Page 39 of Dance of Devils

To numb the self-loathing and dull the sensation that my life was spinning out of control.

Eventually, I told my friends I was leaving. But instead, a few drinks in, I snuck upstairs to Mr. Nikitin’s master bathroom. He obviously wasn’t home, and desperate, semi-drunk me thought that the Bratvapakhan’sultra-luxurious marble and glass bathroom would make the perfect backdrop for some pics for my OnlyFans account.

But then I started scrolling through some of the stuff I’d posted recently on the site and actually reading the comments.

“Slut.”

“What a whore”.

“10/10 would rape.”

The spiral plunged into a nose-dive that night. It was like months of feeling like complete shit about myself as a person all distilled down to one moment where I just sort of…gave up.

Stopped caring. Stopped trying to fight the overwhelming odds against me.

I remember looking out the bathroom window with tears in my eyes and seeing my friends heading out in a group as the party wound down. I’d already told them I was going home, so they weren't abandoning me or anything, but it made me feelso fucking alonein the universe and just shone a huge light on the differences between their lives and mine.

That’s when I found Mr. Nikitin’s prescription bottle of oxycodone and took one.

Then two more. Then another three, before tucking the bottle into my pocket. I decided thatthatnight was my cue to exit. To stop fighting. I didn’t care if I lived anymore.

That was the rock-bottom lowest of the low points.

But right after that, sitting slumped in the empty porcelain claw-foot bathtub, I happened to turn and glance out the window at the pool in the back yard below where the party had been raging earlier.

…And saw someone floating in it.

Seeing what could literally be a dead body sobered me up and slapped me back into reality. I instantly rushed to the toilet and made myself throw up the pills, staggered downstairs, and hurled myself into the pool.

Somehow, I managed to drag the man to the shallow end and lug his considerable weight up the steps and out onto the decking.

That’s when I realized it wasRoman, Evelina’s older brother.

I don’t really know proper CPR, but miraculously, pounding on his chest and screaming at him to wake the fuck up brought him back to consciousness before he rolled to the side and vomited up chlorinated water and booze.

“I puked,” he’d grunted in a daze, before turning and gazing at my hoodie. “Shit, did I get you?”

“Nope, that’s all me.”

He’d grinned a lazy, haggard smile. “That kinda night, huh?”

That was when two things happened: I pulled off my hoodie to wring the water out of it, and the oxycodone bottle fell out between us. Then Roman yanked his phone out of his soaked pocket to let it dry on the pool deck: a phone that was open to…well, something interesting.

He awkwardly grabbed the phone,Iawkwardly blurted something about not knowing where the Oxy came from, and we’d looked at each other sheepishly.

We’ve been secret friends ever since, in a weird but comforting way, and we never,ever, talk about that night.

“Brook.”

Roman raises a hand as he calls my name from the back of the bar…as if I could miss his six-foot-five frame.

Everyone knows I go by Brooklyn, andhatebeing called “Brooky”. But Roman calls me “Brook”, and for some reason, I have zero problem with it.

“Hey, big guy,” I smile as I sidle up to him and give him a hug, grinning when he wraps his thick arms around me.

“How was work?”

Because of the strange way we became friends, Roman and I can pretty much tell each other anything. Okay, notanything—he doesn’t know about my current living situation, or the extent of my money issues. But he and he alone knows about The Mirage.