He Pulled Out CH 2

Walking into our apartment felt like stepping into a crime scene where the victim was my peace of mind and the murder weapon was whatever fresh hell Leo had unleashed this time.

Leo was planted on our piece-of-shit couch like he’d grown roots, staring at some mindless sitcom with the volume muted.

His hands were doing this weird compulsive thing—rubbing together, then wiping on his jeans, then back to rubbing like he was trying to scrub off invisible guilt. Classic Leo stress response.

I’d seen it enough times to know we were about to have a conversation that would age me approximately six years.

He didn’t even look up when I walked in. Red flag number two.

“Leo.” I used my no-bullshit voice, the one that usually got results.

When he finally looked up, I wanted to travel back in time and hug eleven-year-old me for thinking we’d escaped the worst of our childhood drama.

His eyes were red-rimmed, his usually decent hair looking like he’d been stress-grooming for hours. He looked younger than his twenty-one years, more like the scared kid I remembered from our worst foster placement.

“You want to tell me what’s really going on?” I stayed standing, arms crossed. “Because thirty-seven thousand dollars doesn’t just materialize from thin air, and you’ve been acting like someone’s holding a gun to your head.”

Leo’s Adam’s apple did this nervous bobbing thing. “I borrowed it for Mom and Dad.”

I froze, the water glass halfway to my lips and nearly slipped from my hands. “I’m sorry, what now?”

“They needed help, Jas. Medical bills. Mom’s been sick and—”

“Stop.” The word came out sharp enough to cut glass. I set my water down harder than necessary. “Just fucking stop right there. Are you seriously telling me you borrowed thirty-seven thousand dollars for those people?”

“They’re our parents—”

“No.” I was pacing now, because sitting still would’ve meant accepting this insanity. “No, they’re not. Parents don’t abandon their kids. Parents don’t choose heroin over making sure their children don’t starve. Parents don’t—”

“They said they were clean!” Leo’s voice cracked like he was twelve again. “They said they needed help getting back on their feet, that Mom had medical issues and they just needed—”

“How long?” I spun around to face him. “How long have you been talking to them behind my back?”

His silence was loud enough to wake the dead.

“Leo. How fucking long?”

“A year and a half,” he whispered.

I swear I felt something break inside my chest. “A year and a half? You’ve been in contact with those people for over a year and you never told me?”

“See! ‘Cause I knew you’d lose your shit!”

“Lose my shit? You mean react like someone with a fucking functioning memory? Like someone who remembers what they put us through?”

“They said they changed!” Leo was on his feet now, matching my energy. “They said they were sober, that they wanted to make things right—”

“And you actually believed them?” I was shouting now, all pretense of calm shattered. “After everything? After they left us alone for days? After the evictions and the fights and the nights we went to bed hungry because they spent grocery money on their next fix?”

“Jasmine—”

“No, you listen!” Tears burned my eyes, but I pushed through. “Do you even remember being five years old and I was the only one taking care of you when you had the flu because they were too high to notice? Do you remember when CPS found us? We were eleven and seven, Leo. Eleven and seven!”

Leo’s face was crumpling, but I couldn’t stop.

“Do you remember the foster homes? The Hendersons who locked us in the basement when we ‘misbehaved’? The Garcias who made us compete for meals? Mrs. Chen, who seemed nice until her boyfriend decided he liked teenage girls much more?”

“Stop,” Leo whispered, sinking back onto the couch.

“Why?” My voice was breaking now. “You want to remember the good times? What fucking good times, Leo? When exactly were they good parents? When they missed every birthday? Every school event? Every single moment that actually mattered?”

“They’re still our parents!” Leo shouted through his tears. “I can’t just erase them like you did! I can’t just pretend they don’t exist!”

I stared at him like he’d grown a second head

“I thought maybe they really changed,” he said, his voice completely broken now. “I thought maybe… just maybe, we could have a real family. That they could actually be the parents we deserved.”

And there it was. The truth that gutted me more than any amount of debt ever could.

Looking at my little brother, my baby brother who I’d raised and protected and loved more than my own life, I saw it written all over his face.

He’d been hoping. All this time, he’d been hoping for something I’d buried years ago.

“Oh, Leo.” I sat down beside him, my anger dissolving into something deeper and infinitely more painful. “Baby, they don’t change. People like them… they just don’t.”

“I know that now,” he whispered. “God, Jas, I know that now. The money I sent wasn’t for medical bills, was it? It was for drugs. It was always for fucking drugs…”

I pulled him into my arms as he broke down completely, his shoulders shaking with sobs that seemed to come from somewhere deep and wounded inside him.

“I fucked up,” he cried against my shoulder. “I fucked up so bad, and now these people want their money and I don’t have it and I don’t know what to do.”

“How much did you send them?” I asked quietly.

“Over the year and a half? Maybe fifteen thousand. They always had emergencies, always needed just a little more to get back on their feet.” His laugh was bitter and broken. “But the thirty-seven thousand was different. They said Mom needed surgery, that it was life or death, and I panicked. I went to these loan sharks downtown because the banks wouldn’t give me anything.”

I closed my eyes, trying to process the magnitude of this disaster. “What exactly did these loan sharks tell you?”

“Interest compounds daily. They want forty-five thousand now, and if I don’t have it by the end of next week…” He shuddered. “They made it clear what happens to people who don’t pay.”

“We’ll figure this out,” I said, the words coming out automatically. “I don’t know how yet, but we will. Whatever it takes.”

“What does ‘whatever it takes’ mean?”

I looked at my brother, my responsibility since I was eleven, the only family I had left that actually mattered, and felt something fundamental shift inside me.

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But I’ll figure something out. I promise you, Leo. We’re not going to let them hurt you.”

He leaned against me, and we sat in silence for a long moment, both of us emotionally drained.

“I’m sorry,” Leo whispered. “I’m so sorry, Jas. I know you’ve already sacrificed everything for me, and now I’ve made it worse.”

“Hey.” I tilted his chin up. “We’re family, okay? Real family. The kind that shows up and doesn’t bail when shit gets hard. You made a mistake, but we’ll fix it together.”

Leo nodded, wiping his eyes.

I stared out at the city lights, each one representing lives that weren’t falling apart, people who weren’t facing impossible choices.

Forty-five thousand dollars. In fourteen days.

I wonder how much you can sell a kidney for these days.