16. Kade
Kade
Marney visits two pharmacies in thirty minutes and somehow, I doubt she's just really fucking jonesing for a specific brand of toothpaste.
She stays in the first one for about fifteen minutes before she comes out with nothing but her purse, and the second is all the way on the other end of town. She stays in that pharmacy twice as long and when she comes out this time, she has a white paper bag tucked under her arm.
"Like mother, like daughter," I mutter, watching her climb into the Mercedes that Todd probably chose for her.
Marney taught her how to hide, even if it was only by example. She taught her daughter how to steal doses and hit multiple pharmacies with the right timing so nobody could flag the patterns of addiction.
Marney sits in the Mercedes for a long time before she starts the engine, staring vacantly ahead like a zombie. I know that look because my aunt wore it on her face a thousand times.
My phone buzzes.
CYRUS
What's your location?
I text back my position and wait, the lighter turning between my fingers.
Click. Click.
Ten minutes later, the black sedan slides into a spot next to me.
Perfect view of where Marney's now seated in the garden patio at an Italian restaurant across the street, staring at a menu she won't actually order any food from.
But she's got a big glass of wine I'm sure she's not supposed to be drinking with those pills, let alone driving.
Cyrus gets out, adjusts his collar, and comes over to my passenger window.
I roll it down.
"She hit two pharmacies," I tell him. "Walked out of the first empty-handed. Second one, she got a bag."
"Controlled substance?" he asks.
"You know any other kind that's worth two trips across town?"
"Same prescriber?"
"How the fuck would I know that? I was in a parking lot, not reading her insurance card through binoculars.
" I flick the lighter. "But she drove fifteen minutes out of her way to get to the second one when there's a pharmacy six blocks from the house.
Which means she's running out of places where they don't know what game she's playing. "
He doesn't look surprised. "Doctor shopping," he says finally. "She's probably got a whole army of them. Ellie had at least three, from the bottles we found."
"Must be an inherited trait," I say flatly.
His mouth thins. For a second, he looks like he wants to say something else but he doesn't. "I've got her from here. Go on home, get some sleep."
"How's Ellie?" I ask against my better judgment, because I already know the answer to that. I've seen plenty of people go through withdrawal.
The answer is never good.
"She's… progressing," he says carefully.
"That bad, huh?" I give a dry laugh. "She must have had all sorts of choice words for you, wannabe doc."
"Is that why you've stayed gone?" he challenges. "Because you can't stand to hear her choice words, or because you can't stand to see her suffer?"
I roll up the window.
Tank is on the porch waiting like a fucking gargoyle when I pull in, which is never a great sign.
I stop at the bottom of the steps, and for a moment, we just look at each other. The bruises from our fight are almost gone and the one he left on my jaw has faded to a sick yellow I can still feel when I clench my teeth.
How's Marney? he signs.
"Alive and heavily medicated." I scrub a hand down my face. "Cyrus is on her, but you should probably fuck her car up when she gets home. Water in the gas tank, something so she can't leave and decides it's easier to call a cab next time she wants to go 'shopping.'"
Tank nods slowly. You've been out there three days.
"Someone had to make sure she doesn't kill herself while Ellie's out. Something tells me that would put a damper on her recovery."
You didn't eat.
"I ate."
Okay, what?
I stare at him. "Food, Tank. I ate food."
The look he gives me says he knows I'm full of shit, but we've all got bigger issues right now.
She's bad tonight, he signs, nodding toward the house. Worst one yet.
As if to punctuate his point, something shatters inside and we both whip around to stare at the house. The sound is distant and muffled by walls and doors, but it's definitely the sound of glass breaking.
Oh, she's pissed.
Good. That's easier to deal with than whatever else I expected her to be when I finally walked in here.
Jinx is in the hallway when we head upstairs, leaning against the wall outside Ellie's door with his legs stretched across the carpet and his head tipped back.
We all have dark circles, but his make him look like some '90s twink rockstar, which is fucking annoying.
He's wearing the same clothes he had on two days ago, including Cyrus's stolen hoodie and a pair of joggers that are definitely fucking mine.
"The fuck, Jinx? You stole my pants?"
He looks down. "What? No." He reaches behind him to check the tag and frowns. "Uh. Maybe. The laundry situation has been kind of chaotic the past few days. You want them back?"
"Fuck no I don't want them back, just keep your hands off my shit," I mutter. "The hell was that noise?"
"She threw a lamp at me," he says casually. "Actually, I think she was aiming at the wall. She was never great at playing catch."
Another crash from inside the room. Sounds like a heavier object this time. The bedside table, maybe.
"How long has this been going on?"
"This round? Forty minutes. Before that, she slept for two hours, woke up shaking, puked, and then transitioned directly into her feminine rage arc.
It was pretty seamless, no intermission or anything.
" His laugh is exhausted. "She's got incredible stamina for someone running on nothing but crackers and diazepam. "
"When's her next dose?" I ask, glancing at my watch.
"Three hours," he says with a yawn.
"Go to bed, Jinx."
"Kade, I'm fine."
"That wasn't a fucking suggestion."
His mouth opens to argue, but my face makes him think better of it, evidently. Maybe the fact that I haven't slept in three days either, but that's not too unusual for me. I've always been an insomniac. Usually night two is when I set things on fire but there's nothing left to burn right now.
He stands slowly, brushing off the back of his stolen joggers, and looks forlornly at the door.
"She's scared, Kade," he says quietly. "Under all the… screaming and property damage, she's fucking terrified."
"I know that." And I do. I'm scared, too, even if I'd never admit it to any of them. Not even Tank. Then again, I don't have to say it with him.
"I'm just saying, don't make it worse." He lowers his voice even more. "Please."
"Go the fuck to bed, Jinx." I pat his shoulder on my way to the door and he sighs, but he leaves. I hear footsteps in the hall, a brief pause, then his door shutting.
I press my finger against the pad outside Ellie's room and open it.
The room is a disaster. The lamp is in pieces by the far wall, its shade crumpled and bent.
One of the pictures from the Polaroid wall is in pieces, and the bedside table is on its side, the drawer hanging open and the handle partially ripped off, somehow.
There are pink and white pillows scattered everywhere, some defluffed, and the sheets are half off the bed.
And Ellie is in the center of this zone of destruction, standing barefoot on the bare mattress in Tank's sweat-soaked t-shirt, her hair a wild halo of blonde and pink. Her fists are clenched at her sides and she's shaking so hard I can see it from the doorway.
Her eyes find mine and the rage that floods them is absolutely incandescent. I've lit a thousand fires and never seen anything burn that bright.
"Get. Out."
"No."
I slam the door shut behind me.
"I said get the fuck out of my room, Kade!"
I lean against the door, folding my arms, and watch.
She's shaking so hard her teeth are chattering between words. Her arms have red streaks like she's been raking her nails up and down them. Going to have to tell Cyrus to find a straitjacket if that shit keeps up.
"Where are my pills?" she demands, and her voice cracks on the word pills.
You'd think we were denying her oxygen, but I'd bet anything this feels crueler to her right now.
"I know you still have them. Give them back and I'll—I'll do anything you want.
Whatever you want, Kade." Her voice gets low and sultry.
"I'll be good. I'll… the contract, I'll do everything, I won't argue. "
My stomach churns.
Fuck the fucking contract.
I have wanted Ellie Riggs for longer than I cared to admit, and more intensely than I have ever wanted anything at all, but there's nothing appealing about what she's offering me now because it's not her offering it.
"No."
"Please?" she chokes out, stepping off the mattress.
She stumbles and catches herself on the bed frame.
"Please, Kade, I just need one. Half of one, even.
I'll do whatever you want, I'll get on my knees and I'll…
you wanted me broken, right? Here I am, fucking broken!
" She throws her arms out. "Congratufuckinglations. You fucking win. Now give them back."
Oh, so we've reached the bargaining phase. The doctor mentioned this, and Cyrus warned us too. Said it would come between the vomiting and the real crash, a window where she'd promise the moon and the sun and everything in between.
"Is this what you wanted, Kade?" She's crying now, and they're actual tears rather than the crocodile tears of an addict trying to con her way into another fix.
That's more compelling than anything else has been, but not enough to give her the gun she shoots herself with.
"Take it. Take whatever you want, just give me the fucking pills. "
I cross the room and catch her wrists. Both of them, one in each hand, gentle enough not to bruise but firm enough that she can't get free or claw at herself anymore.
She goes feral before I can say a word.
The scream that comes out of her is barely even human.
She thrashes against my grip, twisting, kicking, trying to bite me, and I hold tighter.
She gets a knee into my inner thigh hard enough to make my leg buckle, and we both go down.
I control the fall, onto the mattress, my hand cupped behind her head so she doesn't hit it on the headboard.
I wrap myself around her from behind, arms pinning hers to her chest, legs tangling with hers to stop the kicking, my chin hooked over her shoulder so she can't fucking headbutt my teeth out.
She writhes and screams and when she realizes the writhing alone doesn't do anything to shake my grip, she calls me every name she can think of and some I'm pretty sure she invents on the spot.
Her body burns against mine like she's running a fever and the tremors rack through her hard enough that I feel them in my own bones.
I hold on.
That's all there is.
I hold on while she fights me with everything her body has left, which isn't much, but Ellie has always punched above her weight class in every single way that matters.
The thrashing weakens. The screams eventually dissolve into sobs, ragged and sputtering, and her body goes from rigid to liquid in my arms. She sags against me, soaked through and still shaking. It's the sound she makes when she's finally given up that actually puts a crack in my armor.
"I know," I mutter into her hair. It's damp with sweat and it smells like strawberries.
Even now, even at her lowest, soaked in sweat, this ridiculous girl smells like fucking strawberries.
"I know it hurts and you can scream and you can bite me and you can punch me in the face.
You can hate me for it forever if you want to, but I am not letting a single goddamn pill past those pretty lips ever again. "
"I hate you." Her voice is gutted and she gasps in a ragged breath. There's nothing left in her but the truth now. "I hate you so fucking much."
"I know," I say, and my voice is calm and steady because she's not telling me anything I don't already know, or anything I haven't known for years.
Ever since I opened that goddamn letter.
"But here's the secret," I say next to her ear, her heart rattling against my arm.
"You'll never hate me more than I hate myself.
More than I'd hate myself if I had to watch you die from that fucking shit. "
Her fingers curl into the arm I've wrapped across her chest, nails digging in just enough to sting. She's not fighting anymore, just hurting me instinctively, but I welcome it. The physical pain is a distraction from having to listen to that break in her voice.
"You can hate me all you want, Ellie." I pet her hair because it's the only language left between us that isn't a weapon and she shakes a little less when I do it. "You can hate me until it's the only thing you feel. It doesn't change anything."
A sob shudders through her. Then another one, quieter this time.
"I'm not letting you go again," I tell her, and I mean it more than anything I've said since I was fifteen and swore I'd burn the world down for a girl with pink streaks in her hair. "Not to Todd and not to those fucking pills."
Her breathing hitches, and eventually evens out. A fire burning itself out quickly.
And I keep holding on because that's the only thing I've ever known how to do.