Page 75 of Red Hot Harmony

I felt a cold sweat breaking out beneath the wet fabric plastered to my back. Something was clogging my lungs, then my throat.

Breathing became hard.

Fuck.

I dropped to the floor, the motion automatic. My hands pressed against the furniture to push it farther back. It didn’t budge. So I used my shoulder. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Or maybe I did.

Suddenly, all my questions and insecurities felt insignificant. Nothing a little bit of white magic couldn’t fix.

My mind lurched for it like a night butterfly against the glass. Slammed into that invisible wall. Hurt itself. Slammed again.

Next thing I knew, I was gunning across the yard and up the stairs for the bedroom where Malik had been staying. Pillows and blankets and sheets flew up and across and over. My fingers were shaking, my vision tunneling. All else simply faded away. Became unimportant.

I needed the world to stop spinning, to stop pulling me down and tripping me up every time I took several steps without falling.

And there was only one thing that could make that happen.

The small packet was stuffed between the pages of Malik’s Bible that he kept in the top drawer of his nightstand.

Clenching my fist around the plastic, I sat on the floor and leaned against the foot of the bed. My jeans were heavy, with filth clinging to the bottoms, and I didn’t realize I’d left a huge trail of dirt in the room and all over the house in my frantic search for drugs until Snowflake finally snapped me out of my hysteria with his relentless barking.

He bit the fabric wrapping my leg and pulled as if he knew I was teetering on a very dangerous edge.

My fingers loosened around the packet and I stared at the fine white dust in the cup of my hand. It beckoned to me like a siren. Called my name. Whispered sweet nothings in my ears.

I can make it go away, Dante.

I can make it all go away.

All your doubts and all your struggles. I can love you the way no one else can.

There was a low growl in the vicinity of my knee, and when I looked at Snowflake again, he’d laid his head on my wet thigh and was staring up at me with his huge, sad eyes that communicated something along the lines ofWho’s going to take care of me if you pick her again?

“You know what?” I said to him, getting to my feet. “You’re cleaning up this mess.”

He whined and followed me to the bathroom, where I dumped the packet into the toilet and flushed it.

It was 4 a.m. when I pulled into the driveway of Camille’s house. I had no means of communicating with her, but I’d showered and changed into clean clothes and looked presentable.

Well, as presentable as a washed-up addict on the precipice of his next relapse could look at the ass crack of dawn after fucking up his one and only chance to impress his girlfriend’s conservative parents.

Girlfriend, huh?

It did have a nice ring to it.

My hands trembled when I slackened my grip on the steering wheel of my Camaro.

Don’t panic, Dante.

She’ll understand.

Only, I wasn’t so sure about it when I stepped out of the car and headed for the front porch. The tremor had taken over my entire body. I clenched and unclenched my fists several times before finally pressing the doorbell.

I felt like an asshole because my unannounced visit was bound to wake up Ally too, and facing their combined wrath terrified me more than anything in the world, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Um, relatively right, perhaps, considering the time and the circumstances. A sane person would have at least waited until sunrise. But sane and I weren’t on the same page. We weren’t even in the same novel. Sane would be listed as one of the antonyms below my name in the dictionary.

Nope, hanging around my empty mansion and examining the smoke-covered sky as the first ray of light hit the horizon was out of the question. My anxiety was so strong that I knew I would neither get a single second of sleep nor be able to wait patiently.

I had to see Camille to continue functioning.

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