As soon as I regained consciousness again, the first thing I became aware of was a slow, steady beeping. Not a “fucked the hell out of a cute nerd” kind of hurt, but more like a “got folded into a taco shape and may have had a tentacle deep-throat me at some point” hurt. 

I groaned hoarsely; drool crusted on my lip. My head pounded in thick, miserable waves. My shoulders felt bruised. Even my legs ached like I’d run a marathon through hell. For a long moment, I just lay there with my eyes closed, trying to piece together the events of last night. 

I saw Noah Riley, wet curls stuck to his forehead, holding a paperback against his chest while he looked at me with those huge, beautiful, nervous eyes. “You’re wrong about this book,” he’d said softly. I saw flashes of memories faster now. How we’d ridden in his old truck together in the rain while old music hummed through blown speakers. The trailer. Noah blushing pink when he asked me to stay. The warmth of his body against mine.

His hands clutching at me like he was afraid I’d disappear.

Then nothing but screaming.

And darkness.

The beeping in the background started to quicken as my head filled with the image of tentacles writhing in the darkness before something enormous unfolded where Noah should have been. 

My eyes snapped open in an instant, and a white ceiling with fluorescent lights came into view. 

“Oh, good,” a familiar voice muttered in an undeniably thick Russian accent. “Sleeping Beauty is awake.”

I turned my head too fast and immediately regretted it when pain exploded through my skull. “Jesus FUCK,” I hissed, my hand flying to my temple.

David sat beside the hospital window in one of those awful plastic chairs, one boot propped against the bedframe. He had a foam coffee cup in one hand and wore a dark trench coat that brushed the floor. He had chains on his jeans and several clunky necklaces. The man looked like a depressed vampire who sold cigarettes to minors behind a gas station. 

Rain crawled slowly down the window behind him, washing the morning light gray. The fluorescent lights overhead made the sharp lines of his face look harsher somehow. Made him look fucking exhausted. Dark shadows sat under his eyes, and his normally neat hair was slightly disheveled, like he’d been dragging his hands through it for hours.

“Where am I?” I croaked, closing my eyes again.

I heard him take a sip of coffee and opened my eyes again in time to see him look me over.

“Columbia Memorial. Hospital.” His accent dragged low and rough around the words. “Also, you snore very loud.”

“Did I die?” I rasped and licked my lips a little.

David tilted his head, considering it. “Doctors say no.”

“That’s not convincing.”

“Mm.”

The heart monitor beside me beeped steadily while I tried very carefully to move one arm to push myself up on the bed. Pain immediately shot through my ribs hard enough to make me collapse halfway back onto the mattress with a pathetic groan. 

David watched without sympathy, one dark eyebrow lifting. “You have broken arm," he informed me calmly. “Three cracked ribs. Seventeen stitches in shoulder.”

“Seventeen stitches? That’s it?” I drawled and reached up to rub a sore spot above my nose, which was all taped up now. Broken, probably. Not the first time, and certainly not the last. 

“You hit trailer wall like artillery shell,” David replied. “You went through window. Naked.”

The more he talked, the more I started to remember from last night. At some point, I’d ended up in Noah’s front yard, dazed and confused and cut to hell from falling through the window. 

Gravel had cut into my palms, and cold air had hit my skin. 

I remember seeing the headlights from motorcycles and then David’s gang rolling up while I tried to crawl back on shaking arms towards the trailer to save Noah from whatever the hell was in there with him.

“No,” Marko had grabbed me hard by the arm, panic sharp in his voice. “You can’t go in there.”

“I have to—” I’d choked out, half delirious. “Noah’s still inside.”

David stood up and walked over to a clear pitcher on the little table next to my bed. His trench coat shifted around his boots as he moved, and chains clinked softly against his jeans. He grabbed a foam cup and poured ice water into it. “You have hard time listening, Michael,” he told me. “I told you to stay away from Noah Riley.”

I watched him for a second, then glanced at the hospital windows behind him. Rain was coming down in pale streaks. “You knew,” I said slowly. “About Noah.”

David handed me the cup of water carefully. “I tried to warn you,” he said, “for his safety more than yours. Last boyfriend Noah had was not so lucky.”

Cold settled hard in my stomach, and I held the cup in one hand, head tilted back as everything began to click into place. “Guy at the motel said you were the one who beat up Noah’s boyfriend,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “That you put him in the hospital with a concussion.”

David scoffed, then sat down and rubbed his jaw tiredly, the silver rings on his fingers glinting in the harsh light. For a second, he didn’t answer. “They dated maybe three months after me,” he finally murmured. “Boy from Portland. College student, like Noah. I gave them space, tried to move on with my life. Learned that was a mistake. College boy had anger issues, and Noah was sweet. One night, he took things too far.”

My grip tightened around the foam cup. “What happened?” I asked.

David’s eyes flicked toward me, edged with a bitter frustration. “He thought Noah was cheating with me. Not true, though. Never true. But he did not care. The college boy started yelling, breaking things in apartment. Grabbed Noah. That was a mistake.” 

I swallowed and took a sip of water to wash away the weird bile-chemical taste that had suddenly taken up residence there. 

“When I arrived, Noah was outside building, barefoot and shaking. Not speaking at all.” His fingers tapped once against his knee, restless. “College boy was lying in the grass, bloody and torn to hell.”

“You were there that night,” I said.

“Da,” David shrugged, like it was just another inconvenient fact of life. “When I got there, college boy was still breathing. Barely. We did not know what happened fully yet. I drove him to hospital anyway.” He took a slow sip of coffee, eyes distant. “The police did not care,” he added flatly. “They booked me in for assault.”

I stared at him. “So you went to jail?”

“Briefly,” David said, examining the rings on his fingers now. “But my ties run deep, Michael."

I studied him for a second, the trench coat, the exhaustion carved into his face, the way he spoke about violence like it was just another weather condition. He wasn’t telling me everything, and I was starting to get pissed off about it. Especially since I was the one who ended up thrown through a window last night. When I was the one who…God. 

For the first time in my life, I thought I liked somebody. Really liked them. Not just the easy kind of like, either. Or the passing kind, where I’d move on in a week. But the kind that stuck under the ribs and didn’t loosen when you tried to breathe. 

Last night was starting to feel less like a mistake and more like a door I’d already walked through without realizing there was no clean way back out again.

I thought of Noah laughing into my shoulder. Of Noah looking at me with that soft, desperate expression in his eyes before he kissed me like he was starving for it. Heat flashed through my chest at the memory, sharp and disorienting against the stale hospital air and fluorescent lights overhead.

The monitor beside me immediately started beeping faster as my heart kicked hard against my ribs. I was spiraling, and the thing was, David knew it. His eyes narrowed slightly, attention shifting fully to me now. 

“Where the fuck is he?” I demanded and pushed myself up as best as I could, pain so sharp cutting through me that I nearly passed out. 

“You should calm down—” David started and stood up slowly from his chair. 

“No,” I snapped immediately, one hand gripping the bed rails to keep me upright. “No, fuck that. Where’s Noah? He almost killed me last night. And somehow, I’m still more worried about him than myself. So maybe stop talking in riddles for five fucking seconds.”

David’s jaw tightened sharply, something hot and flustered flashing behind his eyes before he stepped closer to the bed and looked down at me with an expression that was part anger, part exhaustion, and part something uglier underneath both. Jealousy. But not petty jealousy. Not the immature kind, nah. It was something older and way meaner.

“Worried?” David asked flatly. “You had dick in him for five minutes, and he threw you through window. You know nothing about Noah Riley.”

Heat immediately crawled up my neck. “Beat your record, huh? You mad?”

David moved suddenly, grabbing the front of my hospital gown hard enough to jerk me slightly forward against the pillows. Not enough to hurt me, but enough to shut me up. “You think this is funny?” he demanded. 

Up close, he looked exhausted. Like, verging on sleep deprivation, bone-deep exhaustion. The rings on his fingers dug into the fabric of my gown. There was an upside-down horseshoe, a crudely carved skull that he’d probably done himself. “You think you are first person to look at Noah and decide you want him?” he demanded.

I grabbed his wrist instinctively. “Get the fuck off me.”

David leaned in close, his breath smelling like bitter coffee. “You had one fucking night, Michael,” he murmured, his voice viciously controlled. “One night with him, and already you are looking at me like you would tear this hospital apart to find him.”

His grip tightened once before he finally shoved me back against the pillow. Pain shot through my ribs so sharply I sucked in a breath through my teeth. I swallowed it down hard, but my temper was still boiling too hot to back down. “You’re jealous,” I told him. “Because Noah chose someone that wasn’t you. He moved on, Hair. Why don’t you just admit it?”

Something dangerous flickered across David’s face. “You stupid little—”

The door cracked open with a soft squeal, and we both shut up. David dropped the hand he’d been about to grab me with again, and I looked over automatically, adrenaline pounding in my chest. 

Noah Riley stood there, one hand on the door.

He had a crumpled paper bag clutched awkwardly against his chest, fingers curled tightly into the top like he was debating whether to stay or flee. Damp curls hung in his eyes from the rain outside, soft and dark against flushed cheeks. He wore this oversized red windbreaker that practically swallowed him whole, the sleeves hanging over part of his hands. Underneath it was a faded black band T-shirt so worn thin it looked slept in, the collar stretched loose enough to expose one collar bone.

There were little pins stuck into the front of his jacket too. Old horror movies. A tiny alien head. A worn smiley face with cracked yellow paint. One button just said TRUST NO ONE in peeling white letters. He looked like a nervous VHS store employee who accidentally became the vessel for an ancient cosmic nightmare.

And somehow, impossibly, he was still the prettiest boy I’d ever seen in my life.

"Noah," David said. And Jesus Christ, that voice difference. Mother fucker really was playing that game, wasn’t he?

“I…” Noah glanced toward the hallway behind him already. “I can come back later.” 

“No,” David and I said at the exact same time. 

Noah’s eyes flicked to me almost immediately after, and whatever little composure he’d walked in with visibly cracked. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Michael.”

The way he said it made something in my chest cave in a little. Because he looked genuinely horrified. Scared for me. Which was a totally new concept in my book. “I’m okay,” I assured him quickly and waved my good arm a little. “I’ve had way worse than this.”

Noah looked unconvinced and gently shut the door behind him. His gaze dragged over the bruises on my face, the bandages on my arms, and the IV in my hand. He tightened his grip on the paper bag so hard the top crinkled loudly, then he stepped closer to the bed carefully, still hesitant, like he expected somebody…or something…to stop him.

David took a seat and crossed one leg over the other, not angry anymore. Just intensely alert. 

“I brought your sunglasses and stuff,” Noah murmured and set the paper bag beside my leg, opening it awkwardly. “And a couple of other things. I didn’t know what people usually bring to hospitals,” he admitted. “And the vending machine downstairs kind of freaked me out.”

I watched him pull out a can of ginger ale, his worn copy of The Outsiders, and two packs of gummy worms. Then he reached for my hand to hold it. And all I could remember were tentacles, screams, and being pulled apart into something I didn’t understand. 

I flinched and pulled away before our fingers made contact. 

The pain that flashed across Noah’s face nearly killed me. 

David caught my reaction, muttered something in Russian that sounded oddly like an insult, and took a sip of his what was probably now lukewarm coffee. “Well,” he said, tilting his head towards Noah. “Tell him, malenkiy koshmar. The nurses will be in soon to chase us off.”

Noah wouldn’t look directly at me now. His shoulders had drawn inward so tightly he almost looked small despite the oversized jacket swallowing him whole. “I…should have warned you,” he said finally. “But when you showed up at the bookstore, and you called me beautiful, I—”

“Wait,” I said and squeezed my eyes closed. “I never called you that.”

“You did,” Noah replied. “You said I was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.”

I thought my heart stopped beating. I knew I hadn’t called him that specifically, no. I’d called the tentacle monster abomination that had been chasing me the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. So either Noah fucking Riley had heard wrong, or he was…

David exhaled through his nose, low and tired. “Noah.”

Noah flinched at his name, immediately looking down again. “Sorry. I guess…I’m not from here, Michael.”

“From Oregon?” I tried, my voice even more hoarse than it was ten minutes ago. 

Noah shook his head a little.

“So you’re from Europe,” I said. “That explains all the Russian you guys talk in. Damn. I should have known. That explains all the weird shit happening in this town. What is it? Some kind of Russian experiment gone wrong?”

I laughed, only to shut up when I caught the look on both their faces. They didn’t look like they were joking at all. Especially Noah, who had gone as pale as a ghost and was biting on his lip all nervous now. 

“I’m from a place called R’lyeh,” he explained. “Kinda sounds like my last name. I was brought here from another dimension.”

David took a sip of his coffee like this was all mildly inconvenient weather. “He is Cthulhu,” he said, then added, almost as an afterthought, “small one.”