Page 34 of Never To Suffer (The Hollywoodland #4)

I dig the heel of my palms into my eyes, pushing harder until I feel the tears. What the hell was I thinking coming here? I can’t be trusted; I can’t be left alone. I’m a child no one wants in a world that makes it too easy to get what I need, even though it could kill me.

My brain hammers against my skull. I’m soaked with sweat, and I’m shivering. I’m in detox hell and I haven’t taken anything.

“Fuck. Fuuuck.”

Thinking about it makes my stomach knot up, twisting the booze and the beer into a monster attacking me from the inside. Brain. Stomach. Brain. Stomach. Getting jumped would feel better. I’m gonna be sick.

“Sky?”

I don’t move because I don’t think she’s real.

I’ve passed out behind some fucking gas station somewhere, and Marc will get a call in the morning that the cops found my body.

Maybe I’m dying right now and that’s why I hear her voice.

I bought the drugs, took too many, and now I’m on my last big, bad trip.

“Skylar, please look at me?” She holds my face in her warm hands, but I don’t look at her. I can’t.

She pulls me up off the ground with Connor’s help.

I let them lead me across the parking lot to his van.

Connor makes her promise I won’t throw up, and if I do, she’s cleaning it.

They get me back to the hotel room and onto the bed.

There’s a vague sense of Dani taking off my shoes and jacket before washing my face with a cold washcloth.

“Okay, lay down. We’ll get your pants off later after you sleep some of this off.”

“You should go,” I mumble. “It was all bullshit, everything.”

“Don’t say that.” She walks into the bathroom, the pipes rattle when she turns the shower on, and a few minutes later, steam flowing out the doorway and into the bedroom. “Come on. If you’re not going to sleep, maybe this will help.”

“I should have told you.”

“Told me what?”

“The drugs. Rehab. How much your voice—your music—healed me when I needed it most.” I turn, taking her face in my hands and staring deep into eyes I wish I could crawl into and die.

“Familiar and haunting in a perfect storm, colliding inside my soul and demanding I keep going. Every note and every word begged me not to give up, not to give in to the temptation of taking the easy way. Even tonight, the demons nipping at my heels couldn’t compete with the thought of losing you. You saved me, Dani. So many times.”

Her weak smile and glistening eyes tell me how messed up I am. I shouldn’t have stayed.

“ You made me fight, you made me hold on, and you made me want to feel the music again. I want to make it up to you, to repay you for breathing life into my worthless soul again. But I messed up.”

“Jesus, you should be writing lyrics, but Skylar?—”

“They’d only ever be about you.” Every breath shakes like an earthquake, but it’s my entire body, not only my breathing. “Beetle, the truth… shit, I wanted to grab you on stage tonight and bend you over an amp. I didn’t care who watched or what they thought. I wanted to claim you, make you mine.”

“Okay, that’s hot, but what happened? Because that’s not enough to make you run away.”

“The show…it was too much, too fast. The power, the exhilaration, the energy. I came down too hard. I don’t know if I’m ready.

Ready for old, familiar streets and smells, for faces I’ve tried to block out, for you to…

to...” I bite back the emotion, but it won’t last. I can’t go through losing someone else.

“I wanted the high again. And I’m scared I wanted it too much. ”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“No, you don’t understand. I’m scared I’ll screw up again and you’ll…I’ll be alone again.” The itch to purge the lies and hide behind them tries to take over, but I’ve learned how to fight that. She needs the truth. “I can’t handle this. I can’t do it, Dani. It’s too fucking hard.”

“Your sponsor said you’d probably say that.

He also said I should get on your ass about not telling me what to look out for.

But we’re going to talk to him tomorrow morning and come up with a plan.

You need a way to come down slower and smoother after the show.

Drowning in shots won’t work and neither will running away and scaring the ever-loving shit out of me. ”

“I’m so sorry,” I sob, and she holds me to her. It’s familiar and terrifying. “I’m scared, Dani. I’m so fucking scared to lose you, like I lost Steve. I’m scared I’ll fail you and I?—”

“Stop. Right now.” She lifts my head, and I’m met with the stern features of her beautiful face.

“This ends here and now. This marks the last time you do this shit to yourself. Now, get it into your incredible thick yet attractive head that you are not in this alone. You can’t win alone.

Did you listen to nothing in rehab? Where they show you that it takes a support system, not one idiot ready to make a martyr of himself.

Come on, you need a shower. It will help you relax. ”

She pulls me up and leads me to the bathroom.

When I try to handle my own clothes, she swats my hands away and cusses at me under her breath.

I stand naked before her, and she takes my hands one at a time and kisses each of my knuckles before she opens the door of the shower.

The water shocks my system, but only momentarily.

A moment later, I’m holding out a hand and pulling her in with me.

She doesn’t care that her clothes are getting wet.

I need to hold her, to have her against me.

“It’s okay if you still love him. Steve, I mean,” she says as she brushes out my hair. “You know that, right?”

“I did. Until I didn’t. The accident changed my perspective.

No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t ever get what we had back.

The damage couldn’t be fixed, and we were wallpapering over the holes left in our hearts.

We drifted into a void and when I could finally see light again, I didn’t have Steve anymore, only your voice to guide me. ”

“Seriously, I need you to start writing this shit down.”

“You don’t have to do this, Dani. You didn’t ask for this.”

“Okay, my giant emo mountain, let’s get you into bed.

You’re cut off until you find a sponsor and some meetings when we’re home.

” She climbs off the bed and stands in front of me.

For the first time since the bar, I stare into her big eyes.

“Skylar, I’ve watched people do stupid shit when they crave something that could kill them.

You had that look in your eye at the bar, and we need to find the right plan of action.

No more alcohol, though, or weed. Nothing until we have a plan. Okay?”

Her kiss takes my breath and strips me of my soul, but she replenishes what she takes with fragments of her own being, draining me and filling me at the same time.

I break the kiss this time, fighting myself to pull away far enough to see her eyes again.

Her fingers play in the days old beard, her touch awakening the volcano in my core, filling my veins with lava and the unquenchable thirst for her.

I understand now that she’ll never let me go, never give up on me the way I give up on myself. My beautiful siren.