Page 120 of Seizing Control: Part One

A surprise wedding ceremony to marry a man who couldn’t manage to stick around for two weeks before deserting.

Once I’m inside the room, I slam the door shut, and toe of my ballet flats. Flopping face down on the mattress, my arm flails for the bottle of sedatives that Doc prescribed for me. Instead of taking one and a half pills, I swallow down four. Heart pounding, body aching under the weight of everyone’s disbelief, I fling the covers over my head and curl into a ball. The tears I’m ignoring burn with evil intent, but I refuse to allow them to fall.

Slash might be gone.

But that doesn’t mean Zeke is dead.

Even as I battle with the funny feeling that invades my stomach as I think about Zeke being dead, I hang on to the certainty in my heart for dear life. I’ve spent twenty-three years loving Ezekiel Miles. If he was gone, I’d know it. I’d feel it in my soul.

Except I didn’t know that Slash had abandoned me...

“Scoot over.” Toker’s voice is loud in the quiet bedroom. I don’t speak as I roll from the middle of the bed onto my usual side. Settling on top of the covers, my cousin curls his big body around me from behind. The heavy arm that he throws over my waist is comforting. I match my breathing to his when a strange feeling of constrained panic rolls through me. “That’s it, just breathe, lil cuz.”

His crooning is like a cheese grater to my psyche.

I don’t want to breathe.

I want out of the madness that is my life.

As the urge to shout at Toker to leave builds within me, I curl my fingers into fists. My skin is alive. Flaring with the need to bleed. Crawling as filth bubbles through me. A vat of acid made up of my sins lays waste to my grip on control.

I break.

Sobs ripped from my chest.

The shaking that takes hold is agony.

My body slowly falling victim to the pills I swallowed.

The pharmaceutically derived lethargy grips me tight.

As always, my mind does its best to fight off the sedation.

Thankfully, it loses, and I find myself back in dreamland.

A world where everyone believes me when I tell them that Zeke will be back.

A realm in which my first love and my husband peacefully coexist.

21

SLASH

Six days later

Every time I close my eyes, the security vision replays in my head.

Brutus.

Hugh.

Venom.

The blood that gushes when my ex-president draws the blade across my best friend’s throat. I hear the sounds of Venom dying. Relive the callousness with which Brutus shoved him away. Paramedics working to save his life.

Failure.

They couldn’t stop him from dying.

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