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Prologue
Rhys
The music was pounding sohard that the walls shook when Rhys put the palm of his hand on them to steady himself. The techno music made his head hurt but the girl he’d met at the hotel bar with lip gloss that tasted of raspberries had promised him a wild night and he couldn’t stay cooped up in the hotel room all night.
It was suffocating to be around all the happy couples. Usually, Luna would be all for hitting a party with him but since she and the tattoo artist had hooked up, Luna was more about her boy and less about the party lifestyle. Jameson was in domestic bliss with Sinéad, and Declan...
Well, the less said about that the better.
Rhys fumbled his way to the kitchen, snagging another beer even though he knew he was three beers past his limit. He needed to block out some of the shit in his head, and just feel numb, forgetting all the shit he couldn’t seem to get passed.
Why are you such a colossal fuck up?
Putting the bottle to his lips, Rhys drained half, felt his stomach roll, and had to shut his eyes to stop the room from spinning.
Jesus Christ, he just wanted to ache in his chest to subside.
“Hey, babe, you look like you could use a little pick me up.”
Rhys opened his eyes to see raspberry lip-gloss girl in front of him, dressed only in jeans and a red lace bra. She smiled at him, then trailed fingers down the slope of her breast before she pulled a clear plastic bag with white power in it. He’d been to enough parties to know cocaine when he saw it but he’d never dabbled in drugs.
His brain was already all kinds of fucked up and adding drugs wouldn’t help.
Rhys let the girl drag him toward the living room. There was a blonde girl lying on the coffee table, naked from the waist up, and some varsity-looking jock snorting coke off her tits before yanking her up and grinding against her up against the nearest wall.
Raspberry lip-gloss unclasped her bra, her breasts spilling out, and then she was laying down on the coffee table, looking up at him. Opening the plastic bag, she poured a line of cocaine along the swell of one of her breasts and crooked a finger at him.
There was no way Rhys was in any condition to be making sound decisions and he took a step back, preparing to just leave this goddamn house in some Manchester housing estate.
Ya, great idea, genius. Head back to the hotel where your best friend is banging your sister.
Before Rhys could stop himself, he was down on his knees, lowering his face to this girl’s flesh and inhaling the powder. His mind felt like it was being split open, then the girl rubbed some cocaine on her lips and got up to kiss him.
He felt euphoric, weightless. Exactly what he’d been wanting to feel for the longest time. There were lips and hands and lots of touching, as the ache in his chest dissipated. Suddenly the music was the best thing he’d ever heard in his life.
Climbing to the back of the living room couch Rhys whooped and danced, throwing off his leather jacket and feeling free. His head was so fogged that he couldn’t hear his own thoughts but it was like emerging from the water and being cleansed.
Then, Rhys was hit with a wave of dizziness, lost his footing, and fell backwards with so much force that he went right through the window, glass smashing around him, and when he landed, it was on a bed of concrete and glass, his arms and face stinging.
Rhys barely heard the screams coming from the house as he tried to sit up but just couldn’t muster the strength to do it. Instead, Rhys looked up at the opaque sky and laughed at the way his skin burned from the cuts of glass and when he heard the wail of a siren, Rhys closed his eyes and welcomed the darkness.
ChapterOne
Rhys
Thirty Five DaysLater
Rhys kept his eyes firmly on the scenery that blurred by as the car headed back home. It was bad enough that the band mandated he go to a ‘retreat’ to deal with his mental health, but Rhys had known that everyone was worried he was an addict. In truth, he’d been an absolute idiot and fallen through a window after doing drugs for the first time ever.
When he’d woken in the hospital the next morning, he wasn’t surprised his sister, and his band manager Andi were standing at the foot of the bed, his best friend and lead singer of their band Heartache Melody sitting a little closer to Rhys, his arms folded across his chest and his eyes closed like he was sleeping.
Rhys had reached out, his mouth dry as all hell, knocked over the jug of water and alerted the other two he was awake. Andi glared at him with an achingly familiar expression, like she was seething with anger, but her eyes were red from crying.
“You’re a fucking total idiot, you know that right?”
Rhys rubbed his temple, then glanced down at the vast array of cuts on his arms. It wasn’t pretty. Pulling himself up in the bed, Rhys had realized that he’d also gotten a little slashed on his torso. There was a bandage over a patch of flesh just under his ribs and when he touched it, pain made him curse.
“You had a shard of glass embedded that they had to surgically remove. You were so off your head that you didn’t even realize it was stuck in you. What the hell were you thinking, Rhys?”
