Chapter 37 (1/2)

I attempt to nod, but my body just won’t respond. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m screaming from the inside out and no one can hear me.

Maybe I’m in shock after all. Shock isn’t a bad place, though. I’d like to stay here as long as I can. It hurts less.

Chapter twenty-two

HARDIN

The apartment is full again, and I’m working on my second drink and first joint. The constant burn of liquor on my tongue and smoke in my lungs is starting to get to me. If being sober didn’t hurt so fucking bad, I wouldn’t touch the shit again.

“It’s been two days, and this shit’s already itching,” I complain to whoever will listen.

“Sucks, man, but next time you won’t be putting holes in walls, will you?” Mark taunts me with a smirk.

“Yes, he will,” James and Janine say at the same time.

Janine holds her hand out to me. “Give me another one of your pain pills.” The fucking junkie has already eaten half the bottle in less than two days. Not that I care—I don’t have a use for them, and I sure as fuck don’t care about what she puts into her body. At first I thought the pills would help me, get me higher than the shit James has, but they don’t. They make me tired, and being tired leads to sleep, which leads to nightmares, which always involve her.

I roll my eyes and stand to my feet. “I’ll just give you the damn bottle.” I walk to Mark’s room to get the pills from under my small pile of clothes. It’s been almost a week, and I have only changed my clothes once. Before she left, Carla, the annoying chick with a savior complex, sewed some hideous black patches over the holes in my jeans. I would have cussed her ass out if James wouldn’t have kicked me out on the spot for doing so.

“Hello, Hardin Scott. Phone!” Janine’s high-pitched voice echoes from the living room.

Fuck! I left my phone on the table in the living room.

When I don’t respond immediately, I hear Janine say cheekily, “Mr. Scott’s busy at the moment; can I ask who’s calling?”

“Give me the phone, now,” I say, darting back into the room and tossing the pills for her to catch. I try to stay calm when she just gives me her middle finger and continues talking, letting the bottle hit the floor. I’m getting fucking tired of her shit.

“Ooohh, Landon sounds like a hot name, and you’re American. I love American men—”

All subtlety lost, I snatch the phone from her hand and press it to my ear. “What the hell do you want, Landon? Don’t you think if I wanted to talk to you, I would have answered the last . . . I don’t know, thirty fucking times you called?” I bark.

“You know what, Hardin?” His voice is equally as harsh as mine. “Fuck you. You’re a selfish asshole, and I should have known better than to call you. She will get through this without you, just the way she always has to.”