Page 61 of GAF Factor

“I am looking at him. This is what’s best!” Red snarled.

I grabbed Fox by the lapels of his jacket and spun him to face me. “Look at me, Fox. You do not need this. You’re gonna be fine, okay?”

“But…” His chin trembled and his hands shook out of control. “You don’t get it. I can’t function. Anna—she?—”

Concern filtered through me as I saw a single tear slip down his face. “What about Anna?”

“She did this to me.”

“Did what to you?”

His head snapped up, his eyes wild and untethered. “This! She did this to me! I’m losing my fucking mind! I can’t get them anywhere. The store won’t sell them to me. The gas station is out. I tried getting a guy on the streets, but she got to him, too!”

He was buying drugs at the grocery store?

“You don’t get what it’s like. She’s doing this as payback for what I did to her.”

“What did you do?”

“I took Cash. I was going to trade my life if he would only come back to us. And for that—” He squeezed his eyes closed and took a deep breath. He really didn’t look too good. I placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“It’s alright. Breathe through it. You can do this.” I shot Red a glare. I couldn’t believe he was feeding Fox’s addiction instead of getting him help. The man was clearly losing control. “Breathe. Do those Icelandic throat exercises you like so much?—”

Fox grabbed both of my arms and shoved me up against the wall. “Don’t you get it? Those don’t work! Nothing works! It’s all gone. Nothing helps anymore! I need something more!”

Enough was enough. I was taking back the drugs if it was the last thing I did. He wasn’t getting another pill out of any of us. “Give them to me, Fox.”

His nostrils flared. “No. You can’t have them.”

“Fox, don’t make me do this.”

“I won’t give them up. They’re mine!”

“Fox—”

“No!”

I faked like I was walking away, then spun and ripped his jacket open. He cried out, backing away from me, tearing his body from my grip, but I clung to him, refusing to let him suffer in silence. With more strength than I knew he had, he gripped me by the arms—and for just a second, I saw the beast raging inside him—then he flung me across the room, right into the table with the pies.

Screams echoed around us as I jumped up from the floor and the desserts all around me. Anna and Zoe rushed into the room, followed by Eli and Sarah.

“My pies!” Zoe shouted.

I stormed over to Fox. “I won’t let you do this to yourself. Enough is enough.”

“What is going on?” Anna snapped.

“Anna, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Fox is hiding something from you.”

“Please,” Fox whispered, his voice a tortured plea.

“This is for your own good.” I tore open his jacket, and pulled out—a snack pack of Funyuns. I frowned, staring at the yellow bag in confusion. “What is this?”

Fox turned to Anna, his chin quivering as he crumpled to the floor. “I’m so ashamed. I tried, Anna. I tried, but you can’t expect me to quit like that! You have no idea what it was doing to me!”

Anna strolled over to Fox and bent over right in his face. “Maybe now you’ll understand just a little of what it was like for me when you handed yourself over to Cash.”

She patted him on the cheek and walked away with a smirk on her face. I stared at her as she left, then back at Fox, who had torn open the bag and was now stuffing his face with what little Funyuns were there. He looked like a starving man who hadn’t eaten in a week.

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