Page 53 of Never To Suffer

“I can’t… You don’t understand. You can’t. Just… stop!”

“Understand what?”

“Anything!” I rub my temples, too aware of the migraine, too sensitive to every noise, touch, and smell. “I can’t…I don’t know!”

One fix. I only need it this one time. I can tell Dani after, and she’ll help me. I need to get past this one time.

She reaches up and tucks my hair behind one of my ears, holding my wrist with her other hand. I’m scaring her, but I’m scaring myself more. I take a deep breath, but it’s like trying to breathe in a swamp, the air too hot and thick. I squeeze my eyes shut again.

All of this can stop, all the demons can go back into hiding, safely tucked away in their bed. One fix. One night. One more time.

I need to get out of here. I need air. I need to breathe.

“Skylar, what’s wrong?” Her voice sounds so far away as she tries to chase me through the crowd, but I’m on a mission, and it isn’t a good one. I get outside and don’t stop until I’m on my bike, turning the engine over, and kicking off the sidewalk. I doubt I’ll need to go far. I can’t be here and fall apart in front of her. Not again.

I rock my head back against the cold brick wall, exhaling a lungful of smoke. I called my sponsor and left a message, but didn’t answer when he called back. The constant buzzing of plastic against concrete became bees in my head, never ending. Turning the phone off didn’t help. Something else would buzz. Cars, voices, actual bugs. Only one thing can silence the swarm. One call, one street corner, one nod and I can be flying again, feeling that high wash through me and take away the pain and memories. It can put me back on the stage, back under the lights.

But it will push me out of her arms.

I dig the heel of my palms into my eyes, pushing harder until I feel the tears. What the hell was I thinking coming here? I can’t be trusted; I can’t be left alone. I’m a child no one wants in aworld that makes it too easy to get what I need, even though it could kill me.

My brain hammers against my skull. I’m soaked with sweat, and I’m shivering. I’m in detox hell and I haven’t taken anything.

“Fuck. Fuuuck.”

Thinking about it makes my stomach knot up, twisting the booze and the beer into a monster attacking me from the inside. Brain. Stomach. Brain. Stomach. Getting jumped would feel better. I’m gonna be sick.

“Sky?”

I don’t move because I don’t think she’s real. I’ve passed out behind some fucking gas station somewhere, and Marc will get a call in the morning that the cops found my body. Maybe I’m dying right now and that’s why I hear her voice. I bought the drugs, took too many, and now I’m on my last big, bad trip.

“Skylar, please look at me?” She holds my face in her warm hands, but I don’t look at her. I can’t.

She pulls me up off the ground with Connor’s help. I let them lead me across the parking lot to his van. Connor makes her promise I won’t throw up, and if I do, she’s cleaning it. They get me back to the hotel room and onto the bed. There’s a vague sense of Dani taking off my shoes and jacket before washing my face with a cold washcloth.

“Okay, lay down. We’ll get your pants off later after you sleep some of this off.”

“You should go,” I mumble. “It was all bullshit, everything.”

“Don’t say that.” She walks into the bathroom, the pipes rattle when she turns the shower on, and a few minutes later, steam flowing out the doorway and into the bedroom. “Come on. If you’re not going to sleep, maybe this will help.”

“I should have told you.”

“Told me what?”

“The drugs. Rehab. How much your voice—your music—healed me when I needed it most.” I turn, taking her face in my hands and staring deep into eyes I wish I could crawl into and die. “Familiar and haunting in a perfect storm, colliding inside my soul and demanding I keep going. Every note and every word begged me not to give up, not to give in to the temptation of taking the easy way. Even tonight, the demons nipping at my heels couldn’t compete with the thought of losing you. You saved me, Dani. So many times.”

Her weak smile and glistening eyes tell me how messed up I am. I shouldn’t have stayed.

“Youmade me fight,youmade me hold on, andyoumade me want to feel the music again. I want to make it up to you, to repay you for breathing life into my worthless soul again. But I messed up.”

“Jesus, you should be writing lyrics, but Skylar?—”

“They’d only ever be about you.” Every breath shakes like an earthquake, but it’s my entire body, not only my breathing. “Beetle, the truth… shit, I wanted to grab you on stage tonight and bend you over an amp. I didn’t care who watched or what they thought. I wanted to claim you, make you mine.”

“Okay, that’s hot, but what happened? Because that’s not enough to make you run away.”

“The show…it was too much, too fast. The power, the exhilaration, the energy. I came down too hard. I don’t know if I’m ready. Ready for old, familiar streets and smells, for faces I’ve tried to block out, for you to…to...” I bite back the emotion, but it won’t last. I can’t go through losing someone else. “I wanted the high again. And I’m scared I wanted it too much.”

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