by L. A. Sable
He glares up at the ceiling. “What do you want from me, Lily?”
“Pills, preferably Vicodin or Percocet but almost anything will do.”
“Sorry, I’m out.” He pushes off the door with a heavy sigh. “Let me walk you back to your room.”
“You’re a fucking liar.” Unsure of the source of the rage that overtakes me, I jump from the bed and stomp over to the desk. I pull open drawers and rifle through their contents, searching for the distinctive little baggies that represent the only thing that can take my pain away. “Just tell me where they are or I’m going to tear this room apart.”
“The stuff I gave you last week was supposed to last for the rest of the month. I don’t have anymore right now, and I won’t for a while.”
But I don’t listen to his words, continuing with my frantic search. It isn’t even that I necessarily don’t believe him, but I have to be sure. Maybe he missed a bottle the last time he went looking or perhaps there are a few loose pills rolling around in a drawer somewhere. I can’t just take his word for it, not when this is the only thing that can help things right now.
Asher lets me rage, watching in a detached sort of way as I rip his belongings out of the drawers and throw them onto the floor. But he doesn’t make any move to stop me. “You’re not going to find anything.”
His obvious calm only serves to infuriate me more. I launch myself at him, hitting hard enough that it drives him back against the door with a hard thump. He grabs my wrists and holds them away from himself to keep me from striking him, but doesn’t do anything else to subdue me. After a few minutes of patiently waiting, my rage abruptly vanishes, leaving me both physically and emotionally exhausted.
Then I collapse against him, cheek resting against his chest where the steady drum of his heartbeat seems agonizingly slow compared to my own rapid rate. His arms come around me, a little too tight to be only comforting as if he wants to make sure that I won’t pull away. The urge to cry nearly overwhelms me, but the tears don’t come, leaving my eyes as dry and burning as a desert.
We stand there for several moments with his arms wrapped around me as my head is tucked underneath his chin. Finally, he breaks the silence.
“You’re moving pretty well. Does your back even hurt right now?”
I glare at the wall. It’s obvious what he’s getting at and I don’t want to admit the truth, not to him and certainly not to myself. “A little.”
“But nothing that some Advil can’t mop up.”
“Advil won’t help me sleep.”
His voice is soft as his arms tighten around me. “It isn’t sleep you’re looking for, it’s an escape. I don’t like how much of this stuff you’ve been taking.”
I try to push away from him but the circle of his arms is practically as strong as a band of iron. I’m not getting away until he lets me go. “Do you really think right now is the best time to be having this conversation? My mother just died.”
“That’s a nice try at dodging me, but it isn’t going to work,” Asher responds with a scoff. “There are lots of different kinds of pain, but right now I don’t think you’re trying to treat the physical kind.”
“What are you, a psychiatrist, now?”
He snorts and pushes me gently away from him, before slipping around me and moving to the bed. “You are getting controlled medication through me so I’m probably the closest that you’re ever going to get to somebody with a medical license.”
A clenching wave of nausea starts in my belly and spread upwards, making me lightheaded. “You really don’t have anything I can take?”
“Nope, sorry.” He pulls the covers back on the bed. “Do you want to stay?”
I want to stay, but I also want to stab him with the nearest sharp object. “No.”
“I really am trying to help you, even if it doesn’t always seem like it.” Asher sighs as he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His face is heavy with the sort of regret that seems like too much even in a situation like this. “I never should have started any of this. Someday, I’ll apologize to you for it, but not until I see how it ends.”
“You’re right about one thing, we never should have started any of this.” There’s an ache in every part of my body as I glare across the room at him, desperately wanting to crawl into those sheets with him and hating myself for it. “We’re done.”
I let the door slam behind me, despite the fact that it’s the middle of the night and I risk waking up everyone with a room in this hallway. I’m angry and in pain, directing the attention that I don’t want to devote to my personal tragedies at whatever else is close by.
My mind moves through possibilities I know are ridiculous. The doctor’s office is in town and I might be able to wheedle another prescription out of them, but that would have to wait until the morning. The school nurse’s office wouldn’t be that difficult to break into, but it’s unlikely they keep any of the harder stuff stocked there.
I trudge back to the Pavilion and to my room, imagining that the invisible ground in the darkness ahead of me is about to open up and swallow me whole. It isn’t really a desire to die, but I want more than anything else to disappear and no longer have to deal with any of the bullshit drowning my life.
What’s one more sleepless night after a whole string of them?
Chapter 11
I wake up with pressure on my chest, unaware until my bleary gaze meets the ceiling that I slept at all. It takes a moment to realize that I can’t move because someone has their arm draped over my ribs just above my waist.
When I painfully turn my head, sore joints screaming at me in protest, I see Kai with his head propped up by his free arm and smiling down at me in a sad sort of way. “Don’t freak out.”
I try to get up, but the weight of his arm stopped me. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“Diamonds have skeleton keys, remember?” Lukas pops up at the end of the bed with a handful of over-the-counter medication and bottles of Gatorade in his arms that he dumps on the bedspread. “Let me know if you feel nauseous because I have something for that.”
When I shove at Kai’s chest with the hand that isn’t trapped against his body, he barely moves an inch. “What are you doing?”
“Detoxing you,” Lukas says gently as he grabs a nearby wastebasket and lines it with an empty grocery bag. “Or at least we will be soon.”
My body freezes as the word detox slowly filters over my awareness. “Detoxing me from what.”
“You can deny it if you want to,” Kai says with a heavy sigh. “But we’ve already talked to Asher, who is a total piece of shit by the way for letting it get this far. We’re not leaving until all the crap you took is out of your system.”
There doesn’t seem to be any point to denying it. “I have to go to class.”
“You’ve been excused for the rest of the week,” Kai tells me. “Jayden does a remarkably good job at pretending to be you and he called Dean Felton’s secretary this morning from your phone. Nobody even knows you’re back on campus.”
Part of me just wishes that I’d been able to hear Jayden Heart doing his best impression of my voice. “You guys don’t have any idea what’s going on here.”
Lukas’s expression is sympathetic, but resolute. “We know that you’re dependent on your pain medication and right now is the worst time for you to be using, so we’re going to help you get off it.”
If I had access to my hands, I would claw both their eyes out. “So this is some sort of intervention?”
“We’re kind of skipping over that part and going straight to the treatment. The lack of consent is admittedly an issue, but we’d rather you hate us and still be alive than just sit back and watch you destroy yourself.” Kai shifts back but still keeps me trapped on the bed with his arm around my waist. “If I get up will you stay on the bed, or do we need to tie you down?”
“You would really tie me down?” I ask, voice incredulous.
Kai shrugs. “If yo
u make us.”
“This is ridiculous.” I’m already thinking about how long it’s been since I took my last pill, long enough that I’ll start to feel it pretty soon if I didn’t take another. I haven’t been without it for more than a day since my accident and the thought of going cold turkey terrifies me. “This medication is prescribed and you can’t just stop taking it. Things will get really bad if I don’t have more.”
“Opioid withdrawal is physically uncomfortable, but not deadly.” Lukas says it like he memorized the information from a book. “And this stuff isn’t prescribed, your doctors cut you off months ago.”
“And how do you know so much about it?” I snap, the itchy feeling already starting under my skin is making me peevish.
Lukas stares at me with an intensity that takes me aback. “Because I know you, at least as much as you’ll let me.”
“Your mom died.” When Kai says the words, they land with the weight of stones striking calm water. “Have you even cried for her yet?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You aren’t dealing with your grief. You’re trying to hide from it with pills and distractions, but it’s still going to be here waiting for you. We can’t do anything about what happened with your mother, but at least we can get your head cleared up.” Kai leans back from me, testing to see if I’ll jump up and make a run for it, but he doesn’t move to get off the bed.
And despite what they’ve said, I’m still thinking about the possible ways to to stave off the apparent inevitability of withdrawal. “Where is Asher?”
“You’re not going to be seeing him for a few days,” Lukas hedges. At the same time, Kai has no problem stating things flat out. “He’s banned.”
“Banned. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“He’s the one who helped get you into this mess,” Kai responds, voice matter-of-fact. “So he’s not allowed to see you until we get this figured out. Jayden will be by soon to sit with you next.”
“This is ridiculous.” But the joint aches are already making my body feel like every muscle has gone tight even though I’m just lying in the bed. My stomach roils and I wonder if puking on them would be a suitable response to their heavy-handedness. I stare into their twin faces, wanting nothing more than to tear the walls down around us. “I will never forgive you for this.”
“Good,” Lukas murmurs. “That means you’ll still be alive.”
The hallucinations start at the same time that I’m finally able to fall asleep.
So maybe they’re not hallucinations and I’m simply dreaming, but dreams that make it impossible to know if I’m awake or asleep.
I dream about my mother first. We’re running down a long hallway and I’m chasing her, or perhaps something else entirely is chasing us both. All I know is that I’m trying my best to catch up with her, but I can’t quite manage it. She disappears into a blaze of white light and as soon as I attempt to follow, I wake up.
The beautiful white light turns to darkness. And pain.
I wake up sandwiched between the twins, with Kai at my back and his arm still slung around my waist and Lukas in front of me with his side wedged against my belly. At any other moment in time this would be a more than pleasant way to wake up, sharing a bed with two of the hottest guys on campus.
But right now all I can think about it is whether I’ll make it to the bathroom in time before I throw up. Sweat drenches my skin as I struggle into a sitting position. If I look behind me, I know there’ll be a dark outline in the shape of my body on the sheets from sweat, which is just fucking gross. But the weight of their bodies makes it impossible for me to move any further, whatever strength I have is completely reserved for keeping my head upright.
All the lights have been turned off and a heavy sheet covers the window. One of them has even rolled up a towel and shoved it against the gap at the bottom of the door to prevent any additional light from coming in. I don’t have any idea what time it is, or if it’s even light or dark outside. It could have been hours since the last time I woke up, or maybe it was only a few minutes.
“I’m going to throw up,” I croak, voice barely audible in the dark. I have to repeat myself again before Kai hears me and shifts back enough that I can roll over him and stumble toward the bathroom. My foot catches on a pile of clothes and I stumble hard enough that my knees hit the floor. “Fuck.”
“Are you okay?” Lukas asks, rushing over to help me off the floor.
“I won’t ever be okay again.” I pull away when he takes my arms, my skin feeling like it’s on fire anywhere that it’s touched. “Just let me use the bathroom.”
“We already cleaned out under the sink,” Kai calls from the far side of the bed as he rips off the sheets, obviously intending to replace them with the fresh set folded up behind him on the chair. “So if you’re looking for anything stronger than Tylenol, you’re not going to find it in there.”
I have never so desperately wanted to murder someone in my entire life and judging from Kai’s crooked smile, he knows precisely what I’m thinking. “I just need to throw up, thanks.”
The door slams behind me a little harder than it needs to, but I don’t have it in me to be a decent person right now. The nausea has faded, but I still feel like reheated shit that’s been nuked in a microwave. There’s an unopened bottle of Gatorade and I don’t even realize how thirsty I am until I’ve grabbed it and gulped down half the bottle. The consideration the guys are showing me just makes me angrier, at them and myself. I don’t deserve their caring or their kindness.
I don’t deserve any of it.
My reflection stares back at me in the mirror, sallow-faced and exhausted. If possible, I might look even worse than I feel. Hair curls in a tangled mess around my head like a bramble weed. I was supposed to have an appointment with my stylist earlier in the week that I missed for obvious reasons. My highlights are growing out and the dark hair of my roots looks like an even angrier contrast under the florescent lights.
Trish would have hated to see me this way.
That thought is enough to make my already sensitive stomach heave violently. I just barely able to make it to the toilet and get the lid up before I’m puking what little is in my stomach into the bowl. I haven’t eaten recently enough for it to be more than liquid, the same sickly blue color of the Gatorade that I just drank.
The pain in my back isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but the rest of my body aches in a way that I haven’t felt since the bus accident. Every joint feels tender and swollen, even walking back to the sink to rinse out my mouth makes me worry that I’ll collapse.
There’s no noise coming from the other side of the closed door and I wonder if Lukas and Kai are even still there. I pray that if they haven’t left that they don’t want to talk to me. There’s nothing in my brain but anger and darkness. I don’t want to subject them to that.
But I also don’t want to be alone, even though I know that’s precisely what I deserve.
I could have stopped Trish from going out that night, that’s the thought that pings through my head in the most constant and unceasing way. We didn’t need ice or snacks, the party would have gone on just fine without them. But I let her go, even though I knew it was late and dark, and that she’d had a few champagne cocktails to drink.
And now she’s dead.
The guilt of it feels like enough to kill me where I stand, and the only thing that can make it go away has just been taken away from me.
With an angry growl, I rip open the cabinets. Unsurprisingly, all of them are empty with not even a stray pill to be found. The only thing I find is a bottle of aspirin with a Post-it note slapped on it that says Take me. I grip the bottle in my clenched fist, wondering if there’s enough of this I could take for oblivion to finally find me and take all this pain away.
Instead, I throw it across the room where it hits the glass door of the shower, exploding in a rainfall of dull white tablets that clatter to t
he floor. I wait a bit for one of the guys to burst in at the noise, but I don’t hear so much as a creak from the other side of the door. Maybe they’ve realized that there’s some shit that I just need to work out for myself.
It makes me both love them and hate them at the same time.
I didn’t realize how much the painkillers numbed me to other things, like anger, until the effects of it had completely worn off and I didn’t have another hit in sight. And I desperately want to lash out, because I can’t think of a better way to keep all the things I don’t want to feel at bay.
A shower and brushing my teeth makes me feel the tiniest bit better. But it isn’t enough for me to forget how I’m being entirely managed by boys who don’t have any business meddling in my life. As if they’re both so perfect and I’m just the slum girl who doesn’t know what’s good for her.
I march back into the room and glare at the identically sedate expressions on their faces.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” They’re fighting words. I’m throwing down a gauntlet that I desperately want someone to pick up.
“Jayden mentioned there would be a point when she got angry,” Lukas murmured as he lounges on the bed with his legs out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. “This must be it.”
Kai squints at me from his position at my desk where he’s surfing the internet on my laptop. “She hasn’t attacked us yet, I guess that’s something.”
I stumble toward the bed, almost tripping on the trash can they’d left out for me to puke into. It’s hard to think of a way for this situation to get worse. “Fuck you, Kai.”
“I’m Lukas,” he replies with a humorless smile. “That’s Kai over there.”