Jesse, no, I don't—"

"You're sixteen, Neva," he sighed, sparing me a sideways glance. Unimpressed. "I had to come get you from a frat party."

I rolled my eyes. Pendejo. "Nobody asked you to come get me. I was fine on my own."

"Jesse, stop," I gasp, stronger this time, stronger and steadier, but somehow, not strong enough.

"Your mother asked me to come get you."

Tires crunch dirt and rocks; feet fumble on stones.

"Just because you're mamá's boyfriend doesn't mean you're my fucking dad," I snapped, glaring at him in the dark.

Headlights washed over his profile, flickering and flashing in fleeting moments. When his gaze steered to me, I met it defiantly. "Neva, you look like you could pass for twenty two."

I smiled dryly. "Sí. You can't get in unless you dress the part."

"This dress is so hot," he murmurs into my skin, a feverish compliment that feels dirty in too many ways. "So fucking sexy."

"So you show some skin to fuck with older guys."

My heart skipped. Chinga su madre. "No."

"Always showing off those legs and that ass." Fabric rips, or it tears, or it starts to shimmy away like a second skin. "Was it always for me?"

"No," I muster out, palms flat against his chest, pressing and pushing to find air or anything that isn't—

A hand pressed against my bare knee. "If you're really into older guys, Neva..."

I jerked, but his grip tightened, fingers bruising skin. "What are you..."

"Is that why you're dressed like that?" he asked with a laugh, pulling away. "Because you knew your mother would send me. Is this whole thing for me?"

My teeth ground together. "Fuck you. Stop being an asshole."

It was fast, so fast that the world darkened, as he glared at me in the a black void, as the car skidded to the side, slowing, slowing, slowing...

"What..." My stomach lurched. "What are you doing?"

"You are beautiful, Neva."

"I always thought you were sexy, Neva."

"Stop, stop, stop."

For one second, it stops.

I scramble in his grip, writhing and thrashing, a million curses fumbling free, but then we're tumbling out onto the side of the road, and I taste nothing but defeat, a maelstrom of rage and gravel, hot, hot... hot...

Heat presses on my heart, choking out a thick sob, and there are too many fingers, and too many words, and I can't move— and I can't run— and I can't fight— and I can't breathe—

But I can fucking feel.

I can feel everything I don't want to feel.

When he thrusts into me, I cry.

When he thrusts into me, I cry.

Blood spills onto my tongue, a vicious slew of grit and metal, and it's twisted concrete, glittering, and it's brick, carving into palms, beneath nails, into cheeks, biting, pinching... burning...

...mis piernas y mi cabeza y mi corazón...

Everything burns.

A dive for the edge, and a muffled sob, my lungs blistering with the humid air, too hot, too hot, too fucking hot, and these little gasps, sharp intakes of breath, and the... the pounding, pounding, pounding—

"It's okay, Neva. This is okay," he coos in my ear, featherlight, faint, fingers sweeping hair away from my neck, skimming a sheen of sweat. "You like it, right?"

"This is what you wanted, right?" he rasps in my ear, hard, harsh, deep inside of me, throbbing, pulsing and...

"No, no, no, no, no..."

Esto no es lo que quiero.

Sobs tear free, and in the wake of destruction, as the embers wither in the winter breeze, I shrink, shivering and quivering, fucking freezing, left behind, hollow, bare thighs and buckled knees, falling into an icy void, a captured kingdom of snowflake kisses.

I'm nothing.

It's cold. It's so fucking cold.

Someone said it was going to snow this week, and for the first time in my life, I'm dreading it.

❘❘

**Yeah. This was one of the most difficult chapters to write. It's a really dark, dark, dark chapter; it's confusing and traumatic and fragmented with a flashback and a first time heroin high. It hit me harder than I'm willing to admit to put this into actual words, and to... post it. I was nervous, but it's... it's Neva's low right now. It's her lowest fucking moment, and it hurts. It really fucking hurts.

Yes, Neva did heroin. Yes, she did snort it. Yes, she was so fucked up that she couldn't fight someone off of her. Yes, she was so fucked up that she didn't understand what was happening or what she was feeling. Yes, she was raped.

I love you all so much. I hope you still love me. Besos. ❄️