Tempt My Heart(24)

That one powdery white line changed my life for the next eight years. I got to the point where I couldn’t perform without having coke coursing through my veins. Then there was the crash. I would crash every morning after a show, sending me deeper into depression and only feeling alive while I was high.

When I was riding that high, I felt nothing. The voices and hallucinations of Cane disappeared. For those few short hours, I felt normal, instead of a girl grieving over losing the love of her life. The other guys in the band preferred pot, but wouldn’t pass up taking a line or two with me from time to time before going out on stage or to celebrate after a show.

The only difference is none of them hit an all-time low like I did.

Just before I was put into rehab, last spring, I was supposed to go live on E!News to discuss our upcoming album. I was so out of it; I made a complete ass of myself for millions to see. To say that my record label and manager were pissed would be putting it lightly.

That night I had a breakdown after everyone decided to rip into me, letting me know I was flushing my career and my dreams down the drain. I locked myself in my hotel room in L.A. wanting to get away from everyone and everything. That night I did so many lines of coke I thought I was going to die…and I almost did.

Seeing the spectacle I made of myself that evening, Roxie flew in from Miami to L.A. to give me an intervention and insist I enter a rehab program. When I wouldn’t open my penthouse suite for her, she made security let her in.

She said she’d never been so scared in her entire life. She found me slumped over on the floor beside the coffee table that was covered with empty tubes, razor blades for cutting my coke, rolled up one hundred dollar bills and a mirror covered in coke residue. She said the second she saw blood coming out my nose she panicked thinking I was dead.

I was pretty close to it.

I felt as if I was in between life and death. While I was there, I saw Cane. I cried with joy because I had missed him for so many years…I actually ached to finally be wrapped in his arms again. I was okay with dying because it meant I was finally going to be with him. I’d slowly been killing myself each day as I fell deeper into my addiction and depression.

I ran into Cane’s arms and jumped up, hooking my legs behind his back. Crying into the nape of his neck, I told him over and over, “I love you so much…so much…” I never wanted to let him go.

Cane pulled back so he could look me in the eye, the sadness I saw in his once beautiful bright blue eyes was like a punch to my stomach.

“Brittan, I love you too. I want nothing more than to take your hand and walk you to the other side, but baby, it’s not your time. I didn’t put my life on the line and die just so you could throw your life away.”

Shaking my head, I laced my fingers behind his neck, refusing to let him go, “I don’t want to live anymore, Cane. I just want you…” my words taper off as the tears that were filling my eyes began to fall one by one down my cheeks.

With his right hand, Cane used the pad of his thumb to brush the tears from my face, leaning in he pressed the sweetest kiss to my lips that caused my heart to flutter in my chest for the first time since he passed away. I felt a wave of peace wash over me as I melted in his embrace.

“Baby, it’s not your time. I’ll be here waiting for you for as long as it takes, but I need you to live for me. Live the life I know you deserve, and do it for me…live the life I can’t.”

I cut him off, “No! No, I refuse to leave you! I don’t want a life without you in it. I’ve lived seven miserable years without you by my side. I don’t want to anymore. Why don’t you want the same thing?” I ask now, in almost a whisper, as I shake my head and lock my eyes onto his.

I’m sobbing uncontrollably now as I feel him slipping from my grasp.

I don’t want to lose him again; I can’t. Not after finally being reunited!

“I love you, Brittan. Please…live for me.” Are the last words he said to me before I awoke in a hospital bed with Roxie crying by my side with her face pressed against my hand that now had an I.V.

After recovering from the overdose, which felt like I had my head kicked in with a steel toe boot, then tossed in front of a freight train, my manager checked me into a rehab facility in Malibu. When I first checked in I was miserable, and haunted by the dream I had while unconscious. It felt so real. I only told Roxie about it; anyone else would hear my story and commit my ass.

I was haunted with the last words Cane said to me. He begged me to not give up, to live for not just me, but him too. Make his death mean something. So I spent six months in a rehab facility, and then the last two months having a drug addiction counselor meet with me at my home once a week to help keep me clean.