by Ashley Rose
WHITE LINES
Copyright © 2016 by Bella Madison
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Also published as Hooked.
WARNING
Strong language, graphic sex scenes, drug use.
If these subjects make you uncomfortable please do not read any further.
Suggested reading level 18+
LITTLE WHITE LINES
It's no big deal
Everybody tries
Just take a deep breath
and close your eyes
Inhale as fast as you can
You're about to be Superman
It's the weekend
Let's have a good time
You're among friends
and she won't mind
It's just a little blow
and she ain't even got to know
Well I like your style
The first one's on me
If you want to feel strong
I got what you need
To chase little white lines
into the night
While we're still young
Lets all get high
Won't listen to those
on the other side
Don't want us to live
Preaching how we'll die
but they don't know the power inside
these little white lines
A social user turned to everyday
by the time she walked out
I was in a constant haze
She said I can't bare to see
The man you've turned out to be
So I stole from mama
and I robbed from dad
and my dealer friend
took everything I had
And when the money was gone
he said sorry you're on your own
Rock bottom and lost
yeah I got no shame
Cause if you can't pay the cost
you can't play in this game
Where we chase little white lines
You took me away from the love that we had
and a sweet yesterday
numb to this world
No longer made of steel
This fog in my mind
won't let me see what's real
They didn't tell me
'bout the devil inside
These little white lines
Damn white lines
The sweat poured out
My body shook
and deep in my soul
I took a good look
said this is not who I am
It's hard to be Superman
So we sat in circles
and told of our hells
The money we'd blown
ERS and jails
and when it didn't hurt to cry
They said it's time to say goodbye
Take it step by step
you'll know what to do
Cuz when you find you're alone
You'll face your moment of truth
and I'll chase Little White Lines
down this interstate
I'll win back her love
No matter what it takes
Had to come through hell
to know who I am
Now heaven awaits
Down in Brimingham
As I roll down I-65
Chasing little white lines
as I roll down I-65
Chasing little white lines
It's no big deal
Everybody tries
I'll win back her love
No matter what it takes
Had to come through hell
to know who I am
Now heaven awaits
Down in Brimingham
As I roll down I-65
Chasing little white lines
as I roll down I-65
Chasing little white wines
It's no big deal
Everybody tries
Table of Contents
INTRO
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Intro
I can hear the music from almost a block away as I walk the street to his house. My feet are killing me from the journey, but I'm itching. I need a fix. Something. Anything.
I roll my eyes as I ascend the driveway, passing his big white Escalade truck. Brand new rims. He thinks he's the shit.
I know he's the shit.
I remember the first time I met him. Back before I was a junkie. It was my first summer out of high school, and I was fucking invincible. We were still too young to drink in Cali, so me and bunch of my friends drove down to Mexico and laid out for a couple of weeks, just getting shitfaced at the bars all night long, and sleeping in lawn chairs out on the beach during the day.
He had come along with my friend, Sam and her older brother, Randy. Sam had told me that he was Randy's age, and they partied together all the time. But I didn't care who he was or why he came, I just knew that he was sexy. And he had bomb ass weed. We would sneak off from the group together—me, him, Randy, and Sam—and roll up the windows in the car and get high as a kite before hitting the beach with everyone else.
And did I mention he was fucking sexy?
We always had this weird chemistry before we even knew eachother's name. It seemed like I would always look across a room and see him staring at me, and when we hit the bars at night he was always pushing up on me, touching me in ways we both knew were inappropriate.
He was a typical L.A. bad boy: beanies and bucket hats, diamond studs in his ears, tattoos down his arms and on his neck. And normally I hated that shit, but with him it made my fucking legs quiver. He was a wet dream. I secretly loved it when he would come up to me all slow, trying to turn me on just by looking at me the right way with those crystal blue eyes, running his game. I would ignore him for the most part, run my smart ass mouth off, but my panties were always soaked when he walked away. Damn him.
We started hanging out once we got back from Mexico. Sam told me that he was always asking Randy about "your sister's friend," and sometimes when I was over at their house hanging out Randy would disappear to make a phone call, and the next thing I knew Lex was at the front door.
Oh yeah, his name is Lex.
The four of us would shoot pool in the basement and Randy would buy us beer because he was twenty-one, and me and Sam would drink ourselves into giggles and the boys would just laugh at us.
But that was five years ago. Boy, how shit has changed since then.
The first time I did coke was at Lex's house. He had called me and asked me to meet him in town because he was starving. I was kinda hungry myself and wasn't doing shit anyway so I said alright. We had been hanging out for almost three years at that point, and he had kind of tried to
step into the brotherly role, being my buddy and having a bit of a protective edge over me, but if we ever went to a party together and got wasted he was always whispering in my ear and confessing how much I turned him on sometimes. We usually just ignored it the next day though.
We were sitting inside Wendy's when he said the words for the first time.
"I got my hands on some coke."
Of course I fucking flipped out because at that time in my life the idea of something like coke scared the shit out of me. I bitched him out when he told me he had tried it once or twice with some of his boys and he admitted that he'd actually liked it. But then he told me he really wanted me to try it, if I wanted to. He promised he would babysit me my first time through, that no one else would be there, and I could only do a little. But I was fucking petrified.
"Lex...you know if I was gonna do some shit like coke, I would only do it with you. You know that. But I'm fucking terrified. I'm too scared of that shit. Weed is different. God, we can go get stoned right now, but coke...I don't think I can do it."
When we had gone back to his house after eating I got curious about the coke again.
Goddammit.
I asked him a million questions in depth about what it was like, and he made it sound harmless. Could I be anymore stupid than to think cocaine was harmless? But I trusted him. I trusted him because he made me feel safe and he promised he would take care of me and not tell a soul if I wanted to do it. And something inside of me wanted to do it.
So I did it. And I loved it. And now here I am.
I curl a fist and beat his front door with it. No sense in knocking quietly with music blaring like that, and he's probably strung out anyway. It could take an hour for him to hear me at the door.
He opens it slowly, peering out through the crack. His eyes are red and barely open, and he licks his lips slowly. "Sup?"
"I need my shit." I'm almost shaking now, and it isn't even cold out.
He just shakes his head, and walks back into the house, leaving the door standing open. "Come the fuck on!" he calls over his shoulder, and I step inside quickly, pushing the door shut, turning the lock.
I follow him to the living room. Seated—the usual suspects. Each in a progressing stage of intoxication. Some passed out. Some taking their first hit. It doesn't even phase me anymore. I come to get my shit, and I leave.
Unless he's alone. If he's alone, I stay. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for days.
He materializes out of the backroom, the stash room, "the treasure chest" they call it affectionately. He pushes the brown paper bag to my chest with no expression on his face, but as he turns away I grab him by the jaw and snatch his face back to mine, aggressively pressing my mouth to his, tongue sliding past his lips as I slip the roll of bills into his jacket pocket.
He grabs my waist, "I haven't seen you for days," nose to nose with me when he says it, breath hot on my face. I can barely hear him above that fucking music. Eminem, or some shit like that.
It's a love/hate thing now, me and him. We get strung out on each other, just like we get strung out on the drugs. We shoot up and fuck. Smoke and fuck. Snort and fuck. Drink and fuck. Sometimes we just fuck. And sometimes we just get wasted. Sometimes we don't see each other for days or weeks even, except when I come to get my shit. But I always come back, and he's always waiting.
No matter what it is, we're in it together. We hate each other because we can't quit each other, and we can't quit the drugs. I love him because he's got the shit, and he loves me because I need the shit.
But he hates me for keeping him tied to the business, and I hate him for getting me hooked.
1
"Fuck that! Tony isn't an all-star, why the fuck does he want powder?" Lex bangs his hand against the steering wheel, his face flushing with anger at the recipient of his threats.
"No, he only moves trees," he continues fiercely into the cell phone. "Yeah, from here to fucking Mexico, why do you think he's a hideout all the time? I know he's just trying to sell that shit out from under me...I don't give a fuck who his brother is, Tony isn't gonna black-ball me for nose candy when that motherfucker banks on reefer up and down the West Coast. It's hard enough for me to get business in L.A., I don't need him trying to run me out of shop!"
He always does this, making business calls in the car. And it fucking pisses me off. I don't know why he can't just talk to me. As soon as his ass hits the seat, he's on that cell phone. The "business phone." The one that always rings. And he always answers.
He has two others. An iPhone he uses to stay connected with his runners during the day and a Blackberry he uses for data entry after every sale he makes, all of which is dumped into an Excel spreadsheet on his computer and then purged from his hard drive onto an unlabeled disk. It's a single piece of worn plastic that can make him thousands of dollars when he decides to slip out of the business. Selling your numbers, they call it.
I'm sitting in the passenger's seat, knees up to my chest, arms crossed, looking out the window. I gaze at the houses as we pass them by, trying to imagine what kind of people live there. Do they have a normal life, a 9 to 5 job, or are they are in some fucked up mess like me? Sometimes I get carried away with thinking about how other people live, but right now I'm just trying to tune out his "business call." He's a fucking pusher, and I just have to get over that. This is my life, for now.
I start to itch a little, and I squirm in my seat. "Hey..." I lean over to him, but he's still talking a hundred miles an hour. He doesn't look at me, just holds a finger up to me, and I wanna break it off. Business always comes first for him, but fuck that right now. I hate it when he ignores me.
I push on his leg, "Hey," and he snaps his head over to me, not stopping his conversation, widening his eyes at me in an irritated manner. He clenches the fist that was previously holding up the finger, shaking it at me and gritting his teeth menacingly before turning his focus back to the road.
I sit back for a second, frustrated, and needing some kind of buzz, just to hold me over until we got back to his house. We're on our way to make a transaction at Ray's house, a hand-to-hand. I had been with Lex when he got the call, so of course I had to come with him.
He never leaves me at the house alone. He said it's because he doesn't want me as a liability, taking too much shit and kicking the bucket right there in his fucking living room while he was gone. But I think he wanted to protect me. If anyone was going to come by the house ready to throw down over a bogus deal or some mishandled business, he didn't want me to take the bullet for him.
But I would have.
I reach over to run my index finger up his chiseled jawline from chin to ear, laying my head back against the seat, just watching him, trailing my finger down his neck, over the black "L.A." tattooed on the skin there. With his messy dark hair, sexy blue eyes, and lean, muscular body, he's like a walking fantasy. Rugged, strong, and tough. Everything about him teases my senses—his looks, his raspy baritone voice, his clean, earthy scent. He licks his lips before turning his eyes to me, pulling the phone down from his mouth.
"What do you want?" His whisper is tight in his throat, but his blue eyes are soft.
"Do you have any weed?"
He shifts his gaze to the glove box, nodding toward it in a silent gesture, and then goes back to business on the phone.
I open the glove box of his truck and see the familiar pack of cigarettes laying there. The wolf in sheep's clothing. I grab the box with shaking fingers and open the top, sliding out the slender stick, carefully hollowed and re-stuffed with weed. The easiest way to hide it. I grin at his clever trick.
Sometimes it kills me to know that he's so intelligent and he just wastes it. But then again, look at me. I reach over into the cup holder for the lighter, cracking the window halfway, and I light up, taking a long drag and holding it for a few seconds before releasing the smoke.
Buzzin'.
We pull up to Ray's house and he parks on the street. He leans over and p
resses his open lips right beneath my ear and I feel the tip of his tongue touch my skin as he sucks lightly before pulling away, leaving a small wet spot on my neck.
"Give me five minutes," he says.
But I know it won't take that long.
He strolls across Ray's yard quickly, and I'm anxious in my seat. A little baked but still anxious because Ray doesn't live in the best neighborhood. None of Lex's customers do. As much as I like spending time with him, I hate making trips like this all day.
I've asked him time and again about getting just one more bag boy so he can basically run his operation from the house. But he doesn't have enough business surpluses right now to pay anyone else, what with Tony getting into that shit down in Mexico and almost swiping every pothead out from under half the dealers in L.A.
At least there's still the regular coke deals to fall back on for a while. Plus, in a business of deception, finding trustworthy employees is a challenge, and he says he prefers making a certain percentage of his deals himself, to get his face out there and build up a trust with the buyers. "It's PR, baby," he always says with that charming, cheeky grin.
I'm lost in my thoughts until I get a glimpse of someone in the side mirror of Lex's truck. A young girl, probably my age or younger, dressed in a wife beater and cut off shorts, walking fast up the sidewalk. Sinking back in my seat a little as she approaches the truck, I curse myself for leaving the fucking window halfway down while Lex is inside Ray's with the keys.
"Hey!" She's strung out, hair a mess, purple and red around the eyes. A junkie. She's gotta be on some bad shit. I freeze. "You're Lex's girl, right?"
I swallow hard. In the drug business, you're not always sure if the answer to a question like that will get you killed or commended. I narrow my eyes at her a bit.
"Where is he? I've been comin' by the house and he's never home." Her speech is slurred, and she's leaning in closer through the window. I can smell alcohol and filth on her. Mostly filth.
"He's handling business. Who are you?"
