I quickly run my hands through my hair as Ryland stands up, glancing back and forth between us. Sloane stares at me with a shocked look and Troy glares at Ryland like he’s about to rip him to shreds with his bare hands.
“So, uh—” Ryland clears his throat, looking over at me. “I’m gonna head out.”
I nod quickly, too quickly and open my mouth to say something when Troy interjects. “That’s probably the best fucking idea you had all night.”
The temperature in the room drops from the iciness in his tone and no one misses it. Ryland scurries out of the room without another word or glance in my direction. Sloane walks toward me, but Troy stays rooted in the doorway with his cold stare directed at me. I can hear her voice in the distance as her lips move when she stops in front of me, but I don’t hear a single word that she says. I’m caught in Troy’s crosshairs and I can’t look away.
The entire weight of the world comes crashing into me in an instant as reality finally slaps me in the face, digging deep below the drunken haze I’ve been in. If it weren’t for Sloane and Troy, I could have done something I would have truly regretted. I tried to wash away the memory of Ander and failed miserably because I still wasn’t ready.
I’ll never be ready.
It’s impossible to erase someone that is etched into the fibers of your soul.
My knees buckle as a sob tears through my body and I collapse onto the floor in a rush. I surrender to the heartache and anguish as it sucks me under, pulling me into its depths and drowns me with my own tears.
14
Ander
“So, this is your plan?” I ask Anya as I follow her down the street to the corner. “Don’t you think you should be trying to get a legitimate job instead of hooking with a baby in your stomach?”
Spinning on her heel, Anya slaps me across the arm with her purse and cuts her eyes at me. She has no effect on me and her reaction, coupled with the drugs in my system only makes me laugh instead. “Fuck you, Ander.” She rolls her eyes and lets out a frustrated sigh as I laugh in her face. “First of all, being pregnant can work to my advantage and make me more money from these sick fucks with weird fetishes. If I’m careful, it’s a great plan because I’m not going to make this kind of money anywhere else.”
“Yeah, sure,” I reply with a shrug, knowing that her plan is fucking pointless. She’s a dumbass, but who am I to judge right now? “You do realize if you keep using, you’re gonna kill that kid before it even has a fighting chance.”
“Do you ever listen?” She scoffs and stomps her stilettos on the cracked sidewalk. “Cold turkey is worse for me and the baby. It could kill us both. So, I just have to wean myself off of everything slowly, that way I don’t shock either of our systems.”
I grab Anya’s arm as she walks ahead of me, pulling her back to face me. She needs to understand the severity of this situation, even if I’m not as invested as she would like me to be. I can’t sit back and watch her kill this baby. “Have you made an appointment with a doctor yet?”
“Yes, asshole,” she growls, ripping her arm from my grip. “How about you have some fucking faith in me? I told you that I was going to be serious about this shit, so I’m doing whatever I have to do. What the fuck are you doing to contribute?”
Jamming my hands into my front pockets, I cut my eyes at her. She has a point, but I’m in no position to be admitting that I’m wrong. Neither of us are really in any position to be critiquing each other on what we’re doing. “I’m here, aren’t I?” We’re both trying to figure out what the fuck we need to do in life and what direction we’re going in. I’m going straight to fucking hell, but Anya seems to have other plans for herself now.
“I told you that I’d move back and I’d help you however I can.” My tone drops lower as I crowd her space. She pushes her shoulders back and doesn’t back down from the confrontation. “I’m trying here, Anya. I can barely help my fucking self, so you need to lower your expectations and take whatever you can get, you feel me?”
Laughing loudly, she lightly pats my shoulder. “Trust me, sweet cheeks, my expectations can’t get much lower than they already are.” She smiles at me with her wild, methed-out eyes boring holes into mine. “The only thing you can really trust a junkie to do is get fucking blitzed and figure out any way to make that happen.”
Driving her shoulder into me, she roughly pushes past me as she strides back down the street. “What the fuck does that mean?” I call after her as I start down the sidewalk behind her.
Anya pauses, stopping for a moment as she glances over her shoulder with a spiteful grin. “That means that you’re gonna carry your weight and start chipping in.” She shrugs with a look of indifference in her eyes. “If you wanna keep getting high on the dope I get, you’ll figure something out.”
I scratch at the back of my neck as I silently follow her back down the street. I know that I can’t keep relying on her, and I need to find my own way of bringing in some money too. For now, since I moved back in with her, I’ve been going out with her every night to watch her back. Instead of going for rides with these guys, they’ve been fucking her or getting their dicks sucked behind a dumpster in the alley by the corner. The guy that she’s meeting tonight, she meets him once a month and he’s very peculiar.
This should be interesting when she shows him where they’re fucking. Or else, I’m gonna have to ride in the back seat while he takes her for a ride.
We reach the corner and the street is busy with a lot of the late evening traffic. Even after the sun sets, none of the streets surrounding the strip ever truly go to sleep. Pulling a cigarette pack from my pocket, I put one between my lips and light it, sucking the toxins into my lungs as we wait. The nicotine binds to the heroin in my system, sending a small wave of euphoria through me. Like cheese and wine, a cigarette pairs nicely with any kind of substance and gives your high an extra little kick.
Anya walks over to me, taking the stick of tobacco from between my lips and takes a drag of her own before passing it back to me. Leaning against the brick wall of the building on the corner, I cross my arms over my chest, watching as the cars continue to pass by without a second glance. Drug deals and hookers aren’t unusual to see around here, so no one really gives a shit about it.
A sleek black truck pulls up along the side of the street and Anya pops her gum noisily as she glances over at me. “That’s him,” she says, adjusting the strap of her purse on her shoulder and rearranges her tits in her shirt. “Just walk over with me and I’ll tell him what the deal is.”
Nodding, I follow her over to his black truck, unable to see inside from the dark tinted windows. Anya sashays to the passenger side and pulls open the door. I stand off to the side, finishing my cigarette as she talks to the guy in a hushed voice. After smoking it down to the filter, I flick it onto the street as Anya stands back up to face me.
“He won’t let you in his truck.” She shrugs with a smug expression. “He’s pretty fucking vanilla and it doesn’t take him long to come, so I’ll be back in a few.”
“Wait,” I say, grabbing her arm as she goes to step into the truck. “Where’s he taking you? How the hell am I supposed to keep an eye on you?”
Anya rolls her eyes and points to the alley. “You can watch out from over there. He’s gonna pull down the block a bit and I’m just gonna take care of him over there quick.”
She drops down into the seat and the man pulls the truck away just as she slams the door shut in my face. I follow the truck with my eyes, watching as he pulls farther down the block and puts the truck in park. I can see the silhouette of her head as she leans over the center console as I walk toward the alley. Poking my head around the corner, I find it empty and breathe a sigh of relief.
It’s well past dark now and in the gutter, you never know what kind of predator you might run into, lurking in the darkness for their next prey.
I take another cigarette from my pack and light it as I dip into the shadows in the alleyway. Leanin
g my shoulder against the wall, I inhale the thick smoke as I keep watching the truck. Closing my eyes, I rest my head against the chipped side of the building and tune out the sounds of the bustling city. Everywhere I go, everything is so loud. Whether it’s noise from the outside world or the noise inside my head, silence isn’t something that I can easily find.
The heroin silences my mind, but it can never silence my fractured soul.
Something sharp pricks the back of my skin and I’m roughly pushed up against the wall. “Give me your fucking wallet,” a deep voice growls into my ear. His breath is hot against my skin and the smell of liquor seeps from his mouth. The blade in his hand pierces through my skin as he pushes the knife. “I said give me your fucking shit.”
The taste of blood touches my tongue as my lip roughly brushes against a sharp piece of brick. “Joke’s on you, homie.” I laugh lightly, feeling the brush burn as he pushes my head harder into the wall. I grimace from the pain, but a smile creeps onto my face as I relish in it. “I don’t have shit.”
It’s partially a lie. I don’t have my wallet with me. I don’t even own a wallet. But I do have a small bag of dope tucked inside my sock.
“You think you’re fucking funny?” he barks in my ear as he forces the sharp blade of his knife into my back. A searing pain tears through my body and my nerve endings erupt from the foreign object stabbing into me.
Involuntarily, I yell out from the pain and the guy grabs the side of my head, pulling it back, and smashes it back into the wall. My vision instantly blurs as the sound of my blood rushes through my ears. My balance is thrown off as everything grows fuzzier, the darkness slowly creeping into my peripheral vision.
The guy pulls the knife from my flesh and my knees buckle as all of my strength rushes from my body. Collapsing onto the ground, I’m unable to catch myself with my hands and I fall forward in a rush. The side of my face burns as the pavement separates the skin from my head. The darkness starts to close in and I struggle to keep my eyes open as I feel the guy start to pat my body.
He roughly pushes me onto my back as he feels along my legs, patting down my pockets. I feel his hands pull off my shoes and his fingers dip down underneath the elastic of my socks.
“Jackpot,” he slurs and spits onto the ground beside my face. “I knew you were holding something.”
“Fucking junkie,” I grind the words out through clenched teeth, wincing as the searing pain lights my body on fire. I blink slowly as he looms over me, trying to get my eyes to cooperate so I can see his face. The effort is futile as everything is completely out of focus.
He looks away from me as the sound of heels clack down the sidewalk. “Ander!” I hear Anya call my name, but the sound is miles away. The guy quickly spins around and takes off down through the alleyway, running back into the shadows in the opposite direction.
The ground is wet and my shirt sticks to my skin as my blood saturates it from where he stabbed me. Anya yells my name out again, the sound of her voice and her shoes growing louder. It’s so close, I could almost feel the vibrations, but the blackness quickly consumes me, pulling me away from reality and into a painless abyss.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I open my eyes in a rush. The lights are too bright, the walls are too white. I struggle to sit up, tearing at the different probes sticking to my skin and the IV in my arm. The pain erupts through my abdomen as my withered muscles flex when I attempt to move.
“Shit, he’s waking up!” someone calls out as something sharp pierces the raw skin on my stomach. I yell out in pain with my eyes wide as my surroundings come back into focus. Three different doctors and nurses surround me with their gowns and masks on. I glance down at one of the doctors as he stabs me again with a needle, running a stitch through my skin.
How the fuck did I end up at the hospital?
The memories feel like a hazy dream. I vaguely remember Anya finding me in the alley after that guy stabbed me and left me to bleed out. Someone picked me up and threw me into the back seat of a car before dumping me right outside the front door of the emergency department. That’s how we lived out here. If it was someone you didn’t give a shit about, you left them for dead. If it was someone that you did care about, you called 911 and fled the scene or dropped them off at the hospital alone. Anything to avoid implicating yourself, but nevertheless, we still take care of our own sometimes.
In a rush, I fall back against the pillow, bellowing loudly from the pain. My eyes flutter open as someone hovers above me, reaching for the IV on my arm. Her warm brown eyes meet mine as a wave of pity passes through them.
“You won’t feel a thing in a few seconds when this kicks in,” she tells me quietly, and the softness of her voice wraps itself around me like the arms of a mother. Biting down on my lip, the taste of blood fills my mouth as tears prick the corners of my eyes. I give her a curt nod as the sedatives flood my system. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers in the darkness as it pulls me back under.
15
Hadley
My entire body shakes as I’m consumed by my grief. Sob after sob tears through my body and I can’t hold back the tears as they come crashing through the floodgates. I barely feel Troy’s arms as he scoops me up off the floor and carries me out of the living room. It was only a matter of time before this happened, and now that I’m in the midst of a full-on mental breakdown, I have no idea how the fuck to climb out of this hole.
The mattress dips down under my weight as Troy lowers me to my bed. The tears soak my pillowcase as I bury my head into the pillows and Troy pulls the covers over me. I hear him and Sloane talking in hushed voices, but I can’t make out their words. I’m too lost. No one will ever be able to find me.
Feet shuffle across the floor and my bedroom door quietly shuts. The covers are slowly pulled back a bit and the bed moves as someone slips under the blankets behind me. I pinch my eyes shut tighter as thoughts of Ander flood my mind. I imagine it’s him, breathing me in as he wraps his arms around me.
“Everything will be okay, Hadley,” Sloane shushes me as she rubs my arm. “I promise you, it will get better.”
Doesn’t she know that you should never make promises?
In the end, promises are always broken... just like me.
I’ve avoided everyone since my mini-mental breakdown that night. After Ryland left, I was a complete mess and I’ve been walking around in a daze since then and that was almost a week ago now. I still have yet to clean up the mess with Ryland, but that doesn’t even matter at this point. It’s better if I just completely avoid him.
After a quick weekly check-in with my dad, I change into a pair of maroon scrubs and head out into the living room. I wasn’t supposed to work tonight, but one of the other aides had to go home sick so that left me on call to come in for the rest of her shift. I preferred working second shift and if it meant getting me out of this damn room, sign me up.
I walk quietly across the floor as the silence throughout the apartment envelops me. Leaving the lights off, I walk into the kitchen, grabbing my purse and keys from the counter. My phone chimes in my hand as I walk to the door to leave. Unlocking the screen, I tap on my messages and find one from Sloane.
Sloane: Where are you sneaking off to?
So much for being quiet and going unnoticed.
Hadley: I got called into work, but I only have to stay there until eleven.
Sloane: See ya when you get back!
Shaking my head, I slip my phone into the pocket of my scrub top and head out the door. It’s dark outside and the night air is buzzing with the energy of the city. I walk to my car and quietly slip inside. As I turn the key over, bringing the engine to life, I glance up at the windows of our apartment and see Sloane watching me. I raise my hand up to her and she waves back, slipping back behind the curtains as I pull away from the street.
She’s something similar to a helicopter mom, and it kills her to not be able to put my broken pieces back together. She needs to learn to live with
it, like I’ve been trying to do. The girl I was before Ander died in the hospital that day. When he left me, he took a piece of me with him.
A piece that I will never get back.
Broken is what I’ve become and broken is what I will always be.
As I pull into the employee parking lot, I glance up at the sky, noticing the full moon. I find a spot near the side door into the hospital and put my car in park. A deep sigh escapes me as I climb out and head inside. Of course, the night that I’m not supposed to be here is a full moon, and that only means one thing: all of the crazies are out and it’s going to be nonstop here.
My suspicions are confirmed as I drop my stuff off in the break room and head out onto the floor. The nurses and doctors are running around, but everyone moves with some sense of purpose and direction despite the chaos that hangs in the air. As I walk down the hall, various cries and screams come from some of the rooms and beeping sounds come from others.
Some of my co-workers shout at one another as they work on a coding patient. I peek my head inside the door, watching as they perform CPR on a younger girl with frizzy red hair. She doesn’t look to be much older than me and that is enough of a reality check itself. One of the nurses keeps her arms straight as she delivers a round of compressions. My stomach drops as my eyes trail back to the girl’s face and find Ander’s instead.
My breath catches in my throat as I quickly shut my eyes, rubbing them viciously. Swallowing over the lump forming in my throat, I reopen them and see the frizzy red hair instead of short, dark brown. Ducking out of the room, I push my back against the wall and grab my chest as I suck in as much air as I can.
“Hadley!” One of the aides pokes her head through one of the curtains down the hall. “Go check the board and jump in wherever you can!”
Black Clouds of Cotton (In Vein Series Book 2) Page 7
