by Bethany-Kris
Catherine nodded. “Yeah.”
When she was Catty, when she put on that mask and worked her act, she was higher than ever. She didn’t need a drink or drug to get her there, either.
She didn’t have to be a broken girl.
She didn’t need someone who wasn’t there.
She was just Catty.
Unobtainable.
Unreachable.
Un-fucking-touchable.
That rush was everything.
“Surprise, babe,” she heard murmured behind her.
Catherine stiffened, and quickly tossed the Ritalin and Xanax down her throat. She turned on her heel to find Cross leaning in the master bath doorway with a sexy grin that made her heart pick up.
Five long weeks.
He’d been gone five long fucking weeks.
“Cross,” she breathed, her smile growing.
“Come here,” he demanded.
She let her purse hit the bathroom floor, and flew into his arms. He had her picked up and turned around before she even knew what happened. His mouth was on hers, kissing and taking and waging war. His tongue darted past her parted lips to get a taste, and hers was already there to meet his.
“Fucking missed you,” he mumbled against her mouth. “I’m not going anywhere for a couple of months, so I’m all yours, Catty.”
Yes.
Her back hit the bed in a blink. She had so many damn questions to ask him. Where had he been, what took so long, and why in the hell didn’t she get more calls? She didn’t ask any of those things because he was distracting her with something far better.
Stripping her of clothes, and pulling off his own.
Naked and heavy between her thighs, his mouth at her throat.
Teeth, and lips, and tongue.
Biting, kissing, licking.
Down her stomach, nipping at the barbell in her naval, and then lower. Again and again and again, tunneling and fucking her with his fingers and his tongue until she was begging for something else she loved from him.
“Fuck me, fuck me,” Catherine whispered, pulling him up her shaking body.
His wet lips—tasting of her and sin—pressed hard kisses along the seam of her mouth as he spread her thighs wider and fitted himself between her thighs. God, she loved the feel of him, pulsing and hard, and almost there.
Cross thrust in, filling her instantly.
Catherine was in heaven, so blissed.
High from something else, and dazed by him.
It was a perfectly dangerous combination.
He fucked her hard, and deep. Faster when she begged, rougher when she yanked him down for another kiss that tasted like her sex.
Dark eyes watched her.
A sinful mouth promised love.
Hands drove her crazy.
She didn’t even feel the orgasm until it was already there.
“Again,” Cross breathed into her mouth. “Come for me again, Catherine. Fucking give it to me; it’s mine, and I want it.”
He pulled out, and put her on her knees. His hand pushed at her back until she was buried into blankets and pillows, and he could take her from behind. Two smacks to her ass likely left red prints behind, but all Catherine could do was sigh.
Here.
Home.
Him.
Them.
That was what she needed.
He could fuck her even harder when she was on her knees, and he pinned her arms at her lower back with one of his hands. His other hand snaked around her thighs and between her legs. His fingers worked her, while his cock fucked her.
Deep thrusts.
Rough circles.
She shook and came again.
“Shit, yeah,” he mumbled. “So damn tight, God.”
“Come on,” she said, her voice airless. “Fucking come, Cross.”
He fucked her through that orgasm, and she backed her ass into every flex of his hips. She felt his tremor, his hand in her hair tightened, and then she felt him pull away. Hot, ropey streams of his cum painted her back as he groaned her name low.
“Jesus Christ,” Cross grunted.
His hands let her go, and he fell into the bed. She rolled over, not even thinking about the sticky mess he had made on her.
“I have to change the damn bedsheets now.”
Cross laughed, husky and sinful. “I’m out of condoms.”
“Couldn’t tell,” she mumbled against the back of her hand.
“I’ll help you change them after we shower.”
He was up off the bed and heading for the bathroom in a flash. She heard the shower turn on while she was still trying to catch her breath. By the time she got into the bathroom, he had already stepped in behind the frosted glass. Her hands were shaking again, and she didn’t want Cross to see it. She grabbed her purse off the floor where she had left it earlier.
When one or two of her meds wouldn’t do, she just added another to the mix. Like a cocktail of numbed perfection.
Catherine found what she was looking for, and dropped the pill back.
“What the hell was that?” Cross asked.
Catherine found him staring at her from around the glass door of the shower. Her lie was already ready, but her heart beat heavily in her throat. “Birth control.”
“Since when did you switch from the shot?”
“A couple months ago?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s easy,” she said.
Cross tipped his head to the side. “Taking a pill every day is easier than getting that shot once every four months or so?”
“What does it matter, Cross, as long as we don’t end up with a damn kid?”
“My bad. You have plans tonight, or do I get you all to myself?”
Catherine smiled over her shoulder at him. “Tonight you do. I’m going out with Andino to a premier party tomorrow night, though.”
Cross’s gaze darted away, a sure sign of his displeasure. He didn’t say a thing, though.
“What do you want to do tonight?” he asked.
“How about we shower, make a mess in there, fix the bed, and then you take me to dinner since you owe me for being gone so long. We’ll see where we go from there.”
He smirked. “We can do that.”
Catherine was late.
In two ways.
Late for class, for one.
Late by three days, for her period.
This wasn’t supposed to happen—her shot was super effective, and she made sure to get it on time whenever the appointment came up.
She sat on the toilet, and ignored the buzzing of her phone on the counter sink. She was too busy staring at the small piece of plastic in her hands.
Her knee jumped as she counted seconds in her head. Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five …
Two minutes, the box said.
One line, negative.
Two lines, pregnant.
Her phone stopped buzzing, and then started ringing right after. Cross’s ringtone, his familiar tune. She was too numb to reach for it, and too frozen in place.
One pink line had lit up the test instantly.
The other, she was still waiting.
Catherine tapped the test against the palm of her hand, lost in her thoughts. She didn’t even hear the footsteps echoing throughout the penthouse until a form darkened the bathroom doorway. Cross stared down at Catherine, his gaze darting to the test in her hand, and then to her face.
She wished she wasn’t so numb right then.
She wished she wasn’t so fucked up in her head.
She wished she didn’t need anxiety, depression, and someone else’s medication to get her out of bed in the morning. She wished she didn’t need wine and sleeping pills to get to bed at night. She wished her hands didn’t shake if she didn’t pop back at least twenty pills before supper, and that she wasn’t up to a bottle of wine a day. Just having her older friends constantly buying her alcohol was starting to get troublesome because they were starting to take
note of how often she needed them to pick it up for her.
She didn’t know how she had gotten to this place in just a couple of months’ time. She didn’t know it got this bad so fast, or how she was supposed to fix it.
“You weren’t answering me,” Cross said, “so I came home.”
Catherine shrugged helplessly.
Because she was.
Helpless.
Messed up.
Depressed.
Ruined.
“Cross—”
The words wouldn’t come.
Tell him.
Tell him, tell him, tell him!
Catherine started crying instead.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he murmured, closing the distance between them. He was on his knees in a blink, and his hands were on her. She didn’t feel so numb when he touched her. “Jesus, don’t cry, Catherine. It kills me inside. Don’t cry, my girl.”
Sweet, soft kisses dotted over her cheeks, her jaw, and her lips. His hands, never hurting, never hurtful, cupped her cheeks, while his thumbs stroked her skin. He wiped away her tears, and she breathed again.
“I’m so messed up, Cross,” she mumbled.
“Nah, Catty, this isn’t a big deal.”
“Not this—not us.”
“So we’re eighteen and twenty, who fucking cares? It’ll be fine.”
Twenty.
The number rang around in her head, loud and taunting.
Catherine’s glazed, too-heavy lids lifted so she could look at the man who had loved her from damn near the first time he met her. “I missed your birthday.”
Cross frowned. “I don’t do fuck all for it, Catherine.”
“No, I mean … Cross, I don’t even know what day it is right now. I’m pretty sure I’m late for class, but I don’t think I know what time it is. It’s November, but what day is it? I only know my period is late because my stupid phone kept wanting me to log the start of my cycle. I’m messed up—I’m fucked up.”
He just stared at her.
She couldn’t speak again.
Catherine grabbed her bag on the floor, and decided to show him instead. She dumped the purse out, and all the contents fell across the bathroom floor. Prescriptions that were hers. Over the counter sleeping aids, and sleeping pills that had been prescribed. White pills in a small baggie—thirty all together that she’d picked up just a couple of days before when she was at college. And a new pill, a little blue bitch that literally made her nod off when she dared to toss it back.
“And wine,” Catherine said quietly. “I drink all the time; it feels better. Some of it was supposed to help with the anxiety and depression, but I kept doubling and tripling it just to breathe. I couldn’t breathe, Cross. I’m messed up in my head. I don’t know what to do.”
Cross’s hands tightened on her. “Okay.”
That was all he said.
Okay.
Then, softer, “Check that pregnancy test, babe.”
She did, but the window pane still only showed one line.
It was long past the time for it to show up positive.
“Negative,” Catherine said.
The relief was sweet.
Her guilt and sadness was heavy.
“What am I going to do?” she asked.
“We,” he replied, his dark, familiar eyes turning on her. “We, Catherine. We will figure it out.”
He never failed.
She had never doubted him
It still terrified her.
Cross balanced his back against the bedroom doorframe; one arm laid over his chest, while his other raked through his hair. Catherine slept in their bed, fitfully. She tossed and turned, she kicked blankets off, and then buried herself beneath them again. She mumbled, her lids flickered, and her hands balled into fists at the same time they reached for his side of the bed.
His heart ached.
Like his chest was splitting open.
How had he missed this?
How hadn’t he known?
How?
The knock on the penthouse’s front door sent Cross pushing away from the doorway. He didn’t know how to deal with what was happening to Catherine, never mind what was going to happen when she didn’t try to soothe the shakes or the sickness in her stomach.
Cross pulled the door open to find Zeke standing behind it. “Took you long enough, man.”
Zeke shrugged. “Busy. What’s up?”
With a tip of his head, Cross turned to go back into the penthouse. Zeke followed behind his friend, and kicked the door closed behind him.
Zeke froze at the scattered mess of pills, prescription bottles, and empty liquor bottles. The liquor, Cross had ended up doing himself just because he was pissed off, and he didn’t want to give Catherine something to chase when she woke up.
“Fuck,” Zeke drawled, stretching out the word. “That ain’t good.”
Cross fell into the leather couch. A goddamn six-thousand-dollar piece of furniture that Catherine died all over when they found it in that store. He scrubbed his hands down his face.
Exhausted.
Wary.
Silent.
“Is it all of it?” Zeke asked.
“What?”
“Is she using all of it, like mixing it all together, or does she just jump back and forth depending on what the day is like?”
“All.”
“That’s bad, Cross,” Zeke muttered. “Her come down is gonna be hard, man. Like paranoia, sick, tremors kind of bad. Fevers. Chills. Crawling out of her skin. And depending on how much liquor she’s been pumping into her system, she might need a fucking doctor to get her through it. That’s bad.”
“I get it, Zeke.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“I am!”
Zeke grabbed an empty bottle of vodka. It had been in the freezer. Cross remembered it was three quarters full when he first left on his trip a while back. He never thought to ask why in the hell it only had an inch left in the bottom when he got back.
“Do you see this?”
“What about it?”
“Liquor,” Zeke said, “will kill her coming off it. That’s not a joke, Cross. Shit, it might have been better if she was shooting herself full of heroin, instead of guzzling goddamn liquor. She could die off a heroin withdrawal, sure, because she’d jump out a window to feel better. The fall would kill her, get it? Just getting sober from alcohol can kill her—she could seize, her heart could stop, so listen. Why is she here and not somewhere else?”
Because he was still trying to protect her.
Because he was still covering her ass.
Because he loved her stupid.
“I don’t know what to do,” Cross said faintly.
“Well, if you’re dumb enough to keep her here, then you need to lock her down,” Zeke replied. “It’s going to take a few days, and she’s gonna be real fucking sick, man.”
Cross nodded. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Just … fuck.”
“How did I miss this?”
Zeke eyed his friend from the side, and said, “Because they’re really good at hiding it, that’s how.”
“She’s good with me, though. Before I left the last time, she was good. She was dealing with some shit, but as long as I was around, she was fine.”
“You know you can’t be another pill or drink for her, right?”
Cross glanced up. “What?”
“You can’t be another high for her, Cross, or the drug of the moment she uses to stay sane. You can’t be the one thing that is responsible to make her happy, or to keep her sober. She’s got to do that shit on her own. She’ll never be healthy or happy, with or without you, if she can’t be healthy and happy with herself. That’s mental health one-oh-one.”
“I don’t need a lecture, Zeke.”
“No, but you need to listen. So this is the first time—”
“Second,” Cross admitted. “She had a bad spell when she was sixteen, too, after … some s
hit happened. It was almost a whole year of non-stop partying and acting out. I kind of had her under control, then, too. She got better, and she was fucking good.”
“And then she wasn’t,” his friend assumed.
Cross shook his head. “I shouldn’t have left.”
“All right, so this is the second time, but here’s the thing. There’s going to be a third and fourth and fifth time, Cross, if nothing changes. You can get her sober, clean her up, and maybe make her happy for a while. If she doesn’t deal with what makes her need to run for something to get her high or numb, then she’ll be triggered again. And again, and again. It’s a circle; it’s vicious.”
“I—”
“And if it doesn’t kill her, it’ll kill you trying to stop it.”
“How do I fix this?”
“Man, you don’t get it, do you? You can’t fix it, Cross. It’s not for you to fix.”
Cross’s eyes snapped open at the slightest movement or sound on a regular day. But when he was on day three of watching Catherine detox? She just needed to breathe a bit different and he was wide awake.
He sat on the bedroom floor, his back to the closed door, one leg stretched out, and his arm propped up on his bent knee to use his hand as a pillow. He couldn’t get in bed with his girl because she was going through some kind of hot spell, and he only made it worse. He couldn’t leave the damn room because she woke up in a paranoid hell, screaming for him.
She itched.
She was cold.
She burned.
She shook.
She raged.
She cried.
She hated.
He loved.
This time, it was simply the sound of Catherine gagging that had Cross’s eyes flying wide. He was up off the floor, and just managed to catch Catherine in time as she fell off the bed. He didn’t know how in the hell she could vomit any more than she already did for the last three days, but that’s exactly what she did once he got her into the bathroom.
She retched until spatters of red came up with her spit.
Catherine cried harder.
Cross held tighter.
He didn’t know what else to do.
“I’m sorry,” he heard whispered beside him.
Cross tipped his head to the side on the pillow, seeing clearer, green eyes watching him in that way of hers. Her color was better, her voice was stronger, and she had smiled that morning. She still wasn’t eating, though.