Chapter 4
Tracy
The bottle of pills sits on my bathroom counter, taunting me, tempting me, luring me into the reprieve I can only find from it lately.
The decisions of the past five years play through my mind like a movie. Every mistake. Every miscalculation. Every loss. Every time I fucked up weighing on my chest, feeling like it’s compressing my lungs until they’re going to burst.
The tingling starts. First in my fingers, then up through my arms and neck until it hits my face. My heartbeat accelerates and my breathing becomes shallow.
I reach for the pills, opening the bottle and tossing a few into my mouth.
No matter how hard I try, no matter what I do, I can’t block out the memories. I can’t shake the feel of Blake’s body. Can’t bury the regret of letting my best friend walk out of my life and into her own horrors.
Twice.
Twice I’ve failed Riley, and she was the one who suffered because of it. Suffered because I wasn’t strong enough to tell her to stay.
And even worse…
No.
No. I can’t let my mind go there. Can’t let my mind go to the biggest fuck up of all. The one that would tear apart my life and rip the man I love away from me. The one that I can never take back. The one that left a crater sized hole in my chest that no amount of pills can fill.
I reach for the bottle again, throwing back another pill before heading to my bed and praying that I’ll pass out before the past can devour me whole.
But the pills never work fast enough.
They’re never quite strong enough.
And those memories—those regrets—they creep up like shadows following my every move. My every thought. My every waking moment.
They’re never enough to make me forget the past and where it all went wrong. To make me forget exactly why Blake and I can never be together.