Page 88 of First Verse

She stares at me blankly for a beat, then pushes up from the table. “Let me up.Pull out of me right now, Wilder.Now, now, now.”

Her voice rises and sharpens with every word until she’s yelling and shoving me back roughly.

Still half-delirious from performing for two hours and falling apart in bliss, I stumble backward, wincing as my body slips from her heat.

Evangeline jumps off the table and yanks her tights up her legs. She only glances at me once, hissing, “Put your dick away.”

I fumble, pulling up my pants with numb fingers. Cold radiates down my body, wiping away my delusion. Revealing the wide-open darkness around me as I free-fall.

I try to say her name but nothing comes out.

She adjusts her miniskirt with jerky movements, muttering to herself. “History repeating itself. Unbelievable.” Straightening, she smooths back hairs that escaped her ponytail. Her hands shake. A crystalline tear drips off her chin.

I gasp. “Wait?—”

She whirls on me. I don’t know what’s worse, the fury on her face or the shattered look in her eyes.

“You’re asking me to go on tour with Night Theory,” she says in a freakishly calm voice. “To break Glow’slegally binding contractwith Indigo and drop my dream—Lily’s dream—like it’s trash?”

I fist my hair and shake my head. “No. Absolutely not.Fuck.I wasn’t thinking, okay? It just came out. I swear!”

She scoffs. “That’s almost worse. It means yousubconsciouslybelieve my dreams aren’t as important as yours. That your needs and wants are superior. My feelings—my dreams—don’t even matter to you. They never have.”

“That’s not what I said,” I rasp, horrified. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. How—how could you even think that?”

Her lip quivers. For a second, I think she understands. Then her expression hardens. “I need to think. Don’t follow me and don’t come to my house.”

No, no, no.

Black cracks spread from my edges, racing toward the center of my being. My lungs squeeze. Words jumble in my head and tangle in my throat as she walks past me to the door. In my stomach, a demon screams.

The Shadow smiles.

“I’ll call you,” she says softly. “Just… give me a little bit of time.”

The door creaks twice. Open. Closed.

My legs give out and I slam to the floor.

White noise fills my head.

Static nothing.

I blink and Jax is grabbing my shoulders, his mouth moving.

I can’t hear him.

I blink and streetlights pass outside car windows. Colorful streaks across a void.

I blink again and I’m sitting listlessly on my bed with a bottle of pills lying near my hip. My body tingles. Terror ices my mind.How many did I take?Shivering violently, it takes me three tries to open the bottle. I dump the remaining pills onto the comforter and count them.

My gasp of relief slices the silence.

Only three. You only took three.

Like the drug in my bloodstream was waiting for acknowledgment, intense heat spikes inside me. My muscles melt. My mind quiets. I barely manage to lift my legs onto the bed and pull the comforter over me before losing the ability to move.

I float on a warm sea. Lapping waves flush away my darkness. Drown my Shadow. Drown me.

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