Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Vanna
The first thing I notice is the beeping.
Steady. Rhythmic.
The kind of sound that tells you you're still alive even when every cell in your body wishes you weren't.
I know where I am before I open my eyes.
The antiseptic smell that burns my nostrils.
The scratchy sheets that feel like sandpaper against my too-sensitive skin.
The way my arm throbs where the IV pierces my vein—a different kind of needle than the one I usually chase.
Ruby Memorial. Again.
How many times have I woken up like this? Five? Six?
I've lost count somewhere between the third overdose and the fourth, when the days started blurring together like watercolors left out in the rain.
When the faces of nurses stopped registering as individual people and became one collective expression of pity and exhaustion.
Another junkie. Another waste of resources. Another lost cause.
My eyelids feel like they weigh a thousand pounds each, but I force them open anyway.
Fluorescent lights stab into my skull, and I wince, turning my head to the side to escape their assault.
That's when I see him.
Garrett.
He's slumped in the chair beside my bed, his massive frame somehow folded into that tiny plastic seat that wasn't built for a man his size.
His leather cut is draped over the armrest, the Saint's Outlaws patch catching the harsh hospital light—a grinning skull with a halo that has always seemed more warning than blessing.
Dark stubble shadows his jaw, thicker than I've seen it in months, and the circles under his eyes are deep purple bruises that tell me he hasn't slept in days.
He's watching me.
Those eyes.
God, those eyes.
They used to look at me like I was the sun and the moon and every star in between.
Like I was something precious.
Something worth protecting.
Now they just look... tired.
Tired and sad and so fucking hopeful it makes my chest ache with a pain no drug can touch.
"Hey." His voice is gravel and sandpaper, rough from disuse.
Or maybe from all the words he's been choking back.
All the things he wants to say but won't.
"Hey." Mine is worse. Cracked and brittle, like old bones left out in the cold too long.
He doesn't ask how I'm feeling.
Doesn't ask what happened.
He already knows.
He always knows.
This dance we do—me destroying myself, him picking up the pieces—has become so routine that we don't need words anymore.
Just weighted silences and careful touches and the kind of grief that lives in the spaces between heartbeats.
"Water?" He reaches for the plastic pitcher on the bedside table, and I watch his hands—those steady mechanic's hands that have held me through a thousand nightmares, that have stroked my hair while I screamed through withdrawal, that have never once struck me no matter how much I deserve it—pour liquid into a cup like it's the most important task in the world.
I try to sit up and immediately regret it.
My whole body screams, muscles seizing, stomach rolling with a nausea that has nothing to do with the drugs leaving my system and everything to do with the damage I've done.
The room spins like a carnival ride gone wrong, and I squeeze my eyes shut until the worst of it passes.
"Easy." Garrett's hand is on my shoulder, warm and solid and real. "Take it slow."
He helps me sit up, adjusting the pillows behind me with a gentleness that makes me want to cry.
This man.
This goddamn man who should have given up on me years ago.
Who should have signed those divorce papers I threw at him during our last screaming match and found someone worthy of his devotion.
Someone who doesn't stick needles in her arm every time the world gets too loud.
Someone who can give him the family he deserves instead of an endless cycle of hospital visits and broken promises.
I take the water from him and sip, the cool liquid soothing my raw throat.
Even that small action exhausts me.
My hand trembles as I pass the cup back, and I see him notice.
He always notices everything.
"How bad?" I ask.
A muscle ticks in his jaw. "Bad."
"How bad, Garrett?"
He's quiet for a long moment, staring at his hands.
They're clean now, scrubbed pink and raw, but I can see the ghost of engine grease in the creases of his knuckles.
He was working in the garage when he got the call.
He's always working in the garage—tearing apart engines and putting them back together, finding order in machinery when everything else in his life is chaos.
It's the only thing that silences his demons, he told me once.
The only time his head goes quiet.
I wonder what sounds fill his head now.
What nightmares I've given him.
"They lost you for two minutes," he finally says, each word landing like a stone dropped into still water. "Narcan brought you back, but..." He trails off, shaking his head. "Two minutes, Vanna. Your heart stopped for two fucking minutes."
Two minutes.
One hundred and twenty seconds of nothing.
No heartbeat. No breath. No brain activity.
Just a body on a dirty mattress, slipping away while strangers stepped over me to get their next fix.
I should feel something.
Fear, maybe.
Relief that I'm still here.
Gratitude for the EMTs who shocked my heart back into rhythm.
Something.
But all I feel is numb.
Hollow.
Like someone has scooped out my insides with a rusted spoon and left nothing but the shell of who I used to be.
"I'm sorry," I whisper, and the words taste like ash.
Like every other apology I've ever offered him.
Empty. Meaningless. A reflex more than a sentiment.
"Don't." His voice is sharp, and I flinch.
He notices immediately, his expression softening into something that looks too much like heartbreak. "Don't apologize to me. Just... don't."
We sit in silence for a while.
The machines beep their steady rhythm, monitoring vital signs that almost flatlined.
Somewhere down the hall, a phone rings.
A door opens and closes.
Footsteps pass by, soft and purposeful.
Normal hospital sounds.
Normal life happening all around us while I lie here, a walking corpse who has somehow cheated death one more time.
I look down at my arms, visible beneath the thin hospital gown.
The track marks stare back at me—some fresh, angry red lines barely starting to scab, others faded to silvery scars that map years of self-destruction.
A roadmap of every bad decision.
Every moment of weakness.
Every time I chose the needle over everything else.
Over him.
The crook of my left elbow is the worst.
I've overused that vein until it collapsed, leaving behind a dark, sunken line that looks like something has died beneath my skin.
Something has.
The girl Garrett fell in love with.
The girl with the golden hair and the bright eyes and the future stretching out before her like an open road.
I killed her years ago.
Buried her in a shallow grave of heroin and broken dreams.
"Where did they find me?" I ask, even though I'm not sure I want to know.
Garrett's jaw tightens. "Sabraton. One of those houses near the old miners' housing."
A trap house. Of course. Where else would I be?
Fragments of memory start filtering back like shards of a broken mirror—each one sharp enough to cut.
The cramped room with mattresses on the floor, stained with things I don't want to identify.
The guy whose name I never learned, skeletal and hollow-eyed, cooking up the next hit over a blackened spoon.
The familiar rubber tubing tight around my bicep.
The sting of the needle.
The rush that started in my chest and spread outward like liquid fire.
And then... nothing.
Blessed, terrible nothing.
"Was there anyone else?" I ask.
"Just you." His voice is flat. Dead. The voice of a man who has learned to seal away his emotions just to survive. "Found you on a mattress in the back room. Alone."
Alone.
I almost died alone in some filthy trap house, surrounded by strangers who wouldn't have cared enough to call for help.
Who would have stepped over my cooling body on their way to the next high.
But someone called.
Someone always calls, and Garrett always comes.
Like a bloodhound following a trail of destruction.
Never giving up, no matter how hopeless the hunt.
"How did you know?" I ask.
"Anonymous tip to the clubhouse." He scrubs a hand over his face, the rasp of stubble against his palm audible in the quiet room. "Someone saw the ambulance and recognized you. Word travels fast in Morgantown."
Of course it does.
Everyone knows Bloodhound's wife.
The addict.
The cautionary tale that mothers use to scare their daughters away from drugs.
See what happens? See how far you can fall? She used to be so pretty. She used to have everything. Now look at her.
I've been falling for so long I've forgotten what solid ground feels like.
"Vanna." Garrett leans forward, elbows on his knees, those watchful eyes boring into mine with an intensity that makes me want to look away. "We need to talk about something."
Here it comes, I think. The ultimatum. The divorce papers. The final goodbye he should have given me years ago. My chest tightens, bracing for the blow.
"I found a place," he says instead.
I blink. "What?"
"A rehab facility. In the Poconos." He pulls out his phone, scrolling through something, and I catch a glimpse of photos—a building surrounded by trees, rooms that look more like hotel suites than hospital cells.
"It's supposed to be one of the best on the East Coast. Twelve-week program, inpatient, full detox support. Therapy, counseling, the whole thing."
My heart stutters in my chest. "Blood—"
"Just hear me out." He holds up a hand. "I know you've tried before.
I know the outpatient shit didn't work. The thirty-day programs, the group therapy, the NA meetings—I know none of it stuck.
But this is different. This is real. Away from here, away from Morgantown, away from all the people and places and triggers that drag you back down every time. "
Away from the trap houses.
Away from the dealers who know me by name.