Chapter 25
Chapter twenty-five
JUDE GRAVES
The moment I push through the front door, everything inside me cracks apart.
Micah is passed out on the couch, blanket half on the floor, the TV casting a faint blue glow across the room. He stirs when the door clicks shut, pushing himself upright, squinting.
“Jude?” His voice is thick with sleep. “You good, man?”
No.
Not even close.
I don’t answer. I can’t. My hands are shaking as I drop to my knees beside the coffee table, yanking the black case from beneath it. My breath comes in sharp, ragged bursts. I flip the latches open with fingers that barely cooperate.
Micah rubs at his eyes, sitting up straighter. “Hey, what happened? Why do you look—”
But the sight of the kit hits me like oxygen, and everything else drowns out.
My body reacts before my mind does.
Syringe. Lighter. Heroin.
I’m moving too fast, too desperate, but the ritual steadies me anyway. My pulse slows just from the promise of it. My brain quiets a fraction. It’s sick how the relief comes before the high ever does.
Micah’s on his feet now, worry carved deep into his face. “Dude...talk to me. You’re freaking me out.”
I ignore him. The world narrows, funnels down to a single point: the needle. My knee bounces uncontrollably as I shake out the powder, add water, and flick the lighter. The smell hisses up. My whole body leans toward it.
I’m desperate. It hurts.
“Jude,” Micah tries again, softer now. “Hey. Hey—slow down.”
I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
The burn blooms in the spoon. My breath stutters. Sweat slicks the back of my neck. I draw it up, fighting the tremor in my hands.
Micah steps closer. “Don’t—just...don’t do this right now. You’re not okay.”
“Back off,” I rasp. It barely qualifies as a voice.
He freezes.
I slide the elastic band around my arm. My skin is cold and damp. The vein rises. I grit my teeth and press the needle to it. And then—
The moment it pierces.
The moment I push the plunger...everything detonates.
Warmth floods my bloodstream like molten honey, slow and perfect, spreading through my chest, my ribs, my jaw. My muscles unlock all at once. My lungs expand with the first real breath I’ve taken all night. My head drops back against the couch with a dull thud.
Oh god.
Oh, fuck.
Yes.
The world softens. The panic dissolves. The burning under my skin snuffs out. I melt into the cushions, like I’m becoming part of them.
Micah just stands there, staring. Helpless.
The front door slams.
Micah jolts like he’s been shot. I tilt my head lazily toward the noise. Adriana storms in, hair wild, eyeliner smudged, wearing one of her tiny crop tops and that pissed-off model strut. She spots me on the couch and stops short.
“What the fuck?” she snaps, looking agitated and upset.
Micah looks between us, completely lost. “Uh, hey. I don’t know where he—”
“Where the hell were you?” Adriana cuts in, ignoring him entirely. She stalks forward, eyes sharp and mean, like I’m a misbehaving dog. “I needed you.”
Micah stiffens, then lies before I can even breathe. “He didn’t say anything to me. I don’t know where he was.”
Good.
Protective in the only way he knows how.
Adriana scoffs like she sees straight through him. Her gaze drops to the coffee table. Her mouth twists when she sees the needle, the spoon, the black case lying open.
“Damn it,” she says flatly. Her eyes rake over my slack posture, my head tipped back, the heavy drag in my limbs. Then she smirks. “Great,” she mutters. “Guess your dick's useless now.”
Micah’s jaw drops. “What the hell—”
“Well?” Her voice is venomous. “You gonna look at me? Or are you just gonna lay there like a zombie?”
I lift my eyes to her, slow and unfocused.
She folds her arms. “I needed you tonight. I drove all the way here. Nolan, he…” She doesn’t finish, but we get it.
Micah mutters, “Jesus Christ…” and scrubs a hand down his face.
But I barely hear either of them. The warmth keeps pulling me under. It’s heavy, comforting, and irresistible. Emma’s porch light flickers behind my eyelids. Her soft, worried voice echoes faintly in my head. I shut my eyes again.
Adriana huffs and kicks the coffee table hard enough to rattle it. Micah stands frozen, torn between yelling at her or sitting beside me. But I’m already drifting. Sinking...weightless. I don’t know what I hate more. The fact that this feels good, or the fact that I needed it this badly.
Either way, I’m gone.
Adriana’s voice cuts through the haze. “Micah. Leave.” She shrugs off her jacket, tossing it onto the armchair.
Micah holds his ground, brows pulled tight, eyes flicking between me and the syringe still on the table. “Adriana, he’s too high. He’s not—he physically can’t—”
“I can’t deal with life right now.” She spins on him, eyes narrowing. “Do you want to take his place then?” she snaps.
He freezes, his jaw clenching. “Fine.”
No. Not him.
I feel like I’m underwater watching all of it.
My tongue is thick. Everything in me is warm and slow and syrupy.
My limbs won’t move right. “No...no.” I let out a lazy breath, my voice slurred.
“I—I’m right here. Use me. Do whatever you want.
” I just need her to stop yelling. I need everything to stop.
I need to protect him.
Micah recoils. “Jesus, Jude,” he murmurs. His voice cracks in the middle.
Adriana lights up. A slow grin spreads across her mouth. Her green eyes are as sharp as a predator. She’s high, too, but not like me. No, her pupils aren’t just wide; they vibrate. Her jaw grinds. Meth.
Great.
It’s what we normally fuck on.
“Micah,” she snaps again. “Get out. Or watch.” She kicks off her boots, hands shaking just a little, and slides her pants down. Black underwear. Black everything. “I don’t care.”
My head sinks back into the cushion, eyelids dragging. The high keeps climbing, heat blooming up my spine, pooling in my chest, then my stomach. I’m floating. Detached…
Micah flinches. He looks at me one more time, and the pain on his face is unbearable—like he’s watching someone drown and can’t save them. “He’s taken too much, Adriana. He’s nodding.”
I try to lift my head. Try to say something that makes sense...but the heroin is mercilessly pulling me under. He sighs, running a hand through his messy hair and disappears down the hall, jaw clenched tight. As soon as he’s gone, Adriana climbs on top of me.
I can’t give. I can’t…
My pulse is a slow, lazy beat in my ears, a distant echo from another room.
The heroin is a warm, thick blanket smothering every sharp edge, softening everything into a pleasant, blurry hum.
I feel her, but it’s like watching a movie through a rain-streaked window.
The sensations are muted, filtered through layers of static.
Her grip tightens, her nails biting through the fabric of my shirt, a faint, almost pleasant pinprick of reality. My own fingers are suddenly inside her. I don’t remember moving them. They’re just...there.
I keep my eyes closed, my brain fighting to survive.
To keep me from overdosing. I almost want to cry, the poor fucking thing tries so hard.
Every nerve feels muted, yet alive in a broken, disconnected way.
The flickering light through my eyelids stabs at me, so I tuck into a safer corner of the dark, chasing the quiet.
Her breath is uneven. I feel the desperate clench of her thighs, the frantic motion in her body, and the friction of her against me. I register it—not fully, just enough that it pulses through me. She pulls my hand away.
She shifts, grinding against the seam of my denim, hands pressing down, using me for leverage, for balance. I sense it more than I understand it.
I’m here, but not here. I feel her, but I can’t reach her. I hear her, but the words don’t register. Every touch is amplified, yet distant. I nod closer to the edge of oblivion. And for a brief moment, I hope I fall into the warm darkness forever.
I don’t care to come back from this...
She presses her forehead to my neck. Her skin is fever-hot, damp with sweat. Her whisper is a fast, desperate murmur, a jumble of sounds that smear together into meaningless noise in my heroin-fogged ears. I can’t decipher it.
I can’t catch anything.
My head lolls back, heavy as stone, and the ceiling melts into white noise. Shapes bleed, swirl, dissolve. I am a satellite spinning silently in the void, drifting further from the body I inhabit.
Adriana is lost in her own world, a world of sensation I can only faintly perceive. She’s using my body like muscle memory, her movements instinctual. I am the couch. I am the thing she fucks herself on.
A high, broken moan reaches me. Her body stiffens above mine, fingers clawing into my shoulders, talons in flesh. Tremors ripple through her, violent shudders transmitted along every point where our bodies meet.
She comes. Hard. Heat seeps through the denim, a startling, damp warmth against my crotch. The tension drains from her instantly, her body collapsing forward on my chest. Face buried in the hollow of my neck, her breath is harsh against my skin.
“I’m sorry…” she whispers, so low I can barely process it. “You’re the only person who doesn’t make me want to die.”
But I am adrift, anchored only by the faintest vibration of her presence, aware in fragments, drowning in the heat and the haze, barely tethered to the world. To...
Emma.
The ache in my chest flares so sharply it shines through the high for a moment, stinging my eyes. My throat tightens. I want her. I want her so much it hurts.
But all I can do is lie here, someone else filling the space where she should be. I close my eyes, letting the high swallow me whole, and in every pulse of my veins, I feel her like a ghost I can’t touch, but can’t let go.