She kissed his ear, her teeth lingering on the lobe. “I feel like a smoke now. What about you?” she joked with a throaty laugh. What she really wanted was to touch him and see what he had going on beneath the zipper of his jeans.
“Don’t worry about me. Now let me find that smoke.”
“I wasn’t serious,” she mumbled as he put his hands on her waist to lift her off him. He put his finger to her lips to silence her and smiled before replacing his finger with his mouth.
Standing up, he left her on the sofa. She wasn’t a cigarette smoker and she didn’t think Todd was either, and when he returned to the living area with a joint in his hand and a lighter in the other, Mia smiled. She hadn’t felt this good in a long while. She was enjoying this feeling and wanted to enjoy it even further.
He sat back down and brought her to his lap, his erection still very prominent. He lit the joint and took a quick hit before handing it to her. During her turn, he toyed with her breasts, and after she gave the joint back, she yanked his shirt from his jeans and slid her hands underneath, marveling at the soft skin over his hard abs.
“Want it off?” he asked. With her nod, he quickly complied, revealing his chiseled chest. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen him without a shirt. Far from it. Mia had known him for many years and had seen him shirtless countless number of times, but it was the last two times that had her seeing him in a different light. Todd was gorgeous with his mostly hairless chest. Starting below his pecs, he had a small line of hair that led her eyes downward towards his waist, his blond hair almost invisible. She didn’t want the joint anymore. She wanted to explore him.
“No more of this,” she ordered, gesturing towards the joint. He removed her from his lap and stood to put the joint in the ashtray. Her eyes were level with the bulge in his pants.
“What do you want now, Mia?” he asked.
“I want to see this,” she answered, leaning forward and unfastening his jeans. At his hushed intake of breath, she looked up at him. Surprisingly, her insecurity cracked through her high. Maybe he didn’t want her. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”
“It’s very okay,” he croaked as she pushed his jeans open and pulled him out of his briefs.
With her index finger, she traced the smooth skin over his hard length. He looked much different than Ethan, thicker but not as long. Why are you even comparing him to Ethan?
Shaking her head, she looked up at Todd. His half-closed eyes were smiling down at her. “What now, Mia?” he wondered softly.
Yes, Mia. What now?
She couldn’t get her thoughts in any kind of order. The only thing that stood out was his hard cock in front of her. She wanted him, and without a doubt, she knew he’d make her feel good. He would make her forget.
He had to.
Staring at the cock in front of her, Mia slowly moved in and lightly kissed the tip, her tongue teasing before she took more of him into her mouth. His fingers gripped her hair as she moved her mouth on him. When he began to pump his hips into her mouth, she slid her hands up the back of his thighs to his ass, encouraging him.
“Fuck, Mia,” he groaned, stopping her, his unsure eyes lit up with desire.
“I want you, Todd,” she confessed and pushed herself off her knees, her head a little dizzy. Grasping his shoulder to steady herself, she looked up at him, the fierce hunger still present in his eyes. He swooped down and claimed her lips. If she didn’t feel dizzy before, she definitely did now. She kissed him back wildly, hoping to convey how much she wanted him in that kiss.
A couple minutes later Mia broke for air. His hands explored her body, his lips following his hands. “What do you want?” she finally asked back.
“You,” he said, pushing her to the sofa. She reclined back, Todd joining her, resting between her spread legs. Her skirt bunched up high on her thighs, exposing her to him. She pulled him down for another kiss and he pressed his strong body into hers, his hard cock pulsing against her, ready for her.
Stripping her of her underwear, his fingers found her core and she knew he’d find her drenched for him. Her hips rose at his magnetic touch, her body desperate for more, desperate for this oblivion. He slipped a finger inside of her, pulling out a cry of pleasure. His lips found a home on her breasts as his fingers continued their magic. She felt blissfully out of control. When he slid the second finger inside of her, her body rose up while her inner muscles clamped down on his fingers as she unexpectedly came for a second time that night. She grabbed for his cock, wanting the orgasm that having him inside of her would bring. “Todd, please!” she begged.
He smiled and kissed her. “Let me get a condom,” he replied, removing his fingers from her before unwrapping her fingers from his cock.
Before leaving, he stopped to snort another line of coke and then handed her the makeshift tube. “I’ll be right back. The condoms are in my bathroom.”
Mia nodded and stared at the rolled money and then the cocaine, hesitating, feeling a little weird. She had kept pace with Todd all day and he had made her feel really good so far. Great. Fantastic. She didn’t want that to end.
Leaning forward, she snorted the white powder. Almost immediately she knew that it was a mistake. The money fell from her hand as her body began to shake, convulse. Her heart raced, pounded inside of her chest. Mia searched around and found her purse. Fumbling through the bag, she pulled out her phone. With vision that came in and out of focus, she tried to text Marty but her hands shook too badly.
Fuck. This was not good at all.
Finally she got the words out and sent the message to him.
Marty
May 23, 2008, 726 PM
At todd’s in trouble. Help
Falling back against the sofa, her heart hammered wildly inside of her chest. She stared at the coke on the table and things started to distort—blurring, darkening. Fuck, this should not be happening. Panic took over, making her heart pound harder, faster than ever. She worried that her heart was about to explode. It was beating so fast. Her breathing was just as crazed as her heart.
Todd returned. Damn, she could barely make out the different shapes. Mia thought he called her name, but she could barely hear him. “Todd . . . can’t move,” she mumbled, surprised she could get her mouth to work. He moved closer and dropped to his knees. Mia knew he was talking to her, but she couldn’t make out anything that he said. The sounds all jumbled together. She could see the worried look on his face and that scared her even more. With heavy puffs of air, the tears leaked from her eyes.
Her eyes popped open when she felt him push off the couch away from her. She saw two shadowy shapes in the distance and knew that they were people, but it wasn’t until they moved closer that she was able to make out that the shapes were Marty and Allie.
Marty railed on Todd. “What the fuck, Todd? How self-destructive do you need to be that you need to bring Mia down with you?”
Allie hurried over to Mia. She felt the sting of humiliation as Allie pulled her tube top back over her breasts and then lifted her up from the couch to put on her button-up shirt. Allie picked her panties up off the floor and put them in Mia’s purse, before taking the phone from Mia’s hands and adding that to her bag as well.
Mia closed her eyes, her cool tears coating her hot cheeks. Allie returned, holding Mia to her shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Mia. We’ll make it okay,” she whispered against her ear, rhythmically rocking her from side to side.
“What did she take?” Marty yelled at Todd.
“Uh, at lunch she had quite a few drinks, then we came back here and did some coke, followed by some ecstasy. A little later we shared a joint and just a little bit ago, I think she did another line of coke.”
“Holy fuck!” Marty exclaimed, pushing Todd, who fell into the chair. “Look at her, Todd. She’s tiny as fuck. She can’t handle all that. Hell, I don’t know if I could.”
“Take me home,” Mia croaked. She wanted to be far away from this huge mistake as she possibly cou
ld.
Marty went to her. He brushed her hair aside and looked at her tenderly. “What did you say, brat?”
“Home.”
“Okay,” he said and then turned to Allie. “Bring the car around. I’ll get her.”
Allie grabbed the keys from Marty, as well as Mia’s bag, and rushed from the loft.
Marty continued to lay into Todd. Some things she heard, but it was like someone was playing with her volume control, her hearing was coming and going. Same with her vision so she just closed her eyes.
“You drug her up and have sex with her? We are family. She’s like our little sister. How could you do this to her? Don’t you remember Maddy?”
“Of course I do! I can’t forget her. She haunts me every single day of my life!” Todd yelled right back.
Mia wanted to tell Marty not to be mad at Todd, that this wasn’t his fault. I did this, she thought. I did this to me. But she couldn’t talk. She knew they were arguing still, but her body and mind were not working very well together. She had never been this scared in her life. Mia felt on fire and not in a good way.
She heard the car horn and then Marty scooped her up, her body limp in his arms. She couldn’t get her arms to cooperate enough to wrap them around his neck. Her mind couldn’t make that connection to her body.
Marty left Todd without another word and he took Mia from the loft. He put her in the back of the car and sat with her, supporting her against him.
“Who’s that on the phone?” he asked Allie. Mia glanced up and saw the phone to Allie’s ear.
Allie looked back at them and said. “He’s coming.”
Ethan
Numb.
His mind. His body. His heart. Everything. Numb.
But when the town car stopped in front of the hospital entrance, Ethan tore out of the vehicle, seeing and cataloging the news vans arriving.
On the ride from the airport, he kept going over Allie’s words to him, the fear in her voice. “Mia went too far this time, Ethan. I am scared. She’s barely responding to us. She’s not coherent. She can’t move. I think she overdosed . . .”
A goddamn overdose.
The moment he heard Allie’s words, he started packing and making plans. He had been in New York for meetings about new advertising deals among other things. He called his agent to reschedule the meetings and then Ethan pulled some strings to get a private jet to fly him to Chicago.
When he landed, a text from Allie alerted him that she had a car for him, that they’d taken Mia to the hospital and gave him Mia’s room number. That stopped him dead. The hospital?
Now here he was, standing in the lobby, a sense of dread weighing him down. He didn’t know in what condition he would find her. Definitely didn’t know what to expect. He was scared that he might lose her. Ethan knew they would have called him if things had gone further south, so Mia should be okay, right?
After his initial hesitation at the front entrance, he raced towards the elevators and to her room, right past the nurse’s station. He skidded to a stop and stood in the doorway, taking in the scene.
Allie sat at the foot of the bed and Marty sat on a chair by her side. Mia lay in the bed, her head cocked to the side, wires connected to various body parts and oxygen tubes inserted in her nostrils. She had on a white tube top and a hospital issued blanket covering the rest of her body. Looking at her, she appeared so tiny, so frail, and so very different from when he last saw her. Her coloring was off—too pale.
Fuck. His heart hurt looking at her so vulnerable in that bed.
He swallowed back the sudden rush of tears. He would not cry. Mia was still alive. She was just asleep right now. He could see the heart rate monitor and it looked good. She was still with them.
He let out a long, stuttered breath causing Allie to glance up from Mia. She rose from the foot of the bed. “Ethan!”
Allie’s relieved expression got him into action. “Tell me,” he demanded as he walked into the room.
“According to Todd,” Marty spoke first. Todd’s name had Ethan on high alert. “Mia took some cocaine, ecstasy, and pot. They had been drinking before they started in on the drugs. And knowing her, it was probably hard liquor too.”
Cocaine? Ecstasy? Ethan didn’t know much about drugs but mixing all that was not good news. Regarding her small body on the bed, he couldn’t imagine what would be happening right now if it wasn’t for Allie and Marty. What the fuck was Mia doing with Todd? The memory of them on the floor of that St. Paul hotel flashed through his mind. He shook his head repeatedly to shake that image from his brain.
“How did you guys find out?” Ethan asked curiously.
“She texted Marty that she needed help. We definitely didn’t expect all this when we arrived,” Allie responded, nervously toying with her fingers. Allie was always so calm and under control. This had seriously rattled her.
“I’ve done drugs with both of them before and I’ve never seen her take that much. I’ve never seen her react this way either. Before it was all for fun and happy feelings. This . . .” Marty paused as his voice cracked. He regarded Mia, his eyes filled with anguish. “This has been anything but. Listening to her sobbing to just let it take her—”
“The doctors gave her something to calm her down,” Allie added. “Her heart—God, it was pounding so hard, I could feel it while I held her.”
His mind raced. Ethan had so many questions, but before he could even ask one, another would pop up. Saying he was overwhelmed was an understatement. He couldn’t stop staring at her, her beautiful face at peace for now.
“How has she been the past few days?”
“We’ve been in the studio every day this week and she seemed fine,” Marty answered. “Maybe a little distracted. Today, out of nowhere, she announced she was done for the day. That seriously was the only thing I noticed out of the ordinary. I knew something was up. I should’ve pressed. I should’ve gone with her . . .”
“What about the songs?” Ethan asked, knowing her words held keys, clues to her emotional state.
“Uh, well, as someone familiar with her and the situation, I’d say what we recorded this week was all about you two. They weren’t the ‘happy-I’m-in-love’ kind of songs. They’re damn good songs, but yeah, she’s pretty upset in them.”
“Do you know if she’s been taking any drugs the past couple of months?”
“I haven’t seen her take any. But we haven’t seen her outside of the studio—at all,” Marty said.
Ethan turned to Allie, wanting her to answer as well. “Though I’ve talked to her almost daily, I haven’t seen her very often at all. Maybe three to four times with a visit last week. I do think that she’s been doing something—drugs, alcohol. I don’t know this for a fact, but what I do know is that she hasn’t been herself since we left Indy. She has become a bit of a recluse.”
Marty nodded in agreement. Luke had voiced a similar opinion a couple weeks after he surprised her with a visit. A recluse who was doing drugs and alcohol by herself. She was hiding out—running from her problems, instead of facing them.
“So, when you do see her . . .”
“She doesn’t join in the fun. She’s quiet, introspective. She gets her stuff done and then leaves. There’s no hanging out. No fun. And there’s the key. No fun. I can’t tell you the last time I heard her laugh, like really let loose and laugh,” Marty said.
Ethan motioned towards the bed and Marty rose to make room for him. He needed to touch Mia, let her know he was there for her. Lying down beside her, he wrapped her small hand in his, providing her with some sort of contact.
“Mia, talk to me,” Ethan pleaded with her. He repeated what he said and her eyes opened, the panic frightening him. She looked terrified. He squeezed her hand tighter.
“Hey, no . . . calm down, suga. Listen to me. I’m right here, Mia. Right by your side. I’ve got you,” he implored, his other hand cupping her face. God, she was so warm.
“Ethan,” she said breathlessly.
Her voice was different, not like her at all. She sounded far away—hollow.
What the hell was going on?
“Yeah, suga, it’s me. How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” she answered bleakly. Once filled with so much soul, her eyes looked empty. He stared into them, trying to find her, but then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes just rolled back into her head, like she was possessed.
What the fuck? Was this the goddamn Exorcist?
“Mia! Come back to me!” he demanded. “Focus on my voice. You can fight this. Come back, suga.”
Ethan felt her weakly squeeze his hand and felt a small ounce of hope. He kept talking to her until her eyes opened again.
“There you go. Stay with me. Please, suga.”
Her eyes searched his. They moved quickly, almost like a spasm or a tic. Her pupils were abnormally large. How the hell did this happen? He thought she was done with the drugs. That’s what she said when she last saw him. Had she been doing them the entire time they were apart? The thought scared him.
“Why did you do this, Mia?”
Her eyes stilled and then dropped. She remained like that, silent, for a few moments and then she shocked him with her words.
“I’m not worth it.”
He grabbed her face and forced her to look at him. “I beg to differ. You are everything to me,” he declared, putting his forehead to hers. He swallowed the lump in his throat, fighting his tears. “Everything.”
And he meant it. The past few months apart did nothing to diminish that. She was his soul. She gave him life. And with her gone, he hadn’t been the same. There was no joy in his life.
This whole situation was fucked up. He never knew things were this bad. Had she been trying to kill herself? Was that what this was? Hell if he would let that happen.
He kissed her forehead, keeping his lips against her warm skin. He then moved his mouth to her ear and whispered, “I love you, Mia.”
“I’m so tired, Ethan.” She sounded broken. He just hoped she could be put back together again because he needed her too damn much for her to give up.
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