Page 80 of Final Temptation
Most nights in my mind were painted with the terrible, awful sights I’d once seen in my dreams. When Sophie stumbled along, those nights turned brighter, the darkness slipping away, replaced by her beauty and hope. With her in mylife, in my bed—all I saw when I closed my eyes lately…was her.
Until tonight, a one-off night, I fell asleep without her. Now I was seeing her in what felt like the realest dream of my life, and not in the ways I craved to see her when I shut my eyes.
I fell to the gravel below me, my feet giving up.
“You’re a weak, pathetic excuse of a man.” My words came out between grunts. With each heavy groan under my breath, I beat my fist against my head, teaching myself a lesson, one hit at a time.
Physically, I couldn’t feel a thing, but the overwhelming sensation to feel the pain grew.
I gave up on myself.
I risked it all, for one night, to black out the memories.
I told myself I’d deal with the consequences later but never guessed this would be the outcome. My body lacked color, looking completely lifeless. Sophie was a sobbing mess, crying for help. I could see her pain just as I felt my own. All the feelings flooded through me from earlier—downing the rest of that bottle, ignoring her text messages like a total piece of shit—every part of it blanketed me in regret.
“What can I do? There has to be something I can do to help while I wait!” she screamed.
“You’re doing everything you can, Princess,” I answered, knowing she couldn’t hear me.
I could feel her pain growing louder than my own. I may have been reckless. I may have given it zero thought when I downed an entire bottle of tequila after being almost a year sober, but if I could take it all back, I would have tried harder. I would have called her for help before it got bad.
The only option I had now was to stay alive…for her.
“Myles, everything is going to beokay. Help is here. Please hang on for me, I love you too fucking much to let you go.”
She held me tight, and I wished with everything I had that I could hug her back and tell her how much I loved her, too. I hated that it took this moment right here to confirm without a doubt that I fucking loved that girl more than life itself.
It was only late August, and fall was hardly on the horizon in Colorado, yet it felt like the middle of winter. Her body had been ripped from mine when help arrived, the loss of her body against mine immediately blanketing me in a sheet of snow.
If tears could fall, I’d be swimming in them, each one for her.
Sittingin the emergency room waiting area, I thought back to my childhood. I’d never had a reason to be in a hospital before, but I’d been to the doctor’s office more times than I could count. When Dad brought me in for the flu, a twisted ankle, or the times I ingested things I shouldn’t have, the doctor would always ask me to rate my pain based on apain scale.
Zero, being no pain at all, was a bright blue happy face that looked like a sticker you’d grab on your way out for doing a good job. Four, five, or six, meaning your pain was moderate, somewhere in the middle. And ten, the worst possible pain imaginable. The face was bright red and aching, almost like a balloon about to burst.
I may have been in the waiting room, not physically in any pain, but if anyone asked me to rate my pain right now, there wouldn’t be a scale big enough. There was no scale in the world in which you could rate a heart with a gaping hole in the center of it.
Looking around the cold, open space, not one person had a smile on their face. I didn’t want to be the judge of someone else’s trauma. I couldn’t say what I was going through was worse. But by the despair written on each face, matching my own, only hours before the sunrise, I knewthere wasn’t one person sitting in this room who had received good news tonight.
My gaze was laser-focused on the painting hanging on the wall ahead. Zoning out, I imagined myself laying in the field of flowers, staring up at the clouds as they went by. My focus was completely removed from what went on around me and fully focused on my own pain. It wasn’t until Paige physically shook me out of my thoughts that I realized she was sitting right next to me, with Declan by her side.
She wrapped me up in her arms, a hug so tight, it pulled the tears I didn’t know I had left right out of me. Paige didn’t talk; she only held me as I cried harder. My best friend was strong. She was everything I wished I could be in this moment. It wasn’t just me who was hurting; Declan was too, and she had to be there for both of us.
“Hey.” Declan’s hand grazed my back. “Are you up to tell us what’s going on?” Declan had a habit of being incredibly patient and kind. If it were me in his shoes, I’d be screaming,“What’s going on? Tell me what happened!”
Using my sleeve, I wiped my tears away and took a few deep breaths before trying to speak. My shirt was soaked from the water running down my face all night.
I cleared my throat, giving it my best effort to take this night back to the beginning.
“When I got home from your place, he wasn’t home. Something felt so…off in the apartment. It almost looked like he escaped without a second thought. It was a mess, and the TV was still on. He never left the apartment looking the way it did.” Every hair sprinkled on my arms stood up. The slideshow of memories in my brain made everything feel so out of the ordinary.
I dug my phone from my pocket, pulling up mine and Myles’ text thread. Passing it over to Declan, I said, “Andwhen I texted him, it only confirmed my worst fears.” His face paled only a few seconds later. If I had to guess, it was in response to the message Myles sent about Declan—that all this would catch up to him at some point.
Declan ran his hand over his face in one long stroke while he tried to form his thoughts into words. When he handed my phone to Paige, so she could see the texts too, he muttered, “Where did you find him, Soph?”
My eyes shifted to Paige, “I-I found him at your dad’s crash site. He was already passed out when I got there. Unresponsive.” I thought back to what was only an hour ago, yet felt like days, the tears threatening to spill over with every second I replayed in my mind.
“Fuck!” Declan could only stay calm for so long. Finally taking a seat next to Paige, he pulled on the back of his neck, resting his elbows on his knees. Paige’s hand left my back and wrapped around her fiancé. Their words were muffled as they spoke to each other in a quiet tone, but there were a few words I was able to make out clearly. “We never should have believed him when he said he was okay. What the fuck were we thinking, drinking around him?” Declan mumbled in regret as Paige rubbed her hands over his back, chin resting on his shoulder.
