CHAPTER SIXTEEN
William
I WAKE UP dying.
That's what it feels like. My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my teeth, in my skull, in the tips of my fingers that grip sheets I don't remember pulling over myself.
Sweat pours off me. Soaking through my t-shirt, pooling in the dip of my collarbone. The couch cushions beneath me are drenched. The safe house is freezing, I can feel the cold air on my arms, but my body burns from the inside out.
I try to sit up.
Bad idea.
The room lurches sideways, and my stomach heaves.
I barely get my head over the edge of the couch before I'm vomiting.
There's nothing in me. Haven't eaten since before the engagement party, before the bombs, before we ran.
But my body doesn't care. It wrings itself out anyway.
Bile and acid and the taste of copper burning up through my throat until my ribs ache from the force of it.
My hands won't stop shaking. Not the fine tremor I've gotten used to. This is something else. Full-body tremors that rattle through me like I'm plugged into an electrical current.
My teeth chatter. My jaw locks. Every muscle contracts and releases in waves I can't control.
I know what this is.
I've been through alcohol withdrawal before. Twice. Both times were bad. But this is different. This is worse.
The cocaine. I haven't used since before Frank's deal. Before the party. How long has it been? I try to count the hours, but my brain won't cooperate. The numbers slide around, refusing to line up.
Two days? Three?
However long we've been in this safe house, that's how long it's been since the last line.
And my body is making me pay for every single hour.
I manage to get upright. The room spins. Not the lazy tilt of a good drunk, but something aggressive. Hostile. Like the walls are actively trying to throw me off balance. I press my palms against my eyes and try to breathe, but even my lungs feel wrong.
Too tight. Too fast.
My heart. Jesus Christ, my heart. It hammers at a pace that can't be normal. Can't be survivable. I press my hand against my chest and feel it slamming against my palm, rapid and unsteady, skipping beats, then racing to catch up.
Twenty-seven years old, and I'm going to die on a sagging couch in the middle of nowhere because I couldn't stay clean.
Father would be disappointed.
No. Father would be unsurprised.
"You're weak, William. Always have been."
I try to stand. My legs buckle. I catch myself on the arm of the couch, knees hitting the cold floor hard enough to send pain shooting up my thighs. The vomit is right there, the sour smell hitting my nostrils, and my stomach heaves again.
Nothing comes. Just the retching. The awful, empty retching that goes on and on until I'm gasping.
I need water. I need to get to the bathroom. I need to stop the room from moving.
I need cocaine.
The thought comes unbidden and absolute. Not a want. A need. The way you need oxygen. My body knows where it is.
Bedroom. False bottom drawer.
Enough to take the edge off. Enough to make this stop. Enough to feel human again for just a few hours.
Just one line. Just enough to stop the shaking.
I start crawling toward the bedroom. My arms won't hold me properly. I make it three feet before I collapse onto my stomach, cheek pressed against cold wood, breathing like I've just run ten miles.
Everything is spinning. The whole fucking world has come loose from its axis, and I'm the only one who notices.
"William?"
The voice comes from somewhere above me. Far away. Maybe another room. Maybe another country.
"William!"
Hands. Cold hands on my face, turning my head. Light floods my vision, and I flinch away from it.
"Oh God. William, can you hear me?"
Aoife. Her voice cuts through the fog, sharp and afraid. I try to answer, but what comes out is a sound I don't recognize. Something between a groan and a whimper that I'd be ashamed of if I had the capacity for shame right now.
"You're burning up." Her palm presses against my forehead. The coolness of it is so intense I lean into it. "Your heart, I can see it. Your chest is... William, what's happening?"
"Withdrawal." The word scrapes out like broken glass.
Her hands go still on my face.
I force my eyes open. She's crouched over me, dark hair falling around her shoulders, wearing my t-shirt from last night. Her blue eyes are wide. Terrified.
She says something. I see her mouth move. But the roaring in my ears swallows it.
Bedroom. I need to get to the bedroom.
That's the only thought left. Everything else has burned away. The cocaine is in the false bottom drawer, and if I can just get to it, one line, one fucking line, the shaking will stop, and my heart will slow down, and I'll be able to breathe again.
I push her hands away. Or try to. My arms don't work right. She's saying my name, but it sounds like it's coming through water.
I start crawling.
My elbows drag across the floor. My knees scrape against the wood. Every inch is agony. The room tilts and bucks beneath me like a living thing, and I'm vomiting again, or trying to, my body heaving with nothing left to give.
The hallway. I make it to the hallway. The bedroom door is open. I can see the dresser from here. Bottom drawer. False bottom. Two thousand euros’ worth of salvation wrapped in plastic.
Almost there.
My arms give out. My face hits the floor, and the impact sends white light across my vision. I try to get up. Can't. Try again. My fingers claw at the wood, but there's no strength in them.
The dresser is six feet away. Might as well be six miles.
The edges of my vision go dark. Not slowly. Fast. Like someone pulling a curtain closed from both sides.
No. Not yet. I just need to...
Gone.
"William! William, wake up. Wake up, please. Please."
Hands on my face. Shaking me. Slapping my cheek. Not hard, but frantic. Again and again.
"Don't do this. Don't you dare do this. William!"
I come back in pieces. Sound first. Her voice, high and scared and cracking. Then sensation. The cold floor against my back. She's turned me over. My shirt is soaked through. The shaking is worse now, violent, my whole body rattling against the floorboards.
I try to open my eyes. The light is blinding.
"Oh God. Oh, thank God." Her voice breaks. "You stopped breathing. You stopped... I couldn't find a pulse for..."
She can't finish. Her hands are on my chest, my face, my neck, checking, pressing, and they're shaking as badly as mine.
I try to talk. What comes out is a groan.
"Don't move. Stay still. I need to..."
She's looking around. Frantic. Like she's searching for something that isn't there. A phone. A medic. Anything.
There's nothing. We're alone.
"Aoife." Barely a whisper.
"Shut up. Don't talk. Just breathe."
"The drawer." I roll my head toward the bedroom. My voice isn't mine. It's thin and broken, and I hate it. "Bottom...false bottom. I need..."
She follows my gaze. Looks at the dresser. Looks back at me.
And I watch her understand.
"No."
The word is quiet. But absolute.
"Please." It comes out as a rasp. "One line. That's all. One and I can...I can breathe. I can..."
"No, William."
"You don't..." I have to stop. Swallow. The effort of speaking sends my heart into another sprint. "...don't know what this is. Without it. What I'll be. Three days. Maybe four. I'll..."
I can't get the rest out. My teeth are chattering too hard. But in my head, the words keep going.
I'll see things that aren't there. I'll beg you. I'll scream at you. I'll say anything to make you give it back.
"I don't care," she says,like she heard every word I couldn't say. "I don't care what you'll be like."
"Can't do this."
"You can."
"Can't."
She leans closer. Her eyes are bright. Wet. But she doesn't blink.
"I read your journals."
The words cut through everything. Through the shaking, the pain, the desperate animal screaming in my skull. She read them. She knows. Every honest thought I've ever put on paper. Every weakness. Every confession I wrote was because the alternative was a bottle or a bag.
She knows what I am.
And she's still here. On the floor. Hands shaking. Telling me no.
"I know exactly what you can do." Her voice wavers, but she doesn't look away. "And I know what that shit is doing to you. So you can hate me for this. You can scream at me for the next four days. But I'm not letting you crawl to that drawer."
I stare at her. My body screams at me to fight. To shove her aside. To drag myself the last six feet because the cocaine is right there, right fucking there, and she's the only thing between me and it.
But my arms won't move. My legs won't move. I'm pinned to this floor by my own failing body.
And somewhere underneath the craving and the panic, there's a part of me that knows she's right.
The part that wrote those journals. The part that counted days sober and felt something when the numbers got high enough.
The part I've been trying to kill for months.
I close my eyes. Stop fighting.
She takes it as permission.
I hear her stand. Hear her footsteps cross to the dresser. The scrape of the drawer. A pause as she finds the false bottom. Then another sound. The crinkle of plastic.
"No," I whisper it. "No, no, no."
Her footsteps. Down the hallway.
The bathroom door.
"Aoife. Don't."
The toilet flushing.
Something in my chest collapses. Not my heart. Something worse. The last wall between me and everything I've been hiding from.
She comes back. Crouches beside me. Drops an empty plastic bag and a rolled-up note onto the floor like they're contaminated.
"That was everything?" Her voice is steadier now. Barely.
"That was two thousand euros." My voice doesn't even sound like a voice anymore.
"Was that everything?"
"...Yes."
The toilet flushes again. Second pass. When she returns, she crouches beside me and takes my face in her hands. Her fingers are cool against my jaw.
Tears are streaming down her face. Steady and silent, dripping off her chin, landing on my chest. She doesn't wipe them. Doesn't acknowledge them. Acts like they don't exist.
"You're doing this," she says. Voice steady. Like she's already decided. "You're going through this, and I'm staying."
Another tear drops off her chin. Lands on my collarbone.
She doesn't flinch.
"You don't know what you're signing up for."
"Yeah, I do." She slides a cushion under my head, and a tear falls onto my cheek. She brushes it away with her thumb like it was sweat. Like it was nothing. "Now shut up and let me help you."