by Selena Kitt
“What do we do?” I cried, sinking to my knees beside her.
“Help me roll him over.” She climbed over to the other side of him, pulling his shoulder while I pushed, and we got him on his back. He wasn’t breathing.
Dear God, he really wasn’t breathing.
Foam dripped down his cheek and I used the edge of my sleeve to clean it off. It was no worse than the time he’d nearly choked on his own vomit—he would have died then, too, if I hadn’t been there.
But this…
Who could come back from this?
“I’ve got Narcan.” She said this to both me and the phone, which was on speaker on the counter. The voice coming from the phone was telling us that a unit had been dispatched to our address, giving us instructions on how to do CPR as Sarah dug through her purse.
“Do you know CPR?” Sarah asked me. I couldn’t focus.
“Uhhh.” I blinked, trying to remember. “I had a class. I’m not certified but…”
“Chest compressions.” She stopped to show me, position me. “Count—one and two and three… good. Keep going!”
“What is that?” I moved mechanically, not looking down at Tyler, not wanting to see his dead eyes. Sarah was taking out a zippered pouch.
No!
No, no, no, no…
A thousand things went through my mind. The way that sly, sexy smirk lifted the corners of his mouth. How he flipped his hair out of his eyes when he played, his fingers flying over the neck of the guitar. Those fingers touching my cheek. Tracing letters over my skin in the darkness—I love you...mine—like invisible tattoos.
Oh Ty, please, please, I love you, please don’t die…
“Narcan,” Sarah explained, pulling out and quickly preparing a syringe. “Don’t stop chest compressions!”
I didn’t realize I’d slowed down to watch her and went back at it with renewed effort. My shoulders and arms ached, but I didn’t stop.
Ty was still wearing his boxers—the ones with Snoopy as “Joe Cool” on them in sunglasses, little Woodstock beside him wearing sunglasses too—and Sarah yanked the elastic waistband down far enough, so she could jam the needle into the side of one buttock.
She pressed the plunger and then withdrew the needle, tossing it onto the counter.
“Here, I can take over.” She nudged me aside, continuing chest compressions as I knelt on Tyler’s other side. “Narcan should take effect in a couple minutes.”
“If it does…”
“It will!” Sarah insisted, and for the first time I heard real fear in her voice. She stopped chest compressions for a moment to put her ear to Tyler’s chest, listening for his heartbeat.
I reached trembling fingers out to touch his hair. It was wet, like he’d been in the shower, or maybe out swimming, but he was in his boxers. Had to have been a shower. He was in a shower, and then… what? Had he found out and just lost it? Where in the hell did the drugs come from?
“He’s breathing!” Sarah cried, grabbing the phone off the edge of the counter and speaking into it. “He’s breathing! Hurry! Hurry!”
“Ma’am, they’re en route,” the voice said over the speaker.
That’s when I heard the buzzer for the gate. I’d forgotten all about that—we’d have to buzz them in.
“Ty? Ty, can you hear me?” Sarah asked as I ran for the intercom in our bedroom, so I could let in the ambulance.
“Fuck!” Tyler croaked. His voice, strained, pained, but alive.
Alive.
Thank God. The nightmare was over.
Except it wasn’t. It was just beginning.
I didn’t want to leave the hospital. They made me.
Sabrina put her arms around me and we both cried. I remembered, vaguely, calling her in a panic, asking if she’d seen the article, telling her that Tyler had overdosed, begging her to come home. The next thing I knew, she was there. She’d cut the tour with Jimmy Voss short.
“They say he’s stable,” Sabrina murmured, her arms around my shoulders.
I wanted to go back there and see him again. They let me once—just me, no one else—but they wouldn’t let me now. He’d regained consciousness in the bathroom, briefly—long enough to roll over and vomit all over the floor and swear a few more times—but he’d been out of it since. The doctor said they’d stabilized him, though.
“You’re exhausted, Katie.” Sabrina stroked my hair. “Come home with us. You can come back in the morning.”
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay with Tyler. I was only peripherally aware that Sabrina and Rob had made up. At least, they were talking again. Rob insisted we all go back to his place, and in the end, I didn’t have the energy to fight with him about it.
I let Sabrina put me in one of their bedrooms, but I set the alarm on my phone for early, so Jesse could take me back to the hospital. I needed to get back to Tyler. We needed to talk. I needed to hold his hand and look into his eyes and tell him what he’d told me.
It’s not your fault.
He needed to know that I was there, that I loved him. That I knew I could live without him if I had to—but I damned well didn’t want to.
Everyone was still asleep when Sarah came and knocked on my door, waking me up even before my alarm.
“Jesse’s taking me back to my place. I want to check in with Mom and Anne,” Sarah whispered through the crack in the door. Clearly, she didn’t want to wake up anyone else. “Do you want him to take you home, too?”
“No.” My voice was thick with exhaustion. “I want to go to the hospital.”
“You don’t want to go home for a while? Clean up?”
“No.” I was already up, pulling on my jeans. “Home is a mess. I’m a mess. I don’t care. I need to be with Ty.”
“Okay.”
Sarah helped me find my shoes and my purse and we both went out to meet Jesse at the car.
“Do you think I should have her call him?” Sarah asked, when we got in. She had her phone out and was looking at the screen and she tilted it toward me, so I could see that she was texting with Leanne. She clearly didn’t want to say anything obvious in front of Jesse. “I know Rob won’t let her visit. She’s so worried about him.”
“Maybe.” I pondered this. Tyler’s mother seemed to have the ability to reach into places no one else could go. Even me. It was something primal, pre-verbal. She could tap into that part of him when no one else could.
I knew, without even having talked to him, why he’d done it. I remember the feeling I had, the weight on my chest, thinking I’d been the one responsible for Sabrina getting shot, losing her baby.
My fault. It was all my fault.
Only with Tyler, it was even worse. He believed it was all his fault—and yet, his brother was the one who had taken responsibility for it. I didn’t have to talk to him, to ask him, to know what he was thinking.
He felt like a coward, using his brother as a human shield. Even if it hadn’t been his choice, Tyler felt trapped in Rob’s lie. And everyone around him constantly reinforced that lie. His whole life had revolved around that same lie for years, one that he was forced to keep, day in and day out.
And now everyone in the world believed that lie.
It was no wonder he’d crumbled under the weight of it.
“Have her call him,” I told Sarah as Jesse pulled up in front of her apartment complex. “I think it will be good for him.”
She nodded and gave me a long hug before she got out of the car.
If I’d gone straight to the hospital, I would have known that, about the time I had Jesse pull up to my father’s house, Tyler was checking himself out AMA—against medical advice. He’d pulled out his own I.V. and refused to listen to any of the doctors and nurses. He didn’t even have any clothes, or his wallet, no I.D. at all.
Not that he needed it. He walked out of the hospital still wearing Snoopy boxers and a hospital gown. He used the nurse’s station to call a taxi, and of course they knew exactly who he was. When he told the
m where he lived, they agreed to take him there, even without any money up front. Because Tyler Cook was Trouble’s lead guitarist, and of course he would pay them as soon as they took him home.
“Katie?” My father was ready for work, his purple paisley tie swinging, briefcase in hand as he answered the door. I recognized the tie—I’d given it to him for Christmas eons ago, back when everything had been right with the world. “Is everything okay?”
“No.” I felt my lower lip quiver, my voice quavering, too.
I told Sarah to have Tyler’s mother call him, because I remembered how he’d fallen on his knees, how he’d wept like a baby in the arms of a woman who had held him at his most vulnerable, and loved him then, still, and always. I said it would be good for him, thought it might be just what he needed.
But really, it was what I wanted. What I needed.
When my father held out his arms and I let myself fall into them.
By the time I realized Tyler had checked out of the hospital against medical advice—and the goddamned doctors and even the police unit posted outside had let him, in spite of the fact his admission was drug-related—he’d already called for more drugs.
I was wishing I’d let my father come in with me when he insisted as he drove me up to the front of the hospital. But I’d put on my “brave-Katie” face and dried my tears and told him, no, I could handle this. But I had let him pull me into a hug before getting out of the car, and I promised I’d call or text him and let him know what was going on.
Because I’d told him everything. He waved my stepmother away when she came around the corner out of the kitchen to see who was ringing the doorbell so early in the morning and took me into the living room. He sat me on the couch and held both my hands while I told him everything, from the time I’d met Tyler until his overdose today.
He knew about my own addiction, he knew I’d made the questionable decision to go on tour with Trouble—but of course, had no idea how horrible Tyler’s past had been, the things he’d had to live with all these years. When I told him about Catherine, his face went white as a sheet. I didn’t understand it then—I had more of the story to tell, still.
But after I’d sobbed it all out, in hitching breaths, he took an iPad out of his briefcase and showed me a news article that had come across the feed just that morning. Catherine had been found dead in her room at the psychiatric hospital, a presumed suicide.
“It was her,” I told him in a choked voice.
Who else would leak the story? No one else had any motivation, no one else was that vindictive. She was the weak link in the chain, always had been. I wondered, sometimes, if Rob had married her and kept her close for that reason alone. Catherine was a wild card, and now, she had nothing left to lose.
Sabrina had gone to see her, and maybe it had just shaken something loose in Catherine’s crazy brain, seeing Sabrina, knowing that Rob was still happy, in spite of everything Catherine had done to squash that. Rob and Sabrina were still a couple, still very much in love, planning to get married, and Catherine just couldn’t handle it.
So, she’d lashed out.
And in doing so, she’d not only hurt Rob, and Trouble, but it had been the absolute last straw for Tyler. He’d always been the one at the bottom of the pile, carrying the most weight. He’d held it in, silent, for so long. He was so conditioned to keeping it to himself, he hadn’t spoken to a soul his entire first year in foster care.
I was thinking all of this on the longest cab ride of my life. I couldn’t get out of the vehicle fast enough, quickly paying the cabbie and running into the house, sure I’d find Tyler, like some twisted déjà vu, collapsed on the bathroom floor again. I’d already texted everyone—Rob, Sabrina, Sarah, even Celeste, Daisy and Jesse—telling them Tyler had checked himself out AMA.
Then I heard the sound of the amplifier and Tyler’s electric guitar, and nearly collapsed with relief. He was alive. He was playing—loud, angry. That was a good sign. I didn’t know then, how far gone he was. He’d become unhinged.
He barely saw me when I came into our bedroom. He pushed me away when I tried to hold him, throwing himself in one of the armchairs, letting the guitar drop to the floor. His eyes were distant, wild.
“Ty, listen to me,” I insisted, grabbing his shoulders, so solid and strong, and in that moment, so very broken. “This is not your fault!”
Those were the words he’d said to me, the ones I had clung to with such hope, even while I told myself it wasn’t true, that it was my fault. I was the one responsible. I just prayed he could hear me, that he would let the words sink in, even if part of him wanted to deny it.
“Katie,” he choked, seeing me, finally seeing me.
I put my arms around him and let him pull me into his lap. He clung to me, so hard it was difficult to breathe. But as long as he was holding on, I didn’t care. It was when he let me go that I worried. He pushed me gently off his lap, onto the floor, and picked up his guitar, fingers sliding up and down the neck like he wanted to strangle it.
“Ty!” The amp was incredibly loud, and I could barely hear myself think. “We’re going to get you help! It’s okay!”
“Help?” He stopped, gripping the guitar neck so hard I thought it would snap. The amplifier sputtered and squealed. Then he smiled, a sort of smile I’d never seen before. “No worries. Help’s on the way, baby.”
“Rob is coming,” I told him, thinking he was talking about his brother, his sister. “Sabrina and Sarah, too. They texted me.”
“No.” Tyler’s jaw tightened at that. “Don’t let them in.”
“But…”
“I’m finishing it. Today.” Tyler looked down at his guitar, then up at me, with such sadness in his eyes my knees nearly buckled. “I’m sorry, Katie. I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Do what?” I felt the desperation in him, and I was helpless in the face of it. What could I do? How could I convince him?
“Life.” He gave a low, pained groan, something raw and primal, putting his guitar aside and holding his head in his hands. “I can’t fucking life anymore.”
“Ty, no.” I edged toward him, still on the floor, so we were at least touching. “Don’t say that.”
“You can’t stop me.” He shook his head, lifting it to look at me with bleary eyes. “If I had anything left, I would have done it already.”
“You were trying to kill yourself?” I asked, finally understanding. It wasn’t just a relapse we were talking about here. “You can’t do this. Not now. Not ever.”
“I should have done it a long time ago. Years ago.” The smile on his face was both sad and determined. Then he focused on me, just for a moment. “I never should have dragged you into this. I’m no good for you, baby. I’m so sorry.”
His voice caught on his apology and I felt tears slipping down my cheeks, shaking my head, denying it.
“Stop it, Ty,” I insisted, putting my hands on his knees—he’d changed into jeans and a t-shirt—as I knelt in front of him. “Just stop it! I’m not letting you hurt yourself. Do you hear me?”
“You can’t stop me,” he said softly. “I already made the call.”
“What call?” I swallowed, frowning. “What are you talking about?”
“Magic Man’s already on his way over.” He sat back when he said that and the relief on his face was palpable. Why did all drug dealers have stupid nicknames like “Magic Man” or, like the guy who could hook me up back home, “The Genie”?
“So, what, you’re going to overdose again?” I felt my phone go off in my pocket, but I ignored it. “You’re going to leave me here, without you?”
“Baby.” He leaned forward to take my face in his hands. “You’re better off without me. I promise.”
His mouth trembled on mine and I felt a sob wrench my chest.
“Katie, you don’t understand,” he breathed, his eyes searching mine as we parted. “I have to end this. Me. I’m broken. Twisted. Everything I touch… I fuck it up. This ends
here, now. With me.”
“Fine.” I sat back on my heels, setting my jaw, just as determined as him. “If you do this, I’m coming with you.”
“No, baby.” He shook his head sadly. “This is about me. Once I’m gone… don’t you get it? It solves everything.”
“No!”
“Yes!” He took my shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh. “Katie, when I’m dead, they can blame it all on me. Fucking finally. Because it’s always been my fault. And it always will be.”
“It is not,” I hissed, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. “Tyler, you were just a kid.”
“Don’t you get it?” He pushed me away, so he could stand, starting to pace back and forth like a big cat. “It’s me, Katie! It’s me! I’m like fucking poison! Whatever it is my father had, the thing that made him sick—I have it, too. Like my hands!”
He held them up in front of him like claws.
“It’s in me. And I’ve spent my entire goddamned life trying to get rid of it, and I can’t!”
“Tyler!” I cried, standing too. “You are not like him! You are nothing like him! How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” He stood, shoulders slumped, head down. “I’m in so many fucking pieces, no one can ever put them all back together. Not even you, baby.”
“No,” I whispered.
I couldn’t believe he saw himself this way. He couldn’t see what everyone else saw, the bright, shining star he really was. He could only see the darkness, the blackness, like a tumor growing somewhere deep inside. But he wasn’t like his father. The fears that he would pass on whatever sickness his father had harbored were completely irrational. Nothing like that had ever surfaced in Tyler, and I didn’t for a minute believe they ever would.
He was afraid of something that wasn’t really there, like a ghost that trailed him constantly, haunting his every move.
“When I’m gone, it’ll be over,” he told me softly. “It will finally be over. It ends with me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said, hearing the intercom buzz, my heart thumping hard in my chest. Was that the “Magic Man?” Already? “You can kill yourself, Tyler. You’re right. I can’t stop you.”