Fade Into You (Shaken Dirty #3)(62)

But f*ck, it wasn’t like he could just leave it in the middle of the bathroom floor to keep tripping over, either—not if he had any chance of surviving—so eventually he bent down and picked it up. Turned it over in his hands. Ran his thumb over a random burn mark in the bottom left corner of the leather.

Every single brain cell he had shrieked at him to throw it away. To toss it out the window. To do anything, everything, but keep holding it, shifting it this way and that as memory after memory assaulted him.

He didn’t do that, though. Instead, his fingers seemed to move of their own volition as they unzipped the kit. As they pulled the spoon and lighter out of one side and the package of wrapped, unused syringes out of the other. As he did, he sank down onto the floor, rested his back against the wall, and tried not to think about how good it felt to get high. To nod out. To bliss out.

It didn’t work.

Suddenly, the heroin he’d been carrying around since he’d met Rollo at the bar last night was burning a major hole in the pocket of his jeans.

He hadn’t used last night, hadn’t had a drink. He’d gone to Poppy’s instead and let his need for her ease away his craving for smack. It had worked better than he’d ever expected it to.

But she wasn’t here right now and the heroin was. And he wanted it. Holy f*ck, did he want it. Every cell in his body was practically breakdancing in anticipation.

He reached into his pocket. Pulled out the small bag with the off-white powder in it. Held it up to the light as he squeezed it between his fingers again and again and again.

His hands were shaking with the need to open it up. To put a little on his tongue, just to taste. Just to feel the way the numbness tingled and spread.

It would be so easy. All he had to do was break the little Ziploc seal, then sprinkle some on the spoon, heat it up, pull it into the syringe. Inject it.

And then he’d be flying.

For a little while he wouldn’t care about anything or anyone, past or present or future. He could just float. Could just be.

He turned his arm over, traced his fingers over his tattoo sleeve as he searched for a vein he hadn’t collapsed with years of IV drug use. He found it on the inside of his upper arm, closer to his shoulder than his elbow. He’d only just started injecting it when he’d gone to rehab, so it had a bunch of uses left in it.

He poked at it a little, plumped it up so it’d be easier to slide the needle in. It was all so familiar, watching his bleeding, busted open hands poking at his own skin. So, so familiar, and it took him back, had the endorphins shooting through his body in mere anticipation of the heroin.

But as he poked at the vein, as he imagined how good it would feel, as he told himself he deserved the reward—just once; it didn’t have to be a regular thing—Poppy flashed into his mind again.

Poppy, as she was last night. Her hair spread out like a silken waterfall over the dark luxury of the sheets. Her body draped half over his. Her fingers and lips stroking tenderly over his still fading track marks, her gentle acceptance telling him it was okay. Poppy as she’d been that morning, telling him that he was a good man. Telling him that the past wasn’t his fault. Telling him that who he was now was all that was important.

Fuck. Just f*ck.

Fuck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck.

He banged the back of his head against the wall, tried not to think about how he had gotten here, right here, to this moment. Tried not to think about every bad choice, every mistake, every f*cked up thing he’d ever done.

It was an impossible thing to ask himself, especially considering all that shit was on a never-ending track inside his brain. One that ran twenty-four seven, three hundred sixty-five days a year. One that showed him his father’s face, his bloody, torn up body, over and over and over again.

Fuck!

He threw the bag of heroin across the room, watched as it bounced off the shower curtain and fell to the floor. And still it took every ounce of willpower he had not to crawl across the floor to pick it up.

After all, he’d been doing it for years, doing it so long that going back to it would be almost like going home.

But he was smarter now than he’d been even three months ago, smart enough now to know that no matter what he did, it wasn’t going to last. He could go back to what he’d been doing, drinking twenty hours out of the day, pumping more and more and more heroin into his veins until everything was a blur. Until even being on stage with his friends became nothing but a faded out mockery of itself.

And still it wouldn’t be enough.

Still it wouldn’t last.

Because even at his worst, even when he was injecting more than an ounce of heroin a day, he hadn’t been able to get enough. His body hadn’t been able to tolerate enough to keep him numb, to keep him nodding out and forgetting all the shit from his past he’d spent so long running from.

He’d nearly died once—would be dead, if it wasn’t for Ryder and Jared and Quinn. And how had he repaid them? By ruining their tour and f*cking everything up for them as they waited on him for the last three months.

Yet here he was on another bathroom floor, kit in one hand and heroin right there, waiting for him to ruin everything. For his friends, for Poppy, for himself.

Goddammit. No.

He wasn’t going to do it this time, wasn’t going to go there no matter how much he wanted the momentary oblivion that first hit of heroin would give him. And he wanted it. God, did he want it.