Valeria looked at him like he was the dumbest person alive. “The Reaper.”
My head whipped toward her. “Lera,” I hissed. “Why would you say that?”
She lifted a brow and gave a pointed look. “Don’t look at me—I wasn’t the one who invited him.”
His jaw clenched, voice dripping with judgment. “You let that fucking animal put his hands on you?”
My voice cracked as I tried to hold it together. “Yes. I gave him everything, and he tore it up like trash. And no, I’m not explaining shit. I didn’t come here for judgment or sympathy. I came for a joint and a blackout. Now are you in, or are you useless?”
Ruslan muttered something under his breath, and Valeria gave one of her trademark awkward grimaces—but, thankfully, neither of them pushed the topic any further.
Lera flopped onto the floor in front of the coffee table, pulling out the weed she always kept stashed. She lit a joint, took a long drag, and passed it to me. I took it silently and sat beside her, staring straight ahead at the blank white wall, watching the faint shadows slide across it from the passing headlights outside.
Ruslan joined us a moment later—quiet, brooding.
“That new shit I was talking about,” he said after a while. “The one that turns your brain into static. Try it. You’ll forget that bastard ever touched you.”
Normally, I would’ve turned it down without a second thought. I despised that kind of high—the feeling of losing control, of watching people drift into a glassy-eyed haze, disconnected from the world and themselves. It turned my stomach, the way they looked so far gone, so out of it, like ghosts pretending to be alive.
But right now, all I wanted was numbness. To drift, unseen and untouched, like I’d already disappeared.
I swallowed once, then nodded. “Yeah. I don’t care anymore. Give it to me.”
Lera smirked. “Finally, someone’s speaking my language.”
That was it—the moment I stopped being fully there.
We ended up in Valeria’s bedroom—not by choice, but by momentum. The dim lamp cast soft, strange shadows, the bed swallowing us in fabric and limbs. The weed dulled everything, but the other stuff? It crept in like fog, slow and insidious, curling around my mind like smoke I couldn’t cough out.
My body felt warm and far away, like I was floating underwater in someone else’s skin. Sound warped, echoing like I was at the bottom of a well. Thoughts slowed to a crawl. I wasn’treally there—I was somewhere just outside of myself, watching everything happen from a distance.
Someone took my hand. Ruslan.
His fingers laced with mine. I felt the pressure faintly, like it was happening to a mannequin version of me—plastic limbs, hollow bones. It should have mattered. But nothing felt real.
He rolled to face me, his gaze locking on mine. “You know I love you,” he said softly. “I’m crazy about you.”
Love. Crazy. The words didn’t land. They drifted past, untouchable, meaningless.
“I don’t care who you were fucking,” he said, voice rough. “You could crawl in here smelling like him, and I’d still want you. I always fucking want you.”
It felt wrong. Every word. Every movement. But I couldn’t react. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even remember how.
My chest tightened, like my heart remembered how to scream—but the drug kept me pinned beneath layers of velvet weight. Heavy. Helpless.
He leaned in, breath warm and wrong, and his mouth skimmed mine before settling in a kiss I couldn’t return.
I didn’t move at all; I just lay there, frozen and unresponsive, aware of what was happening yet unable to gather the strength or clarity to stop him.
His hand cradled my jaw, thumb dragging up with a sick kind of care, fingers circling my neck like I was something breakable—or something begging to be broken. Then his lips met my throat, slow and possessive.
Something deep inside me twisted. A silent, distant scream.
No.
But it didn’t come out. My limbs were slow, my mouth dry, my brain an echo chamber. The world spun too fast and I couldn’t keep up.
Ruslan’s hand slid lower, deliberate and unhurried, as though he had all the time in the world to claim what he thought was already his.
