Page 147 of Sin Like the Devil

“I’m never going to be able to sneak up on you. Am I?”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Besides, I don’t see many other girls queuing up to sob at my bedside. Do you?”

“I don’t know. I had to fight my way in here to get past your fans.”

He swats a hand through the air. “Feel free to let them in. I’m bored as fuck laying here.”

“Perhaps think of that next time, mister.” Nina bustles around him, fiddling with his multiple IV lines and frowns at various machines monitoring his vitals. “Ain’t nothing fun or interesting about drugs. You worried your girl here.”

“Alright, Nina.” Raine sighs tiredly like this isn’t the first time she’s scolded him. “Enough of the lecturing already. Isn’t your shift over yet?”

“Behave. I’ll be back.” With an eye roll, she scurries from the cubicle.

Even with her gone, I can’t bring myself to walk over to him. He looks so small and ashen in the hospital bed, an array of needles poking into his arms and the low, steady beep of a monitor measuring each heartbeat.

Part of me wonders if he’d be laying here had we never met. I know this isn’t Raine’s first rodeo. He’s been playing this game for far longer than I know. But I thought things were under control. I thought he was being safe.

“Rip.” He pats the bed. “Come here.”

I shake my head before realising he can’t see it. “I can’t do that.”

“I need to explain.”

“Well, I don’t need you to. This… It’s my fault.”

“Don’t do that to yourself. Please.”

“It’s true. I never should’ve sold to you in the first place. If you’d gone through withdrawal and maybe gotten clean back then, none of this would’ve happened.”

“Because I’d be dead,” Raine deadpans.

“You don’t know that.”

He fiddles with a clear plastic tube wrapped around him. “I’m here because I was reckless. That’s all.”

My chest constricts. “Why’d you do it?”

“It was just a dumb mistake.” He exhales loudly through his nose. “Something else must’ve been cut into the pills I took. I wasn’t trying to overdose or do anything stupid.”

“It was an accident? Really?”

“I swear, I didn’t do this on purpose.”

That loosens the pressure on my panic-strapped lungs a small amount. Outrage floods into me instead. I’m in no position to lecture or judge, not after what I’ve done, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling hurt.

“Where did you get those pills? I know they weren’t mine. You’ve been buying from someone else.”

His lips pucker then twist. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No one else is supposed to be selling in here!” My voice raises. “So it does matter. They sold you a bad batch, and it almost killed you. I want a name.”

Unseeing eyes gazing over my shoulder, he seems perfectly calm. Like swallowing God knows what chemicals and almost dying as a result is just an average weekday. I don’t know whether to kiss him or kill him, I’m so furiously confused.

“Just leave it.” He cringes in pain as he shifts his position. “I’m fine.”

“Nothing about this is fine. You were blue, Raine! Fucking blue!”

Exhaustion is catching up to me after everything that’s happened. Part of me wants to run far away from Harrowdean and all its complications. Three in particular.

---