Beyond the Horizon (Sons of Templar MC #4)(73)

They let me ride in the ambulance with her, pushed to one side, watching in horror as they connected all sorts of things to Bex, mumbling words like “overdose” and “heroin.”

I stopped my pacing, staring down at the remains of my coffee, eyes blurring at the sides.

Heroin. Overdose.

They hadn’t told me anything, not since we had arrived, hours ago. Terror pulsed through me like a living thing. At the lack of news. At the smell of these sterile walls, ones I had promised myself I’d never see again. Ones that held ghosts and haunted my dreams. If these walls took another person from me, I didn’t know if I could stand it.

Heroin. Overdose.

I swallowed my tears. I didn’t even know. My best friend had been taking heroin, enough to be doing it in club toilets and I hadn’t noticed. So wrapped up in my own despair I hadn’t noticed Bex drowning in her own. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, so they say. Now I think back to those days where Bex had looked twitchy, dark circles under her already dark eyes, her frame skinnier than usual. The fact she always seemed to be on her last dollar, even though she barely bought anything apart from wine and clothes from goodwill.

I sank into a chair in the waiting room, putting my head in my hands.

“Please don’t die, please don’t die,” I chanted to the floor beneath me.

“Rebecca Bennett?” a voice penetrated my sorrow.

I shot off the chair and rushed to an older man in a white coat, glancing over a chart in his hands.

“Is she okay?” I demanded, wanting to clutch his lapels but restraining myself.

He regarded me. I was a mess, I knew. The outfit I was wearing was intended for a club floor, not fluorescent lights and a hospital waiting room. Mascara smudged under my eyes, brought loose from tears. I didn’t care. I didn’t care what he thought of me. He just needed to tell me one thing.

“You’re Ms. Bennett’s family?” he asked skeptically.

I resisted the urge to shake the answer out of him. “Yes, I’m her family,” I said firmly.

He paused a second then glanced at the chart in his hands. “Your sister is lucky to be alive,” he stated, eyes moving back to me. “A heroin overdose causes the body to forget to breathe, it doesn’t take long for brain damage to set in when the brain is deprived of oxygen,” he told me with clinical detachment.

I didn’t hear much beyond, “alive” which made my whole body sag. I felt it tighten back up at his words.

“She’s going to be okay, though, isn’t she?” I asked in desperation.

The doctor nodded. “Luckily, the paramedics could administer the right drugs and we could treat her. As I said, she’s lucky. This could have easily gone another way.”

“Can I see her?” I asked. I didn’t want to sit at another hospital bedside. Not again. But I had to see her with my own two eyes.

The doctor nodded again. “For a short while. Then I suggest you go home, get some sleep. She’ll need to be in here overnight at the very least.”

I followed him down hallways that seemed like a second home, welcoming me with their sick satisfaction. I swallowed the lump in my throat at the memories that came with them.

When the doctor stopped outside the room, he turned to me. “Your sister needs help,” he told me flatly. “We don’t refer these cases to the police, but I urge you to get her into a rehab facility before they become involved, or before we are too late next time.”

I nodded. “There won’t be a next time,” I replied firmly. I had been blinded by my own demons for long enough. I’d help Bex conquer hers. It didn’t matter that mine hadn’t been defeated yet.

The doctor’s face softened slightly, and he seemed to regard me with a sort of pity.

“I hope that’s true.” He gave me a nod before he left.

I walked woodenly to the bed where someone vaguely looking like my best friend was lying hooked up to machines. The beeping of her heart monitor gave me hope.

I clutched the hand with chipped black nail polish. “You’re going to be okay,” I whispered to her sleeping body. “We’re going to get you through this.”





By the time I got out of the hospital, daylight was kissing the horizon. A new day. One I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for. I should have taken the bus. Should have realized that a taxi was an extravagance I couldn’t afford. But I felt dead on my feet. To my bones tired. So I took the taxi, deciding I would worry about my dwindling funds later. After I caught enough sleep to make me mobile enough to get Bex home and to figure out how to take care of her. When I fumbled my key in my lock, my thoughts were of bed, of researching rehabs that we had no way to pay for, of figuring out how to get more time off work to watch Bex. How to eat if I wasn’t going to work. They weren’t on being aware of another person in my apartment. I nearly crawled up the wall when Asher stood from the sofa, staring at me. It wasn’t just a stare, his blazing eyes tore through me, running over every inch of me. His tight form relaxed slightly when he made it back up to my eyes as if he had been expecting me to be damaged in some way.

We gazed at each other for a long while.

“What are you doing here?” I asked after my heart had returned to its normal rhythm. “Did you break in? I added on an afterthought. Despite everything, my body yearned to touch him, to run into his arms. I stayed rooted to the spot, his stiff form and angry gaze communicating that he might not be feeling warm and fuzzy toward me right now.