Delphi howls louder. I release Megan, letting her sag to the bed, and I close my eyes and cover my ears. But I can’t erase the traces of blood filling my vision. I can’t block out the sound.
“Briar, Briar, Briar,” I chant like a plea. This isn’t real. This isn’t really happening. It can’t be.
I startle awake, my arms thrashing, reaching, searching. I gasp for air. Fight to fill my lungs with a breath that doesn’t smell of blood. My eyes flick across the wall, the same faded wallpaper from my dream. Same generic landscape painting inside a cheap golden frame.
The door opens and Briar hurries inside, her eyes widening in concern. Mine burn with tears of relief as she moves toward me. I grip her arm, dragging her into my arms, and hug her tightly. She winces and I remember her ribs. I loosen my grip, pulling back enough to touch her face. I smooth her hair and study her eyes, making sure she’s really okay. And then I press a kiss to her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks.
“I thought I lost you,” I husk. “I thought you were gone.” I tuck my head into the crook of her neck and inhale.
Her fingers slide down my back, soothing me. “I just went out for a few minutes,” she says softly. “I got you some Gatorade and crackers.”
I shake my head, unable to say anything more. I don’t want to let her go. I can’t. I can’t.
“You have to try to drink something. You must be dehydrated.”
“Later,” I mumble against her shoulder.
She pushes me back, but I cling to her, unwilling to release her just yet. “You threw up all night and slept all day. We need to get some electrolytes in you.”
Flashes of the past couple days flip through my mind like a picture book. Checking into the seedy motel. Falling on my knees in front of the toilet. Briar kneeling beside me with a cool washcloth. Her dragging me to the only bed. Me gagging on the sips of water she forced down my throat.
The fear in her eyes.
The worry in her voice.
But she stayed with me the whole time.
I must be too caught up in the memories because I don’t realize I’ve let her out of the confines of my arms until she’s offering me a bottle of orange Gatorade. I take it and as soon as the cold liquid hits my tongue I finally comprehend how parched I am. I chug it down, not slowing until my stomach churns, rejecting too much at once.
“I slept all day? What time is it?”
“A little after one.”
“In the afternoon?”
“In the morning.”
“You shouldn’t be out by yourself in the middle of the night.”
“I don’t have much choice. You need things and I’m the only one who can get them.” She takes the bottle from my hand and sets it on the nightstand. “How do you feel? Think you’re ready to try some crackers?”
I shake my head absentmindedly. More memories surface and my chest seizes in panic. “Jax,” I choke as I shove the blanket off of my legs.
Briar places her hand on my shoulder firmly, holding me in place. “You need to get better before we can do anything. Eat. Drink. Get your strength back. That’s all you have to worry about right now.”
I let her guide me back until I’m lying propped on the pillows. But she’s wrong. Getting better isn’t the only thing I have to worry about. I need a plan. I have to do something to make sure my dream never comes true.
29
Briar
Once Benji falls asleep, I perch on the end of the bed and watch him. I watch his chest, the rise and fall of each new breath. I watch his hands twitch and clench before relaxing again. I watch his face, his thick brows crinkled, his full lips frowning. He’s never really peaceful, even in rest.
It’s sad and I can’t tear my eyes away from him. I watch him until my body no longer allows me to.
When I awaken, Benji is sitting up, his back against the headboard, and his golden gaze directed at me. I push myself up and rub the sleep from my eyes.
“Good morning,” he rasps. I can’t tell if he just woke up or if the rawness to his voice is from lack of use. Maybe he’s thirsty. I slide off the bed and grab another Gatorade, offering it to him. He takes it without argument and drinks deeply.
“Good morning,” I say. “How do you feel?”
“Tired. But good. Better.” He recaps the drink and sighs. “I feel gross. I need a shower.” He tugs at the t-shirt he’s worn for days now, slightly stiff from old sweat. “I stink.”
“When you’re done, will you try to eat?”
He nods as his eyes lock on mine. “We need to talk too. I need to tell you something—explain everything.” He drags his fingers through his hair uncomfortably as I nod.
He returns the gesture before gingerly placing his feet on the floor, pressing them against the carpet as if testing his legs’ strength. I hold my breath as he stands. When he doesn’t tip over, I sigh in relief. With his trademark crooked grin, he pads off to the bathroom.
After we’re both showered and dressed in fresh clothes, Benji takes my hand, guiding me to the bed. We sit on opposite ends, facing each other. I grab the pack of crackers, opening it and handing him one.
He smiles softly as he accepts it.
“When we left,” he begins, his voice rough and low. “I never thought we’d be gone as long as we were. In my mind, I believed Jaxon would turn eighteen and we’d come back. I hadn’t realized the hold my mom had over me.” He lifts a cracker to his lips, taking a small, hesitant bite. He tests the flavor before placing the rest in his mouth.
He takes a moment, to make sure it stays down, I think, before going on.
“Mom OD’d the first time right before Jax’s eighteenth birthday. I came home from work and found her lying in a puddle of her own puke. Called 911.” His fingers curl, forming fists as he stares at the wall. “It was close that time. I don’t know if it was an accident or if she was tired of it and just wanted to end it.”
I want to ask questions. Dozens of them. But I stay quiet as he gathers his next thoughts.
“When it finally dawned on me that I couldn’t leave her, I was furious.” He looks at me now, his eyes reflecting the anger he felt back then.
“I started using, just here and there at first. Just on the worst days. Pretty soon, all days were the worst days.” He chuckles darkly. “You don’t realize you’re addicted until it already has its hold on you. My brain made excuses, allowances. And I believed them because I wanted to. I wasn’t like her. She was a junky. I was staying to take care of her. I was better than her. I honestly believed it for a while.
“Then my stash ran out. And Mom’s stash had run out because the extra money I used to supply her habit with was gone, wasted on my own habit. She came up with the brilliant plan to deal. Get fronted a large amount of oxy, sell it. Even up. Buy more. And hey, why not skim off the top while we’re at it? Perfect fucking plan.”
“What happened?” I ask after his silence reaches an uncomfortable amount of time.
He shakes his head. “It was fine at first. We were doing well. We pulled that shit off flawlessly in the beginning. But…I don’t know. It was there. It was always right there. She used. I used. The longer we used, the more we needed to get a high. So we used more. We sold. Then we used even more. And more. Sold less. And less. We started borrowing. But we were paying back less each time. And then it was gone.
“I had never met Delphi. Mom knew him from the club where she waitressed, but I had only dealt with Kent. He was the one that dropped off and picked up.
“He shows up, we’re short—by a lot. There’s no product left. Basically we’re fucked. But Kent comes up with this idea. This stupid plan that seemed so simple at the time.”
“Drink,” I insist as I push a new bottle of Gatorade into his hand. He complies, wipes his mouth, and closes his eyes.
“He told me I could come work for Delphi. Pay off the debt. They’d pay me forty percent, keep sixty until I was even. And then I’d be out.” He laughs again, the bitterne
ss pouring off him in waves.
“Once you’re in, you’re in. There is no out. Not unless Delphi says so.”
“Kent said he was out,” I say, confused.
“There is no out. Kent went from dealing to smalltime junkies to dealing to criminals. Less hours, higher pay, same business.”
“So you went to work for Delphi?”
“I did. I had to. And I was good at it. One week I’m selling. The next Delphi has me running errands. Dropping off product. Picking up cash. Riding along to collect from guys like me that couldn’t pay up, but weren’t given the opportunity I was.
“Week after week, Delphi had me doing more and more shit. Taking on more responsibility. Only, I was also using more and more because now I had some extra cash and a direct supply of oxy at my fingertips. It was all so easy.”
Benji pushes himself off the mattress and begins to pace the small space at the end of the bed. I watch him, waiting for him to continue his story, and not knowing how to feel about any of this information.
“There’s a reason he took a liking to me.” He pauses and meets my eyes. “There is always a reason. People like Delphi don’t do shit out of the kindness of their cold black hearts. Apparently Delphi has a thing for blondes. All kinds of blondes. And he had a hard-on for Mom. I went in one night to pick Mom up after her shift, and there he is. Sitting in her section. He had plenty of other women. Younger, prettier. Women without kids. Women who weren’t strung out on pain pills. But he wanted her.
“I didn’t give a shit. It wasn’t my business. Hell, Delphi set up his girls good. If he wanted to hook Mom up, I was fine with it. I thought maybe I could work less and still reap the benefits.” He shrugs.
“I was too high and too stupid to see what was happening. It wasn’t until I tried to get out that I finally understood.”
He sits back down and his expression darkens. I swallow the lump forming in my throat. I know whatever is about to come next is difficult for him to talk about.
“You have to understand, addiction takes you over. Eventually, the person you once were disappears, and what’s left behind is nothing but a shell. I stopped caring about anything. Anyone. I just wanted to get fucked up. I forgot about Jax. I forgot about my reason for moving with my mom in the first place. I was supposed to be there for my brother and keep my mom out of trouble. I failed. I completely fucking failed and it was Jax that paid the price.
“He begged me to clean up. He begged me to quit. He begged to have his brother back because he had nobody left. And I ignored him. I didn’t give a shit about what he wanted because what I wanted was so much more important to me.
“It was too much. He tried to kill himself, Briar. He couldn’t deal and he took a razor to his wrist, and he cut himself open.”
I suck in a harsh breath as my eyes fill with tears. I think about the Band-Aids I had noticed covering Jaxon’s wrist while we had ice cream at Fancy’s. I wonder if this was recent or if he was covering the scar.
“Mom found him and she lost it. It was the first time she showed she cared in a really long time. When I visited him in the hospital, saw him lying in the bed, pale and still, something inside of me broke. I knew I had to get out. I had to get us all out.
“My debt had been clean for a while, so I went to Delphi and I told him I was through. My family needed me.
“He laughed. The bastard looked me in the eyes and he fucking laughed. But he did offer me another deal. If my mom came to him—asked him herself—then he’d let me go. I didn’t tell her. Not right away. I kept it to myself and kept working for him. Word got back to Mom somehow and she confronted me. I was so pissed at her by that point—I told her if she cared about Jax and me at all she’d do it.”
I close my eyes, trying to keep the tears in. Poor Jax. Poor Shelby. Poor Benji. He doesn’t need to tell me what Delphi wanted from his mom. I get it.
“And she did, Bri. She did it,” he says flatly. “She went to him that night. And I don’t know if it was a last ‘fuck you’ or what, but when she left his bed, she took five hundred thousand dollars worth of his drugs with her.”
30
Benji
Briar shoves another cracker at me. I take it, already growing sick of the dry, salty taste. It isn’t making me want to puke, but I have zero appetite right now.
“Eat,” she says firmly, leaving no room for argument. It makes me smile as I bite the stale cracker in half.
“Have you eaten anything?” I’m eager to change the subject, if only for a moment.
“There’s a convenience store across the street well-stocked with Pop-Tarts. Yes, I’ve eaten.”
“You’ve been eating Pop-Tarts without me?” Nostalgia hits hard as I recall our daily-shared breakfasts. Briar presses her lips together as her eyebrows lift slightly, guilt written all over her face. “What flavor?” I demand.
“Brown sugar and cinnamon,” she says innocently.
I throw the other half of the cracker at her. “Give me a cinnamon Pop-Tart, woman. I can’t believe you’ve got me eating crusty convenience store crackers while you stash the good shit.” She laughs softly as she brushes the salty crumbs from her shirt. I missed that sound so damn much. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, my smile fades. Because I don’t really know her anymore, and she definitely has no clue who I’ve become.
Briar frowns, her eyes meeting mine. “I’m still me.”
She drops her gaze, scooping up a bag and rummages through it. I can’t find a good response. Hell, I can’t find any words at all. None. They all seem wrong somehow.
“Tell me about Megan.” She places the foiled package in my hand and leans back on her palms. The movement pulls her shirt tight against her chest, highlighting her curves, and the last thing I want to do right now is talk about my ex-girlfriend.
My dead ex-girlfriend.
I rub the back of my neck and look away. And then I notice that even though my hands are still shaking, the trembling isn’t quite as bad today. I’ve gone over 72 hours without using. As soon as the thought occurs to me, the need that had been lying quietly in wait, lurking in the shadows, raises up and rears its ugly head.
Fuck.
A cold sweat beads across my forehead. I fist the blanket into my hand, squeezing tightly. Briar slides her fingers over my other hand where I’m unknowingly destroying my breakfast. I wish her touch was enough to force the monster back. I wish it was that easy.
“Do you remember the day I slipped and fell into the water at the falls?”
It takes me a second to comprehend what she’s saying. Not because I forgot, but because I’m wholly focused on my unyielding craving. “Yes,” I rasp.
She pries the crumbled Pop-Tarts out of my hand before opening a new pack. She breaks a piece off, and I think she’s going to actually try to feed me, but she thinks better of it and places it into my hand.
“I fell in and you didn’t even think. You jumped in after me with no regard for yourself.” Her thumb slides across the palm of her opposite hand. “I have a constant reminder of who you are engraved into my skin.” She holds her hand out, showing me the small jagged scar there. “You’re strong, Benji. You can do this. And if you start to slip, I’ll jump in after you.”
I want to tell her that she’s engraved in my skin as well—my reminder of what I lost. But her pledge has me reeling, once again, unable to find my words.
“Maybe you should sleep.”
“No.” I’ve slept enough. Missed enough. Lost enough. “You asked about Megan…she was one of Delphi’s girls. She danced in his club and he took care of her.” I pause, inhaling a shuddering breath. I loathe the idea of telling Briar this part, letting her see this part of me, but I need to tell her. I need to get it all out, lay it all on the table for her.
“Part of my job was to supply his girlfriends with whatever they wanted. When he wouldn’t let me out, I began to take my job description too literally. Megan never hid her
feelings. Every time I showed up, she would…insist on paying me…in dances. And sometimes in other ways.” I can’t look at Briar any longer because I feel like an asshole. I know she’s not innocent, I know she also moved on with Flynn, but to describe this shit—I feel so low. And if I ever had to hear about her and Flynn? I think I’d bust my fucking eardrums.
“I let her because I was a high piece of shit that just didn’t care about anything. When Delphi fucked me over, I fucked him over the only way I knew how—by fucking his girlfriend. She was my lame-ass attempt at revenge. We ‘dated’ behind his back for a few months and I smiled to his face, knowing I had taken something from him. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.
“After mom died, I wanted real vengeance. Megan knew shit. Names. Plans. She had enough information on Delphi that, if put into the right hands, could end him.
“I used her. I knew Megan cared about me—and I used it to get what I wanted. Now she’s dead, because of me, and I don’t know what the fuck to do anymore.”
31
Briar
I need a break. I can’t hear anymore right now. My emotions are at war. Common sense battling with morality. I want to take Benji’s side in this. I do. I want to understand. But I’m so torn.
“I need some air,” I murmur as I slip off the bed and yank the door open, letting it shut behind me. My hands grip the railing so tightly my fingers turn white.
I didn’t expect Benji to be a monk while he was gone. Nobody’s perfect. But the image of him taking lap dances and sexual favors from strippers in the form of drug payments makes me want to cry. And the fact that he slept with Megan—not because he loved her—but for revenge… I think I might be able to handle it better if he at least cared about her.
I can’t stop my mind from spinning out of control. Jax. God. Jax tried to kill himself.
I stare out at the empty parking lot. My eyes trail the cracks in the pavement as if they can help me find the answer I’m looking for. But I’m not sure I even know the question.