“Shit,” she’d exclaimed. “Bex, what did you take?” Her voice was calm, purposeful.
I let out a frenzied and hysterical giggle at that. I supposed I must’ve looked like I was on the edge of overdose. And in a way, I was. I’d overdosed on him. On us. On the depravity he didn’t even know he’d unearthed, the depravity we’d shared.
“Bex,” she repeated. “Do I need to call an ambulance?” She had her phone in her hand though she was biting her lip, knowing my hatred for hospitals.
I shook my head quickly. “I haven’t taken anything. I promise.”
Something in my voice must have been convincing. “What do you need?”
“Clean,” I choked out. “I need clean.”
To her credit, she didn’t look at me like I was crazy, which most likely would have sent me over the edge. “Okay, we’ll get you in the shower.”
She led me into the bathroom, turning on the water for me. “You need me to stay?” she asked, her voice even.
I shook my head. “I’m good.”
She didn’t look convinced.
Yeah, I so wasn’t good.
“I’m not going for the razorblades, I promise. I just need to be clean,” I said, my voice stronger. I was coming out of that terrible abyss with the calm Rosie was emitting, and the steam filling the room.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right outside. Making tea and Pop-Tarts.”
She gave my hand a final squeeze and left the room.
Left me to get clean.
When I emerged, as clean as a shower would ever get me, she handed me a steaming mug. I took it.
“Drink,” she ordered.
“Is there tequila in this?” I asked hopefully.
She gave me a look. “I did think about it, but I didn’t know how tequila would taste with Earl Grey. And I also don’t know the rules for giving a recovering drug addict hard liquor, so I went with no, sorry.”
I smiled at her. “Probably a good call.”
I sipped the tea, sitting on the sofa.
“Want to talk about it?” she asked, sipping her own mug which wasn’t steaming like mine. I had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t have Earl Grey in hers.
I didn’t. Like would rather get a bikini wax with duct tape kind of didn’t. But I found it all pouring out anyway.
When I’d recited the whole gory and thankfully short story, she sat in front of me, a tear streaking through her makeup. “Fuck, Bex,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. It was my coping mechanism. “It’s life. I dealt.” I paused. “Or thought I did. Then that happened with Lucky and I kind of… freaked out.”
Rosie nodded. “Understandably.”
I gaped at her. “You don’t think I’m a total fucking head case?”
She gaped back at me. “Babe. You’re standing. Breathing. Living. You know how to do winged eyeliner better than anyone I know and have a kick-ass sense of humor, all despite that fucking nightmare. You’re a miracle.” She leaned forward to squeeze my hand. “Freak-outs, they’re normal. I have one every second day when my hair doesn’t cooperate. People lose their shit. Fucking necessary. It’s only when you try and swallow all that down, keep it bottled up, that it turns to crazy.”
I blinked at her. “I’ve never thought of it that way before.”
She smiled. “Probably because you’ve never thought too hard on it before. We never do about our ugliest shit. We run from it. Try not to look too closely. But it catches up, forces our gaze.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed.
“You know he’s not going to leave you alone,” she said gently.
She’d barely managed to keep him from storming in not an hour before. I’d heard his shouts.
But she did.
“No, I don’t think he will.”
The thought terrified me. Of seeing him. Trying to explain what it was that had me running like I’d been afraid.
Me? Afraid.
Because I loved him.
Fuck.
There are two things completely free from logic in this world. Fear and love. Two things I promised myself I wouldn’t surrender to because lack of logic in my world meant lack of life.
So I didn’t love. And because I didn’t love, I had nothing to fear. I’d already discovered nightmares were real before I’d reached high school, experienced the horrors that happened in the dark. Yet there I was, bursting with love. And fear. I’d given into both and couldn’t do anything about it. More importantly, I didn’t want to do anything about it.
And that had me wanting to escape. Myself, him, everything.
But life had other ideas.
More precisely, death.
Chapter Twelve
“She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of the Devil’s lair.”
-Laini Taylor
He caught up with me the next day. At the grocery store, of all places. I was being a total coward and ignoring every single call—all twenty-seven of them—after letting Rosie deal with the bellowing alpha the night before.