by Ren Benton
He cupped her face in his hands and regarded her solemnly. “I’ll let you sleep.”
The offer was tempting. It had taken her a long time to get used to being full-body held while she slept, but being securely swaddled cut down on her restlessness and the frequency of her nightmares — and having Lex there to distract her when she awoke from one reduced the recovery time.
Temptation triumphed over the prospect of descending into the dark, lonely dungeon. She relented with a sigh. “Give me a minute to turn off the kitchen light.”
He kissed her forehead. “I’ll get your nest ready.”
They parted ways, Lex heading toward his bedroom while she slipped through the dining room and into the kitchen.
On the island stood a bottle of wine that hadn’t been there earlier. Since the drinker hadn’t tidied up, Gin assumed it was evidence of Simone having a nightcap.
As she rounded the island to clean up her mother’s mess, something crunched under her shoe. When she looked toward the floor to see what she’d stepped on, her sweeping gaze fell upon a pale hand limp against the tile.
A guttural denial strangled her as she scampered around the island. She dropped to her knees beside Olivia’s prone form, barely feeling the crack of her bones against the stone. Gin’s hand shook too much to detect breath, much less a pulse, but an ear to Olivia’s chest worked well enough to hear a heartbeat.
She sobbed with relief and shook Olivia by the shoulders. “Liv!”
Olivia grimaced and turned her head away.
Another candy-colored pill skittered across the floor and disappeared under the refrigerator as Lex came to investigate the commotion. “What—”
“Call 911.”
“No-o-o,” Olivia whined.
He reached for the phone on the wall and dialed.
The only word he barked at the dispatcher that Gin understood through the rushing in her ears was overdose. She grabbed a brown plastic bottle that had rolled under the edge of a cabinet — unlabeled. “What did you take, Liv?”
“Everything,” the actress muttered.
“What about first aid... Fuck!” Lex gave the phone an incendiary glare. “They put me on hold.”
With no idea what Olivia had ingested or how long ago, waiting for professional advice seemed like the most dangerous of the limited options. Gin wrestled Olivia onto her side and forced her fingers into her mouth.
Olivia clawed at Gin’s hand, and then her face, and then she gagged and rolled away to vomit a gush of wine and pills. “Oh god, leave me alone, you bitch!”
Undeterred by the stinging scratches, Gin grabbed her around the waist and squeezed hard. “All of it, dammit!”
Another stinking spew was followed by several dry heaves that suggested Olivia’s stomach was as empty as it was going to get.
Gin hauled the limp woman away from the poisonous puddle and propped her upright against the cabinet. She seized her chin to get her attention. “What was in the bottle, Olivia?”
“My personality.”
Gin’s cussing streak put Lex’s to shame. The medics would have to know what she’d taken to counter the effects, and the only pills they had to go by were partially digested.
She banged through drawers until she found a plastic freezer bag. With grim determination and a spatula, she shoveled the former contents of Olivia’s stomach into the bag and sealed it tight.
Then she staggered to the sink and heaved hard enough to hurt her internal organs, though nothing came out of her.
A big, warm hand settled on her shuddering back. “I hear the siren. I’ll let them in and be right back.”
She waved Lex off, glad for a minute to pull herself together unobserved. She elbowed the faucet open and soaped her trembling hands.
Olivia sniffled. “I’m sorry, Gin.”
“Fuck your apology,” she snapped in return. “Die in somebody else’s arms.”
Ethan — eyes wide, hair wild — ran into the kitchen ahead of the paramedics and their stretcher. One EMT checked Olivia’s pupils and pulse while the other peppered Gin and Lex with questions, few of which yielded useful information. Then they lifted the patient onto the stretcher and strapped her in with the bag of answers tucked between her arm and body.
Lex gripped Gin’s shoulders and bent close to penetrate the numbing fog surrounding her. “I’m going with her to the hospital.”
She managed to nod her understanding.
“You’re fucking amazing.” He planted a kiss on her forehead and left her to explain what little she could to Ethan.
8
At Olivia’s insistence, Lex was allowed into her hospital room in the wee hours of the morning. The nurse left with a strict warning about a two-minute time limit.
Olivia was sitting up in the bed. Her skin was the color of oatmeal, her eyes bruised. She pinched the neck of her hospital gown between two manicured nails. “My stylist would faint.”
He dragged a chair to her bedside. “If that’s your stylist’s primary concern about this, get a new one.”
“That’s his job.”
“Give it to someone who cares if you nearly kill yourself.”
“And have one more person to scold me? No thanks.”
“You get a reprieve from me only because I need to consult my shrink about the best way to yell at you.”
“Take your time.” She gave him a wobbly smile. “Gin already told me to fuck off.”
He scrubbed his face with both hands, hoping to scour off the panic and anger contaminating his compassion so he could be the friend she needed right now. “Gin watched her brother die. She watched me almost die. She’s seen enough death without yours. If you’d done this anywhere but right in front of her, she’d have been the most supportive person in the world. And she will be, once you both...” He shook his head. “What am I saying? You two don’t back down much from this level of intensity.”
“I can’t believe she stuck her hand down my throat. Who does that?”
“Someone determined to save you. Someone who knows you’re worth saving.”
Fresh tears spilled down her ashen cheeks. “She left you when you almost died.”
“If I’d asked her to stay, she never would have left my side. She’s a savior of lost causes, remember?” That was why he’d let her walk out of that hospital room five years ago without saying a word to stop her. If he couldn’t save himself, it wasn’t fair to exhaust her with the thankless job of rescuing him. “When you reach out, she’ll be there. I’m obviously a third-rate support system, but I’m available, too.”
She looked away. “Are you all right? Inside?”
She was asking as one rock-bottom dweller to a former resident. He couldn’t paint as rosy of a picture as she’d probably like, but he wasn’t going to lead her to believe it was supposed to be easy so she felt like a failure for struggling. “I’m in an okay place, but it took a lot of years and a lot of help to get here, and it’s still day by day. There’s no magic wand that makes everything better, overnight, forever.”
“Sometimes I wish you were less honest.”
“I frequently wish the truth hurt less.”
“It must be terrible, always breaking somebody’s heart.”
Maybe he didn’t give himself enough credit for being cruel to women. “Is that what this is about?”
“My diagnoses predate you by fifteen years. You get none of the credit for ‘this.’” She smoothed the mouse-gray blanket over her knees. “Tell Gin I’m sorry. She’ll listen to you.”
“I’ll tell her.” He squeezed her hand. “You’ll tell her yourself later, and she won’t tell you to fuck off again.”
The nurse opened the door. “Time’s up. Out.”
Lex stood on command. As soon as he blocked the nurse’s view from the door, Olivia wiggled her finger toward the pile of her belongings and mouthed, Phone.
“You need rest.”
“I don’t want my father to hear about this on the news.”
On his way to the door, he heard her say her agent’s name. He turned to glare at her.
She thrust her chin forward. “You can’t tattle on me. You’ve aided and abetted.”
He entrusted her nurse with overhearing and imposing order and left Olivia barking orders at her handlers. The elevator deposited him in the empty lobby. He walked out of the hospital into crisp night air that made him regret running out of the house without a jacket.
He patted his pockets. He’d been ready to fall into bed. No phone. No wallet. No currency.
Adventure just wouldn’t leave him alone.
Back in the good ol’ days, a friendly trucker would go out of his way to take a penniless musician home in exchange for a good sob story.
Present-day truckers were no less friendly, but their corporate overlords had bound them with GPS and stopwatches to monitor every mile and minute, limiting their generosity to perfunctory drop-offs at stop signs along their fixed routes.
Lex had to hike the last five miles into Grayson. Main Street didn’t offer an abundance of on-duty taxis, so he went into the police station to ask what transportation options the town had to offer a down-on-his-luck traveler.
There were two deputies at the front desk, one sitting behind and one leaning against. The leaner’s name plate identified him as E. MENDEZ. “I’ll run you out to the lake.”
“I got the impression Chief Raymond would object to my use of public servants in such a manner.”
“He doesn’t mind us dropping somebody off after a night in the drunk tank. I don’t see how this is any different.” Mendez stretched away from his perch. “It’s my wife you have to worry about if I’m not home before she heads to work, so if you want the ride, let’s go.”
Lex accepted. He expected to pay for the service with gossip about the previous night’s events, dating famous women, the mythical rock star lifestyle, or any other questions he’d be obliged to answer through clenched teeth, but the deputy’s disinclination to chatter allowed him to nod off in the passenger seat.
He woke with a hand shaking his shoulder and his face mashed against the window, through which the house stared back it him with its shiny glass eyes. The gap in time and space was reminiscent of a blackout. He muttered, “Just like drunk delivery.”
Mendez grinned. “You don’t smell like fermented puke.”
Lex’s small inventory of positive qualities increased by one. “Thanks for not interviewing me.”
“Chief made it clear we’re not to gossip about the seasonals until they’re gone. Easier if we don’t know anything we don’t need to.”
Lex made a private vow to send the chief a fruit basket for his tact and trudged up the bluestone steps in the early morning light.
The door was unlocked and the alarm unset. He remedied both and lectured himself against yelling about the security oversight later. Hitchhikers were hard to take seriously as advocates of personal safety.
Ethan’s hair tufted above the back of the couch like a storm-battered palm. A shake of his shoulder, Mendez style, roused him to bleary consciousness. “How’s Liv?”
“She’ll be okay. Go to bed.”
Ethan stood obediently but then faltered as if overwhelmed by any task that might follow. Lex pulled him into a hug.
His chest muffled Ethan’s words but not his sorrow. “Why is life so hard on everybody I care about?”
In his bleakest moments, Lex thought his loved ones were being punished for their association with him. Several years of therapy had almost convinced him everyone had a life apart from him and other forces acting upon them. Taking responsibility for events he had nothing to do with was often easier than those that were a direct result of his own behavior because his guilt for the former didn’t demand acknowledging real wrongdoing on his part.
Blaming himself did nothing to help the wounded, though. At the moment, Ethan was among the bleeding. Unfortunately, Lex’s wisdom had little to offer in the way of comfort. “Life is hard on most people, one way or another. If you care about anybody, odds are they’re struggling somehow.”
“Caring sucks.”
“It’s the worst. Can’t seem to stop sometimes, though.” He laid a protective hand on the back of his friend’s head. “Get some sleep, Eth.”
“I’m convinced, but this one” — Ethan jerked his head toward the woman lying on the other branch of the couch — “is going to be tough to power down.”
Lex had kept his voice low because he’d assumed Gin’s stillness meant sleep. He saw now she watched with the kind of wide-eyed vigilance the human body wasn’t meant to sustain for hours on end. Three dull red scratches marred her cheek.
His promise to love her to sleep had backfired in spectacular fashion.
“I’ll take care of her.” He couldn’t make her sleep, but she wouldn’t be alone.
When the door of Ethan’s room clicked shut behind him, she said, “Tell me more than ‘okay.’”
“Medically stable.” Lex wasn’t family, so the hospital hadn’t given him any other news to pass on. “When I left, she was strategizing with her agent.”
“That doesn’t sound good for her.”
He agreed, but stealing Olivia’s phone wouldn’t have stopped her for long. “It’s what she knows. They’ll work on how healthy it is in therapy.”
“How are you holding up?”
He held out a hand and let her see the shaking before clenching it into a steady fist.
She lifted her arm in silent invitation, and he crawled onto the couch and rested his forehead against hers. She held herself rigidly — if he’d been more alert, he never would have mistaken this stillness for rest.
“I was so mean to her,” she whispered.
He ran a finger along her cheek, near enough the claw marks to make her wince. “She was horrendous to you, too, and she didn’t have to deal with your puke.”
Her sigh implored his lips for sympathy. “Let’s never speak of that part again.”
“She asked me to tell you she’s sorry.”
“I just don’t understand. We didn’t find a note. Why did she do it?”
The official statement would be that it was an accidental combination of prescription medications, but Olivia hadn’t accidentally swallowed an entire bottle of assorted pills. “She has diagnosed mental health issues. No responsible doctor would have given her that many drugs.”
“I’d hunt him down, but the bottle wasn’t labeled.”
Somewhere, that doctor was waking bathed in sweat, feeling the breeze as a scythe narrowly missed his heart. Gin wasn’t gentle about saving a life — she sure as hell wouldn’t be soft with her vengeance against anyone who helped nearly end one.
Despite Olivia’s denial, Lex felt he belonged on that list. “I should have seen it coming. She’s just so flamboyant, it’s hard to distinguish her everyday spinning from spiraling out of control.”
“Hey.” Her fingertips against his jaw made five distinct points anchoring him to the moment, to the couch, to her, snatching him from the grip of blame. “She’s been no more or less controlled than she’s been the entire time I’ve known her. There was nothing for you to see.”
If his shrink had said the same thing, he’d argue with her until the end of the session. Gin had lived the experience with him, so her conviction carried enough weight to reassure him — at least until the twisty, dark labyrinth of his brain sent up an unassailably monstrous thought even she wouldn’t be able to subdue.
For now, though, he was grateful for the reprieve. He turned his face toward her touch and kissed her palm.
“Was she upset about...” One finger pointed from him to her.
“No.” He believed Olivia’s claim that he wasn’t a reason. They’d both been with o
ther people since their split. There had been no upheaval then, and she’d said herself she wanted him to make things right with Gin. “She probably had money on when, where, and how, but not enough to make her suicidal if she lost. The not-okay stuff in her head got the better of her this time, that’s all. She’s a fighter. She’ll bounce back.”
She’s tough. She’s a survivor. The familiar refrain trailed a chilling finger across the base of his skull. Was he kidding himself about Olivia, too?
“You still love her.”
“The same way you do. I want the best for her, but I don’t want to breathe her every day.” There was only one woman he’d felt so deeply for. That part of him would never be available for anyone else, and Gin’s preexisting claim took precedence over any other rights he temporarily signed away while he couldn’t be with her. “She knew she was headed toward trouble and came to you, which is probably my fault. I never shut up about how you got my life together.”
“You did all this without me. I was mean to you, too.”
She shattered his heart, but he considered it an act of self-defense. “You were nothing but good to me until the day you had to stop to be good to yourself.”
He’d been unqualified to give Gin the security and stability she needed, forcing her to self-serve — starting with cutting loose the chaos that loved her.
Currently, he had the dubious honor of being the smallest dumpster fire she’d had to put out all week. Her rigidity had melted with head-to-toe contact, and she’d acquired no new burns from him. Every stroke of his hand against her spine made her eyelids dip further. “Everything can be mended. It will seem less impossible without the boot of exhaustion grinding our faces into pulp.”
The faintest smile graced her lips, mimicking the sweep of lashes against her cheeks. “You’re gorgeous even pulped, you beautiful bastard.”
He doubted it, but he had a hard time being argumentative when she burrowed under his chin and the rhythm of her long, even breaths against his throat convinced his weary mind it could safely shut down.