“I said no.”
She leans in closer, whispering, “One last hit won’t hurt, babe. You’ve earned it.”
I flinch. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I do,” she says softly, like she’s telling a secret. She sets something on the edge of the sink. A small bag. White powder glinting like it’s alive. “It’s what helps me sleep after they come back smelling like that.”
The sight of it hurts worse than the memory. I tell myself I’m strong enough to walk away. Then the shaking starts again.
Pearl folds my fingers around the bag like she’s placing something sacred in my palm, as if she’s offering salvation instead of poison. “You’ll thank me later.”
When the door clicks behind her, I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I look like a ghost. And ghosts don’t win battles, they haunt them.
The silence feels louder than gunfire. The bag’s small enough to disappear in my palm, but it feels like it weighs a ton. I stareat it. The soft, white powder inside catches the light. A lie that sparkles.
My pulse starts to throb in my throat.
I tell myself I don’t want it, that I’m stronger now, that I’ve survived worse, but the craving doesn’t care about logic or promises. It lives under the skin, in the quiet between breaths, and it knows exactly where to whisper.
One last time, Syv. Just one more time to stop shaking.
I drop the bag on the counter like it burned me. My reflection in the mirror looks wrong. Pupils too wide, lips too pale. I look likeheragain. The woman who crawled out of that motel months ago with blood under her nails and nothing in her veins but poison and fear.
I grip the edge of the sink until my knuckles turn white. “You’re not her,” I whisper. “Not anymore.” But the memory answers anyway.
The first time, after Josiah, after the screaming, after the cuffs came off and the club found me, I couldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. Every sound was his boots. Every shadow was his face. Someone handed me a line and said it would stop the noise. They were right. It made everything go quiet.
I hated myself afterward because the calm felt good, and that terrified me more than the chaos ever had. It felt like peace, and I didn’t think I deserved it.
Now, staring down at that same white lie, I hear Pearl’s voice again.You’ll thank me later.I laugh. A broken, hollow sound that doesn’t belong to me. My hands shake so hard I can barely open the damn bag.
“Just a breath,” I tell myself. “Just enough to stop the noise.”
The second the cocaine hits my system, the world slides sideways. The walls exhale. The ceiling sways. The panic dissolves into warmth, a soft hum beneath my skin.
It’s not peace, not really. It’s forgetting. For a few blessed seconds, I can’t see Tiny’s soot-covered face. I can’t smell the blood. I can’t feel the ache in my chest that never goes away.
I close my eyes and let the numbness take me. It’s easier to drown in it than to remember how it feels to survive. Then everything turns black.
I wake to the sound of running water. A voice I know, low and shaking. “Stay with me, Syv. Come on, come on, baby girl.”
My body jerks. The world swims. I’m half on the bathroom floor, half in Tiny’s arms. His shirt’s soaked, and his hands grip my face, patting my cheeks hard enough to sting.
He drags me upright and shoves me into the shower. Ice-cold water hits my skin like fire. I gasp and cough, my lungs fighting for air.
“Breathe,” he snarls. “You hear me? You don’t get to quit now!”
I try. The air won’t stay. Everything inside me hurts. The tiles blur, his voice fades, then comes back sharper. “Don’t you fucking do this, Syvannah!”
His hands move fast, checking my pulse, slapping my cheek again, tearing the towel from the rack to wrap around me. His breathing’s ragged, half rage, half fear.
“Don’t you shut down on me,” he says again, his voice cracking at the edges. The fury slips. What’s left is raw, shaking, terrified.
I start to shiver. My body convulses against his chest. Tiny holds me tighter. The smell of soap, smoke, and sweat surrounds me, and for once, it doesn’t make me flinch.
When I finally manage a breath that doesn’t scrape like glass, his forehead drops against mine, trembling. “Jesus, Syv,” he mutters. “Why would you do this to yourself?”
“I didn’t…” The lie dies halfway out. Tears spill before I can stop them. “I didn’t mean to.”