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2
Isat on the balcony of my apartment, listening to the horns blow and tires screech on the asphalt below me. Sirens reached my ears, but the sounds were so normal to me that I barely noticed them anymore.
Three days had passed since I had buried my best friend, since I had watched her get lowered into the ground, never to be seen again.
I sighed when my doorbell rang, cursing whatever asshole decided to disturb me. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with anyone. I wanted to be left alone to wallow in my misery, to question the universe about why this shit kept happening.
Maybe I was just always destined to be a walking tragedy.
When I slung open my front door, I wanted to slam it back shut again. Drake Rollins—Lacie’s ex-boyfriend—was standing on the other side of my door.
He looked rough. His lip was split open, and his eye was beginning to swell. I hated that I could still find him even the slightest bit attractive after what he had done to my best friend, and I was angry that I didn’t have something on me to make him feel the same pain she had before she had died.
Her death was all his fault.
“What the fuck do you want?” I snarled at him as I clenched the door frame in my hand.
He ran a hand down his face, blowing out a harsh breath. “Lacie—do you know where she is? Have you heard from her?” he asked, his voice filled with worry.
Was he fucking serious right now? He was really trying to play this card like he wasn’t guilty as sin for her death?
I wasn’t stupid, and I sure as fuck wasn’t naïve anymore.
“What?!” I screeched at him. He frowned at me, but I was so fucking angry—so furious. “You have the audacity to stand here and ask me that after what the fuck you did to her?” I snarled. “Do not stand in front of me and try to claim to be the innocent one.”
He looked as if I had slapped him. “Do what?” he demanded. He stepped towards me threateningly, his fists clenched at his sides as his breathing picked up slightly from his anger. My muscles instantly tensed, sensing a threat from him. “What the fuck do you mean something happened to her?” he snarled as he crowded my space.
I stumbled backward, panic clawing at my throat. My heart pounded erratically in my chest, and I felt like throwing up and passing out at the same time.
Drake Rollins was fucking intimidating when he wanted to be.
He cursed and stopped moving forward, linking his hands together behind his head as he glared up at my ceiling. “I’m not going to hurt you, Hayles,” he said, using the old nickname he used to have for me. I didn’t want him to call me that—not after what he had done to her. “Breathe and calm down. I need to know what happened to Lacie.”
I didn’t know what game he was playing at, and it was making me all the more nervous to have him in my apartment.
I turned away from him, cursing myself for still feeling so shaken years after leaving the one man who had instilled so much fear in me. The dumbest things made me panic, and apparently so did Drake Rollins.
Damien may have loved me, but he always had a fucked-up way of showing it.
I grabbed a bottle of water out of my pantry and untwisted the cap, downing the bottle in one go. I tossed it into the trash can once I was done and turned to face Drake who was looking at a picture of me and Lacie on my wall near my front door.
“I tried to protect her,” Drake admitted softly when he realized he had my attention again. “I really did. Lacie got caught up in the wrong shit—did it behind my back until I finally realized that she was doing it without me knowing. Cocaine, meth—fucking hell, even heroin,” he grumbled. My eyes widened in shock. I had figured as much, but she had never been open about what she was doing. I just tried to support her the best that I could.
“I told her the people I fucked with were dangerous, told her not to get caught up with them, that as long as she stayed near me and never interacted with them, then she would be fine, but she bought coke from him, then meth, then heroin.”
He blew out a harsh breath and turned to face me, a troubled look settling over his features. “I was trying my damnest to get her to stop, even told her she needed to come back to you—that you could help her.” I swallowed hard, beginning to realize that Drake wasn’t the bad guy in this situation. “She took off one night while I was dealing with some shit. I came back, and she was gone—all of her shit packed up. I’ve been trying to find her since, hoping I could get to her before they did for all the money that she owed them.”
I felt a tear run down my cheek, and my bottom lip trembled as I desperately tried to hold in the flood gate of tears I had managed to hold in all day. “Drake, you were too late,” I whispered. He shook his head, not wanting to believe me, but a sob ripped out of my throat. “I buried her three days ago,” I sobbed.
He rushed over to me, gripping my shoulders, kneeling so he was eye level with me as I fell apart. “No. No; you’re pulling my fucking leg right now,” he whispered brokenly.
I shook my head at him. “Drake, they shot her. She died at the hospital. They couldn’t save her.”
He drew me into his arms, holding me for his comfort as much as for my own, I imagined. “How did you know?” he asked me. “She disappeared from the Earth, it seemed like.”
“She came to me, Drake,” I told him. “She showed up at my front door a few months ago. She was begging me for help, and she was black and blue, strung out on drugs.” I stepped back from him, swiping at my cheeks, laughing at myself a little for my stupidity. “She never talked about her condition to me, so I assumed you had hurt her.” Drake shot me a dark look that had me swallowing nervously. “I never imagined someone else could have hurt her.”
Drake glared at me. “For you to assume that I would have ever hurt her is fucking stupid, Hayles, and you know it.” I didn’t miss that he called me Hayles again—his old nickname for me back when me, Lacie, and he all used to hang out together. “I was in love with Lacie, and I would have protected her if I had known what the fuck she was doing to herself,” he told me.
