Page 15 of One Night in Glasgow (The Scottish Billionaires #15)
CHAPTER NINE
BETH
The next day, I walked into the secret underground party house feeling numb. It was a mercy. I’d spent the morning ignoring frantic texts from Kinna, the hollow feeling in my gut a constant, gnawing presence. Colter was my only mission today. Oblivion was the destination.
The house was quieter than I expected for a weekday afternoon, but the familiar scent of stale beer, weed, and regret still clung to the air.
A few stragglers from the previous night’s party were passed out on the ratty couches.
I pushed past a sticky patch on the floor, my eyes scanning the dim room.
“Colter?” I called out, my voice sounding rough. “Anyone seen Colter?”
A guy with a scraggly beard and vacant eyes looked up from his phone. “Haven’t seen him today, man.”
A flicker of irritation went through me. Of course, he was late. I texted him: Where the hell are you?
No reply .
I spotted a girl I vaguely recognized, Dina, maybe, coming down the stairs, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She stopped dead when she saw me, her face going pale.
“Hey,” I said, my patience wearing thin. “Have you seen Colter? He was supposed to meet me here.”
Her eyes widened, filling with a horror that made my blood run cold. “Oh, God. You… you haven’t heard.”
“Heard what?” I snapped, my voice sharp.
She took a shaky step towards me, her hands twisting together. “Beth, it’s… it’s Colter. They found him this morning. In his car, just around the corner.” Her voice broke. “He’s dead. The paramedics, they think… they said it was fentanyl.”
The world dissolved into a silent, roaring static. Fentanyl. The word was a gunshot in the quiet room. Not cocaine. Not the “top-shelf” payment he was so proud of. Fentanyl.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, shaking my head, the denial a useless reflex. “No, we were supposed to… I just talked to him yesterday. We had a plan.”
Dina was crying now. “I know. It’s so fucked up. Someone must have given him a hot shot. Or maybe… maybe he never even knew what he was taking.”
The air rushed out of my lungs. The “business” he was doing last night. The “lookout work.” The “payment.” It all coalesced into a single, horrifying image. He’d been paid with his own death sentence. And he’d been about to share it with me today.
“Are you okay?” Dina asked, reaching for my arm.
I jerked away, stumbling backward until I hit the wall, sliding down to the sticky floor.
I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t anything. The numbness I’d been cherishing was gone, replaced by a black, terrifying void.
That could have been me. If he hadn’t tried out the product before we met, we could both be dead right now.
I scrambled up and fled, bursting out of the house and into the too-bright afternoon, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. I leaned against a graffitied wall, my body shaking violently as the reality crashed over me. Colter was gone. And I had almost gone with him.
I felt like I was about to be sick. Colter, dead? It didn’t seem real. He was only thirty-one, for fuck’s sake. And so full of life, always ready with a joke or a wild story. How could he just be... gone?
I leaned against the railing, my mind racing. A small voice in the back of my head whispered that this could have been me. That I was on the same path, spiraling out of control. But I pushed it away. I wasn’t Colter. I could handle it. I always had.
I moved on autopilot, heading back inside to the makeshift bar. “Vodka,” I said to the guy playing bartender. “Double.”
As I waited for my drink, I took out my phone. The screen was lit up with notifications. Kinna just didn’t get it. She wasn’t from this crowd where nobody gave a damn about judging you.
Kinna’s latest message flashed on the screen: “Beth, please call me. I’m worried about you. Are you okay?”
A twinge of guilt pricked me, but I didn’t want to deal with Kinna’s concerns right now. Not when everything was falling apart.
The bartender slid my drink across the counter. I knocked it back in one go, relishing the burn as I drank it. “Another,” I said, pushing the empty red cup back towards him.
As the night wore on, I lost myself in the rhythm of the party.
Drink, dance, repeat. It was easier than thinking about what happened to Colter, or my parents, or the mess I’d made of my life and probably Sean’s life, too.
I was a real piece of shit, but here, in the pulsing center of the party, I could pretend that none of it mattered.
Then as I stumbled to the bathroom, the world spinning, reality came crashing back when I caught sight of myself, eyes glassy and unfocused. For a heartbeat, I paused.
“What the fuck are you doing, Beth?” I whispered to myself. But the girl in the mirror had no answers for me.
I splashed some water on my face, trying to clear my head. As I reached for a towel, two girls squeezed into the small bathroom.
“Did you hear about Colter?” one of them said. “Such a waste. He was so good looking.”
“I know, right?” the other replied. “But like, what’d he expect? You play with fire, you get burned.”
Their callous words stung. Is that how people would talk about me if I ended up like Colter? Just a rich kid who partied too hard, not worth more than a moment’s gossip?
I stumbled out of the bathroom, suddenly feeling claustrophobic.
The music that had seemed so inviting earlier now grated on my nerves.
The press of bodies around me felt suffocating.
I needed to get out of here. But where could I go?
Home to my parents and their disappointment?
Back to my empty flat with nothing but my own thoughts for company?
As I pushed my way towards the exit, my phone vibrated in my pocket.
Probably Kinna again. For a second, I considered answering.
Considered letting someone in, admitting that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t as okay as I pretended to be.
But then I remembered the look on Mrs. Campbell’s face when she asked me to leave the charity.
The headlines screaming about my latest scandal.
The way Sean had looked at me in that garden, right before everything fell apart .
No, I wasn’t ready to deal with any of that right now. I couldn’t face their concern or their judgment or their pity. It was easier to keep running, to lose myself in the noise and the chaos.
I spotted a guy I vaguely recognized from the club scene. He caught my eye and grinned, holding up a small baggie filled with white powder. “Want some?” he mouthed, gesturing for me to join him.
Colter’s face flashed in my mind, the word fentanyl screaming loud. My stomach churned. “No,” I mouthed back, shaking my head sharply. “Not that. Not anymore.”
The guy’s grin didn’t falter. He shrugged, then reached into a different pocket, pulling out a couple of joints and a small, clear baggie with a few brightly colored gummy bears.
“No worries, darling. Got some killer weed if that’s more your speed?
Or these little fellas…” He shook the gummies.
“They’ll send you to the moon if you just wanna forget everything for a while.
Two of these with all that vodka you’ve been downing, and you won’t remember your own name. ” He winked.
Forget everything. The words resonated deep in the hollow ache where my hope used to be.
Yes. That’s exactly what I needed. To not remember my name, my mistakes, my life.
The girls’ words in the bathroom echoed: You play with fire; you get burned.
Fine. Maybe I was tired of playing it safe, tired of trying and failing.
Maybe I just wanted to feel the burn, to let it consume everything until there was nothing left.
I crossed the room to him, plastering on my best, most reckless party girl smile. “The gummies sound perfect,” I said, my voice sounding strange and distant to my own ears. “Let’s have some fun.”
As I followed him to a quieter corner of the party, I felt my phone go off again in my pocket.
But this time, I didn’t even bother to check who it was.
Whatever they had to say, it could wait.
Right now, all I wanted was to forget. To forget about Sean, about Colter, about the charity and my parents and every fucking thing that had gone wrong.
To forget about the girl I used to be, the one who thought she could change, could be better.
That girl was gone now, lost in a haze of alcohol and bad decisions.
And ya know what? I was glad to see her go.
I groaned as consciousness slowly crept back. My skull felt like it was caught in a vise, each pulse sending a fresh, sickening wave of pressure through me. The first thing I noticed was the cold, hard floor beneath me. What the fuck? I cracked open an eye, harsh sunlight stabbing my retinas.
Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself up. My stomach lurched. I was on the floor of my apartment, still in last night’s clothes, which reeked of stale booze and cigarettes.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, trying to smooth down my tangled hair.
How the hell did I get here? I tried to piece it together.
Flashes of the night came back in disjointed fragments.
The party house. The gut-wrenching news about Colter.
The burn of vodka. Popping those sickly-sweet gummies a guy gave me…
a handful, maybe? The room spinning. After that, a complete and terrifying blank.
I stumbled to my feet, swaying as the room righted itself. My purse was on the floor near the door, its contents spilled out in a messy heap. How did I get home? Walked? A taxi? My memory was a black hole, leaving me cold with a fear that went beyond a simple hangover.