My body’s doing a lousy fucking job of making its mind up. Blankets on, blankets off. Repeat.
I shake my head. “Maybe later.”
Jase nods, taking a stand of my hair between his thumb and forefinger and tucking it gently behind my ear. “Try and get some sleep,” he murmurs, leaning in to kiss my forehead. My skin burns where his lips have touched, but it’s a nice burn.
It’s raining outside again. I drift off, thinking that when I wake up, the worst will be over, and I can finally be free.
I’m screaming. Screaming and thrashing about, my nightmares full of blood and terror and his face.
“Hey,” Jase yells in my face. His voice cuts through the greasy haze, and I force my heavy eyelids open, peering up at him.
“Wake up,” he urges. “Are you awake?”
I hear fumbling and the lamp next to me switches on, blinding me. “Ahhhhh!” I protest, throwing my hands over my tender eyes. Everything hurts. Everything hurts so fucking bad.
Jase grabs one of the shirts I’ve hung next to the bed and drapes it over the lampshade, dulling its intensity. Thank crap for that. I slowly take my hands away, looking up at Jase.
He looks mad.
“What is going on?” he asks, and I see anger flash in his eyes.
I struggle to sit up, but it hurts, everything hurts. I try to catch my breath.
“What do you mean?” I ask weakly, my teeth feeling like they’re about to burst out of my gums. The pressure, the pounding is fucking intense, and it’s everywhere, all over my body. My skull. My skull feels like it is going to explode.
“You’ve been crying for almost an hour,” Jase says gravely, running a hand through his hair. “Saying I need it, saying help me. What the fuck is going on, Juliette?”
His eyes are dark with emotion. He looks like he’ll wrap his fingers around my throat and throttle me if I give him the wrong answer.
“I have the flu,” I say. I lie. To the man I love.
I am a terrible person. We promised no more lies, and straight away they’re coming out of my mouth faster than I can draw breath. There is something seriously wrong with me.
His jaw clenches; I see his fists are balled up as well.
“Last chance,” he says. “Don’t fucking lie to me. I deserve the truth.”
My heart rate picks up considerably, my mouth suddenly very dry.
“What is this?” Jase asks, holding up the two pieces of the methadone bottle I’d buried in the bottom of the trash. Fuck.
I don’t answer. He’s seething; I can see it in the way he’s watching me with those eyes, those dark, haunted eyes of his.
He stares up at the ceiling, clearly disgusted.
“Can we talk about this later?” I ask, swinging my legs out and letting my feet hit the floor. I stand, wincing as the sudden change from laying down to standing up makes me dizzy momentarily. Sharp pain shoots up my spine, and I gasp.
“Fucking heroin,” Jase says with an air of resignation. “Really? I didn’t pick you for a junkie, Julz.”
Images rush at me as Jase’s cruel words hit home. Dornan’s face, those identical eyes of his boring into mine, taking his twisted pleasure as he got me high again and again, as he took me to the brink of death, only to bring me back to life. That fucker did this to me.
“Fuck you,” I spit, narrowing my eyes at him. “I didn’t do this. He did this to me. I’m just trying to get better.” That month of lazy sex and morning beach walks and a goddamn marriage proposal are all but forgotten, a lie, a mistruth because I am a liar and an addict.
“How could you keep this from me?” he asks. “From the doctors?”
My head is pounding, my mouth dry. I can’t focus. I can’t do this.
He looks at me now, and the look of betrayal in his eyes is enough to make me want to die. I have failed him. I will always fail him, because I am a liar and a cheat and I have become my mother.
“You would have left me,” I say, a small sob coming from my throat as my eyes fill with tears. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t tell anyone what he did to me. Who he made me.” I whisper the final words.
Jase looks like he wants to kill me. “What is wrong with you?” He roars, pounding his fist into the wall.
Everything is wrong with me, I think sadly.
I’m sweating so much from the comedown (will it ever fucking end?) and I need to get clean, to rinse off my skin and let warm water ease my cramps and aches. I go to push past Jase, to make it to the shower, but as I pass him he reaches out a hand and locks it around my upper arm, spinning me around to face him. At the same time, he switches on the main light of the room, casting us both in a bright amber glow.