That made her laugh again. “You’re not worried about Trinity working alone with him there this morning?” They’d make a cute couple. She wanted her friend to be as happy as she was with Drake. But she didn’t know if Chase’s mental state now resembled Drake’s when she first met him.
“Better Chase than Mike.”
Adria poked him in the ribs and rolled out of bed. “You’re bad.”
“I’m right.”
“You are, but poor Mike.” She slipped out of the panties she’d slept in and stood next to the bed naked. Drake’s gaze scanned her from head to toe and filled with heat. “Not now, cowboy, I’ve got to mosey.”
Drake leaned up on his elbow, muscles flexing. “You’re the boss. You can be a little late.”
She stalled a second too long. He reached out, took her wrist, and pulled her down on top of him. She giggled and went willingly. She loved it when they were like this together. Since the beginning, their relationship had been easy. They enjoyed each other. They supported each other.
And thinking about a house on a little piece of land made her stomach flutter and her heart soar.
She pictured them there so easily. A simple, uncomplicated life filled with happiness.
Maybe her sisters weren’t the only ones headed down the aisle soon.
Chapter Thirty
Another great day.
Adria racked them up with a sense that all the bad was behind her.
She hoped every day started off with her waking up in Drake’s arms and that feeling of perfect contentment that stayed with her all day. She was where she was supposed to be. And with the man she loved.
The shop remained busy. Online lunch orders increased. The dinner rush wiped them out of several favorites. Everyone loved mac and cheese, but the demand for chicken pesto pasta with broccoli and kale surprised Adria and Trinity. Because of its success, they’d come up with a recipe for a similar vegetarian lasagna.
She thought the ready-made meal kits would appeal to a lot of people who were either too busy to cook or didn’t have a lot of skill in the kitchen. She’d never imagined this kind of demand from the get-go.
Almost Homemade, her dream shop, was a success!
She wanted Juliana to have this same kind of accomplishment.
Adria glanced at the stack of art school printouts sitting on the passenger seat next to her purse. Juliana had done some research on her lunch breaks. Adria’s heart swelled with pride and excitement for her sister. She was working hard to change her life and find a direction that made her happy.
Adria headed back to Almost Homemade after picking up the TV stand she bought earlier in the day at Cute Clutter for the apartment over the shop and picked up after closing. She spent her lunch browsing the store, trying not to be tempted by all the wonderful finds but imagining them in the home she and Drake would share.
She couldn’t wait. The more she thought about their future together, the more she wanted it now.
Juliana was back at the shop finishing up closing for the night with Mike. Chase said he’d be happy to help Mike carry the console up to the apartment if she provided dinner again. She’d paid him up front with a tub of chili, a garden salad, and a thick slab of honey corn bread. Instead of thanking her, he’d asked her to dump Drake and marry him.
The memory made her smile. She liked Chase. He had the same lost and hurt look in his eyes she’d seen in Drake’s. She hoped he found some peace and happiness the way Drake had with her.
Drake was so different now. Calm. Loving. Not so lost in the past and pain. He had his moments. PTSD didn’t just vanish. But his nightmares had subsided and he hadn’t blacked out again like he did when they first met. He wasn’t so quick to anger anymore.
His anxiety sometimes got the better of him, but he used the tools he learned to calm and center himself.
Sunny helped with that, too.
It made her heart swell that she’d had a hand in making him happy.
She pulled around the building and parked the car with the back end toward the rear door. The overhead security light brightened the dark lot.
Thank you, Drake.
He’d done a great job making sure the building and perimeter were safe and secure. She appreciated it when she got out and didn’t have to walk around in the dark back here where no one could see her from the street.
She grabbed her purse, slipped out of the car, and glanced up at the lights coming from the apartment windows. She’d call Chase down as soon as she made sure Mike and Juliana were done closing things up for the night.
An overwhelming sense of urgency came over her as she approached the door. Her heart raced and she couldn’t take a breath.
Juliana!
She fumbled with her keys. Hands shaking, she unlocked the back door and ran through the kitchen to the front of the store where she heard a scuffle and shouting.
“Call a fucking ambulance. Stop stalling. Do it now!” The panic in Chase’s voice chilled her heart.
“We have to get the fuck out of here.” Mike’s voice sounded high and desperate.
Adria’s chest went tight. She couldn’t breathe. The last time she felt this way . . . She dashed around the counter and out into the main part of the shop.
Chase leaned down and breathed into Juliana’s mouth, rose up, then fell sideways onto his back. His eyes rolled back and he put his hand to his chest.
Mike paced back and forth next to Juliana’s prone body, but stopped short when Chase went limp.
Adria rushed forward and dropped to her knees between Juliana and Chase. She looked from one to the other and back again, desperately hoping what she saw wasn’t real, but knowing all too well that it was because she’d been here before with Juliana.
“No! No, no, no.” She shook her head, trying to deny the obvious but seeing the devastating truth.
She dumped her purse on the floor, grabbed her phone, hit the speed dial that went straight to 911, hit the speaker button, and found the naloxone she still kept in her purse despite the fact she believed she’d never need to use it again.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“I have two people who have overdosed.” Her hands shook so badly she had a hard time cracking open the ampoule. “I’m administering naloxone. I need an ambulance at Almost Homemade.” She rattled off the address and used the first dose, hoping, praying she wasn’t too late.
“Help is on the way. Are the patients breathing?”
Adria took in Juliana’s blue lips and still body.
Mike paced behind her. “Fuck! This isn’t happening.”
Yes, it was. Again.
She didn’t think her heart would survive this.
Adria checked Chase, didn’t like what she saw, and administered the second dose.
“Ma’am, are the patients breathing?”
Adria couldn’t—not right now. “Tell them to hurry.” She curled up on the floor next to Juliana, held her close, buried her face in her sister’s hair, let the tears fall, and prayed.
“No, no, no. No!” Mike ranted as he rushed one way and then the other in his pacing.
Red and blue lights swept the shop, but Adria didn’t move. She held tight to Juliana, hoping the paramedics got here in time.
The officers banged on the locked front door.
Mike stopped in his tracks. “Fuck.” He hesitated for another moment, but finally went to open it.
“What happened?” the arriving officer asked.
Mike scrambled to explain. “She had the heroin. She used it. Like ten seconds later, she passed out.”
Adria hugged Juliana close, her tears too many to count, but managed to spit out the horrible truth. “Fentanyl.” She avoided touching her sister’s face because of the powdery residue dusting her nose and upper lip. Some of it coated her shirt, but Adria couldn’t let her go.
“We’ve had six other overdoses in the last two days. There’s a bad batch of heroin being distributed. Put your gloves on
,” one officer said to the other, knowing that getting it on their skin could cause them to absorb the deadly drug.
“What about him?” the officer asked Mike.
“He . . . I don’t know. He OD’d, too.”
The ambulance pulled in outside.
The officer crouched next to Juliana and looked down at Adria. “Let the paramedics check her out.” His sympathetic tone undid her and she cried harder.
She wanted to hold on to her beautiful sister and never let her go. But she couldn’t do that and reluctantly pushed herself up, stared down at Juliana, snatched her phone from the floor, and made the call she dreaded to make again.
“Adria, what’s wrong?” Roxy asked.
This late at night, Roxy expected trouble. “Get Sonya. Meet me at the hospital. I need you.”
“No. Not Juliana. Not again.” Roxy’s voice shook. “She was doing so well.”
Adria couldn’t speak the awful truth, so she simply pushed out the words for what she needed past her clogged throat. “Meet me there.” She hung up, moved out of the paramedics’ way so they could work, and made the second call she dreaded.
“Hey, sweetheart, I thought you’d be home by now.”
Not even Drake’s warm voice eased her shattered heart. “You need to call Chase’s family, then meet me at the hospital. He and Juliana overdosed.”
“What? No!” Rage filled that last word.
“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t say anything more. The paramedics had loaded her sister onto a gurney and were wheeling her out to the waiting ambulance. She needed to go with her.
The second set of paramedics took their time with Chase, who went in and out of consciousness.
“Miss, we need to get some information from you,” the officer said and scooped up the scattered contents from her purse off the floor and put them back in the bag. She took her purse from the helpful cop and pointed at Mike. “Ask him what happened. I came in, saw Chase giving Juliana mouth-to-mouth before he collapsed, administered the naloxone, and called 911 because Mike wouldn’t.” She glared at Mike, wondering how much critical time passed while Mike freaked out, afraid to get into trouble instead of helping a friend. Her sister. “Check the security footage.” With that, she ran for the ambulance carrying her sister, her throat clogged tight, and her heart in a million jagged pieces.
Chapter Thirty-One
Drake had gotten ahold of Chase’s brothers at home in Wyoming and delivered the bad news, though he knew very little about what happened. He’d called and texted Adria numerous times, but hadn’t heard back from her. No one in the hospital would tell him anything about Juliana. He only got updates on Chase because he’d woken up enough to give consent.
He sat in the waiting room going out of his mind with worry, his anxiety off the charts, and his heart pounding despite how hard he tried to convince himself Chase and Juliana would be okay.
He needed to talk to Adria. He needed to know what happened. He had no idea what would possess Chase and Juliana to use again.
His thoughts spun out to a hundred different scenarios, none of them good.
“Drake. There you are.” Trinity walked into the waiting room ahead of a police officer. She’d gone to the shop to close up after the cops finished their investigation there. “Where’s Adria? I thought she’d be with you. The officer needs to talk to her about what happened.”
“I haven’t seen her. She must be with Juliana.”
Trinity shared a look with the policeman.
Drake needed answers. “What happened at the shop? How did this happen?”
The officer glanced at Trinity again, then explained. “Chase Wilde and Juliana Holloway overdosed on heroin laced with a very high dose of Fentanyl. We’ve had several deaths the last few days that we believe are linked to the same supply.”
Drake didn’t want to believe it. “You’re saying Chase took a deadly dose.”
“The drug came from Juliana—”
Drake shoved past the officer midsentence the second he saw Adria walking down the hall toward him.
She looked pale and wrecked, her eyes puffy, red, and swollen.
He took all that in, but the officer’s words replayed in his head and he let his anger fly. “Your sister gave Chase drugs. You said she was better. How could you let this happen?”
Adria stopped short and took a step back. Her eyes widened a second before they narrowed. “Is he alive?”
“Yes, no thanks to you!”
What little color she had drained from her face.
It should have warned him to take a breath and get his anger under control. But the thought of all Chase had been through surviving the war, the surgeries to fix his injuries, the PTSD, and getting hooked on the prescription pills that were supposed to help him get better, not worse. He spent sixty long days in rehab working on getting clean. A day with Juliana, and he ended up in the hospital again. All his progress lost.
He’d nearly lost his life. Again.
Drake couldn’t take it. “Because of Juliana, he nearly died. When I get my hands on her, she’ll pay for hurting him.”
“She’s dead!” Adria’s rage dwarfed his. “Is that enough for you?”
A gasp went up from Roxy, Noah, Sonya, and the other man with them.
Tears streamed down Adria’s face, but the hurt and pain in her eyes undid him.
His anger vanished, replaced by remorse and a need to comfort her so strong nothing else mattered. “No. Oh God, sweetheart, no.”
He’d let his anger get the better of him instead of seeing the pain that stole her smile, joy, and everything about her that lit up his world. He recognized the hurt and wanted to erase it. What she felt, he felt. His heart ached for her. Everything in him wanted to hold her and take away the misery from her eyes and heart.
He took a step toward her. He needed to make up for the horrible things he’d said, but she held up her hand and shook her head. “Stop. I can’t. Not now.”
She’d always said go. She’d always come to him.
This time, she turned her back and ran into her sisters’ arms. Noah and the other man—Austin, if he remembered the stories Adria told him about her family—stood in front of the three crying sisters.
Trinity grabbed his arm. “Drake, wait. You need to know what really happened.”
He shook off his sister and tried to go after Adria, but she walked away, hugged between Roxy and Sonya. “Adria, wait. I’m sorry.”
Noah didn’t budge. “Leave her alone. They need to be together right now.”
“I didn’t mean what I said.”
“I don’t think she cares right now.” Noah turned to his friend. “Let’s go, Austin.”
The cop followed them to get Adria’s statement.
“Mr. McGrath, Chase is asking for you.” The doctor he spoke to earlier waited at the nearby nurse’s station.
Trinity took his arm. “Adria needs to say goodbye to Juliana. Go see Chase. Make sure he’s okay.”
“I can’t leave her like that.”
“She’s not thinking about anything, except that Juliana is gone. They were twins. Closer than close. They could look at each other and not say anything, but say so much. Adria told me they could even feel what the other felt sometimes.”
“Juliana is part of her. I know how much this hurts her.”
“I don’t think you do. It’s more than Juliana dying. Adria saved Juliana once. She couldn’t save her this time.”
He’d seen the devastation of that in her eyes.
He knew exactly how guilt, remorse, anger, and failure devastated him. He didn’t want to see it destroy his beautiful, kind, loving, strong, and resilient Adria. She’d been through so much.
“I need to find her and be with her.”
Trinity grabbed his wrist. “Adria has her family with her. Chase is alone and asking for you. Go see him. Give Adria time to calm down and sort out what happened tonight.”
“I yelled at her.”
; “You were upset and angry. She’ll understand.”
He hoped so. But he didn’t wholly believe it. As he walked away from Trinity and headed down the hall to Chase’s room, that seed of doubt took root and tightened his stomach into a knot.
But he had to set that aside for his friend. For now.
He pushed open the door to Chase’s room and his stomach dropped. Chase sat up in the bed, his face pale, a lost look in his eyes that punctuated the desolate vibe coming off him.
“Drake. They won’t tell me anything. What happened? Her lips . . . they were blue. Her eyes . . . Did Juliana make it?” Chase’s eyes went wide. His intense gaze bored into Drake, imploring him to fill in the blanks and tell him everything was okay.
But it wasn’t. For Adria, it would never be.
He wished he could make this right for both of them.
He stood beside Chase and gave him the brutal truth. “Juliana died.”
Chase fisted his hands and pressed the heels to his forehead and shook his head. “No. No. It can’t be. She can’t be gone.”
Drake put his hand on Chase’s shoulder. “She is.”
Chase broke down. “I tried to save her. That fuck wouldn’t call an ambulance.” Chase slammed his hands down on the mattress. “And then I lost it. I couldn’t . . .” He slammed his hands down on the bed again. “Fuck!”
Drake took him by the shoulders. “Calm down.”
Chase knocked his hands away. “She’s dead. I should be, too.” He sank into the bed, covered his face with his arms, and let loose all the wild emotions he couldn’t contain anymore.
Drake rubbed his hand up and down Chase’s arm and tried to comfort him. “It’s going to be okay. You tried to help her. That’s all you could do. I’m glad you lived. You’ve got another chance to change your life.”
Chase knocked him away again. “I don’t have a fucking life anymore.”
He hated to see his friend so broken.
Unable to comfort him, he let Chase ride it out, but stayed close.
Drake turned off the overhead lights, leaving just one light burning next to the bed. He’d had his share of bad nights, where he just wanted to be left alone. But not.
Tough Talking Cowboy Page 24
