Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(16)

The needle.

The nothingness.

There was no escape from it. So my body healed from the beating Dylan gave me while my mind became more damaged from the battering of my demons. I dodged Lucky; that was one addiction I had to kick, no matter how tough the withdrawals were. The universe seemed to be on my side for once because he and Asher were away on some biker mission and I was safe. Safe from the illusion of safety he offered.

Safe to continue the habit that offered the comfort of danger. Because Asher wasn’t around to offer Lily the life raft she still needed, despite the fact she was treading water now, it was my turn to help her stay afloat. Though I feared dragging her out to some club and plying her with booze was dragging her deeper. I had no choice to come out to drown my sorrows, or at least drunken them, in order to gain the courage to go back to work tomorrow.

Yep, work. Back to the place where my boss had sent the guy I was sleeping with to rough me up in order to convince me to solicit.

I’d guess most people would say such a move was insane. Or at least people who had the luxury of choice.

I did not.

So in order to live with my choice, I came here. And dragged Lily with me.

Because I was such a great friend.

It was the shame that came with that realization that had me slipping into the bathroom to find solace in nothingness, so I could face my friend. So I could face myself.

I wasn’t under the illusion that I was doing this for anyone but myself. Fuck, I couldn’t get any more f*cking selfish than leaving my vulnerable best friend in some greasy club while shooting up in the bathroom.

I almost retched from my disgust in myself.

As always, I shook myself, as if physical movement would chase those thoughts away, and plunged the needle into my arm. The pain of the needle was almost nonexistent now, the moment that blissed nirvana entered my bloodstream pain a rather arbitrary concept.

Everything fell away. The chattering of girls outside the bathroom stall I was crouched in, the thumping of the bass in the club. The filth. That was the most important thing. The filth fell away. No, maybe it didn’t. It was tattooed onto my skin, onto my soul. It would never leave. But it was hidden. It was gloriously cloaked like everything else was in these precious moments.

I closed my eyes and leaned back, cherishing the moment. The future didn’t exist. It was only the now.

Then, as the darkness dragged me deeper than I’d ever been, I had a horrible premonition that the now was all I was getting, all that was left.

Then there wasn’t even that.

Then there was nothing.



Almost overdosing in a dirty bathroom stall of some terrible club was a turning point for me. My bottom.

No, actually waking up in hospital after I’d almost died was a turning point.

The first thing that assaulted me when I woke was the smell. Unpleasant was not the word. It seemed to seep into my bones, that sterile, ammonia smell. Taunting me with its cleanliness, making my own filth that much more visible. Inescapable. Because the first thing I’d wanted to do was find a needle, a pill, a f*cking cocktail to blur that dirt, make myself care just a little less about it.

Unfortunately they didn’t offer narcotics or stiff drinks to junkies recovering from overdoses in hospital rooms.

Then it was the pain. Every cell in my body hurt, every strand of hair a weight on my pounding head. It was not pleasant. But that was all Club Med compared to a distraught and pale-faced Lily sobbing at my bedside when she’d come in.

I saw it then. The consequences of my actions. Of what my death would have done to the only person in the world who loved me. My only family. I saw how f*cking selfish I’d been, looking for escape like a coward and then laying all that shit on Lily just after she’d buried her mom.

Worst friend of the century goes to me.

It was then I found my strength. I decided to make a change. Not to be a coward and find excuses to flush my life down the crapper. Not to hide behind the demons of the past and let me destroy my future.

So I went off the junk.

Cold turkey.

I wouldn’t recommend it.

I don’t really want to relive the sickness. The insects crawling on my skin. The itch that nothing but a needle could scratch. The pain of my body coming back to itself. Me descending back into the unfamiliar home of my body, which was now a stranger to me. Because that’s what I’d ultimately tried to run from with the drugs at the start, so coming back to it and facing the real me, stone-cold sober, wasn’t pleasant.

But I survived. People did it every day, so I would. And I did.

I hated myself, a lot, for being like that. For needing Lily to take care of me for the first handful of hellish days. When I’d been so sick I couldn’t stand, couldn’t shower. Forget keeping down any form of food. It mirrored the hell Faith went through with chemo. Though she was putting poison in her body in order to stay on this earth, to heal, I’d been doing it to leave it, further damaging my already-damaged body. I subjected Lily to that, after she’d gone through the same with her mom.

I was going to hell for sure. Withdrawal was already hell, so I guessed I had a taste of what the afterlife held for me. Totally not keen on meeting my maker any time soon.

By the time I was well enough to bathe myself and think beyond a rabid craving for junk, I was lucid enough to see what withdrawal had done to me. My pale face was almost translucent, and the circles under my eyes looked like smudged eye shadow. I looked like a cancer patient. No, I looked like a junkie.