Page 15 of Sinful Desires (Sinful #4)

Chapter

Thirteen

“Drugs don’t really fix anything, except for everything.”

― Ashly Lorenzana

Scarlett

Where the fuck was it?

I needed it. Needed it now .

With a groan, I threw the empty Chanel purse back to the floor and stumbled to the nightstand, yanking the drawers open so fast they slipped right off the rails. I tore through them, frantic hands shaking, heart slamming so loudly it drowned out everything else.

Empty. Fucking empty. I slammed my fist on the floor, the sting barely registering.

I crawled under the bed, dragging out the red box that was supposed to be for souvenirs, but had always hidden my stash. My head smacked the bed frame, but I didn’t stop. I clawed through it, nails bending, nearly breaking, until my fingers scraped velvet. That little Cartier pouch. Salvation.

I scrambled out from under the bed, arms trembling, back against the mattress, legs sprawled on the floor. I ripped the pouch open with shaking hands.

Empty.

Nothing but dregs of white dust. I still tried to inhale it, dragging my finger along the seams and pressing it to my nose—desperate, pathetic, sucking at nothing. When it was gone, I threw it across the room, chest caving in, breath burning.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I hadn’t touched anything in weeks. Maybe months. But I needed it tonight.

Needed it, or I wasn’t sure I’d survive the fucking night.

I had known that my father would summon me because I’d refused to perform at tomorrow night’s Lazzio Christmas party. I had told him I was too tired. That someone else could do it. Any singer would do, especially if the price was high enough.

But Lucius Harper hadn’t liked that answer. Not my tone, my boundaries, or the idea that I might exist without performing for his pride.

His hand moved so fast I barely registered the slap. Only the taste of blood, the ringing, the way my face felt split in two.

For a moment, I truly thought he’d broken my nose.

What I hadn’t expected was LeRoy barging in. Seeing me like that . Seeing him like that.

I didn’t let it last though. I’d pulled LeRoy with me and left.

I didn’t have the energy to be witty or spiteful. I didn’t have the strength to stand there and take more of my father’s poisoned love wrapped in fists, kicks, and fury. I was just tired. The kind of tired that settled in your bones, that made you quieter. Slower.

Less alive.

I’d climbed to the rooftop of my building, twenty stories above the city, and stood by the pool. The wind cut through me, and I had thought about how easy it would be to fall in and let the cold water pull me under.

I didn’t want to swim. I needed silence. I needed the world to unhook its claws from my chest and give me one fucking second to breathe.

LeRoy had followed, quiet and steady, like he already knew what I was planning. Maybe he saw it in the way I walked. Maybe he’d seen enough broken people to know the signs. That when the pain doesn’t fit inside your body anymore, you start looking for ways to leave it behind.

Even if that meant leaving yourself, too.

So, he stayed. Not out of duty. Not out of pity. But because something in him had refused to let me fall alone.

And I hated him for it.

When he’d said his biggest desire was to live, a part of me shattered. How different we were.

The girl who wanted to die, and the boy who wanted to live.

His words were a burden I didn’t know how to carry. Full of light, of yearning, of promises I couldn’t even begin to understand.

So, I did what I had come to do. I dove into the pool, headfirst into the water, the cold slicing through me like glass. It stole the breath from my lungs, froze the noise in my chest.

For a second, the world went still.

I stayed under, letting the chill wrap around me like a second skin. Letting it hush everything inside me. The water blurred the edges of everything. My thoughts, my guilt?…?even him.

Silence. The kind that prevails death.

But then he came after me.

I opened my eyes and saw him. His strokes were stiff, controlled, like his body knew what to do, but wanted to be anywhere else. His jaw was locked, eyes fixed ahead, unreadable even underwater.

His hand found my waist, and before I could even blink or fight him off, he was pulling me up. My head broke through the surface and I gasped, but I couldn’t get enough air. He was too close. His face hovered inches from mine.

Too tall. Too strong. Too calm.

His jaw clenched, his whole body shaking.

There was something terrifying in his eyes, something I wasn’t ready to see. Like I’d ripped open something that should have stayed buried.

He looked at me like I had dragged him under with me, like I’d cracked him open too.

“ Putain de merde, ” he shouted, voice shredded. “Are you fucking insane ?”

My gaze drifted over his face shamelessly.

The thick lashes clung to his wet skin. His eyes, still storming, wouldn’t look away. And his mouth—pink, parted, dripping with fury and everything I didn’t deserve. It was the kind of mouth that ruined prayers. The kind you ache to taste even when you know it will undo you.

“Knew you wouldn’t let me drown,” I whispered, my breath brushing his mouth, like I wanted him to prove it with his lips or with his hands.

I hated that I couldn’t even choose when I was done with this life, that even my death wasn’t mine to control. But in his arms, for one fucking second, I forgot why I was even here. And the gates of death slammed shut for now.

For the briefest moment, his eyes flickered to my lips, and I saw the storm building in his gaze.

A hunger. A darkness.

Like he wanted to ruin me with his mouth and bury me with his hands.

I leaned in, the heat between us thickening, the space between our bodies practically crackling with it.

But then, without warning, he let go, like my touch had burned him. He pushed back, slicing through the water with a single fluid motion, not sparing me a glance. Not a word.

The second his hands left me, the cold had hit harder.

But the shame? That cut deeper.

I was useless. Couldn’t fucking kill myself. Couldn’t even survive.

Scarlett Harper. The Red Queen of nothing .

A crown of ashes. A kingdom of ruin.

Useless to the very fucking end.

I couldn’t believe I had humiliated myself tonight. Twice . First with him seeing me on the floor, like some spoiled little brat getting physically lectured by her father, then with him watching me flail around in the water, trying to drown like a pathetic idiot.

Théo LeRoy had seen my downfall headfirst, and I was fucking ashamed of it.

I got out of the pool, dripping and shaking, and made my way to my apartment quickly with only one goal: to numb it all. To forget every second of tonight.

My mind kept dragging me back to Luke. He had been right. I wasn’t strong enough for any of this on my own.

Drugs were the only strength I had.

With shaky hands, I dug my nails into my arms, scraping them deeply enough to draw blood, dragging them up and down as I rocked back and forth, sobs tearing out of me, deeper and deeper, until nothing else existed but pain.

“I hate the way I live, but I can’t stop. Selling pieces of my soul for another shot. They keep clapping while I drown, guess it’s easy to adore me when I’m going down,” I sang softly, my throat tight, the words catching as they left my lips.

The lyrics of the song that said it all. The song that held the core of my heart.

“Hate The Way I Live.”

It was the first song I’d ever written that told the truth. The truth about fame. About myself. The first time I’d let people inside. But even now, even in moments like this, it was never enough to save me from the hell I lived in.

And in the dark spiral of loneliness, craving a high and desperate to forget, if drugs and alcohol weren’t an option, I would always reach for the next best thing?… someone to fuck the emptiness out of me.

And I hated that the only name echoing in my head tonight was his.