A lot.
Shots when beer wasn’t working. A bottle of whiskey when a shot wasn’t enough. After that, I slipped something from Rome’s stash, popped it, and everything got really fucking dark.
I remove my arm from my eyes and am instantly blinded by the sun.
“Damn it.” I sit up and throw my hands on the back of my head. The sudden movement makes me feel like I really might throw up.
“Morning, sunshine,” Rome says, and I lift my middle finger to flip him and all the rest of them off.
Being in a band is kind of like forming a fucked-up family that’s codependent but always there for each other. If only, right now, they would leave me the fuck alone so I can finish what I started last night.
“Where’s my phone?”
Some stupid part of me is curious to see if Cassie texted. Not that I expect her to. But I can’t help but wish she’d sink the knife in just a bit further to remind me of the pain of being alive.
“In your pants, in my freezer.” I look up and Eloise is scanning me with narrowed eyes. “Don’t ask.”
“Wasn’t gonna.” Looking around, I realize the whole band is here, including Adrian, who is drinking coffee like this is just a normal day on the job.
Damn, we’ve done a number on him for him to be this unfazed all the time.
“Why are you all circling around me like you’re sitting around the fucking campfire?” I groan. “I’m not talking about shit.”
“Then don’t.” Noah stretches his legs out on the lawn and rests back on his hands. He’s wearing pajama pants, and I realize they must have all stayed the night at Eloise’s house.
At least he’s wearing pants, unlike Rome, who is sitting on her lawn in his fucking underwear. Guy has no fucking decency—not that I’m one to talk at the moment.
“She left.” I lie back down in the grass. It’s too early to be sitting, or thinking, or talking. But I know they’ll only go away if I do at least one of those things.
“Yep,” Adrian says, matter of fact.
Dick.
“I killed her brother.”
“Are you still fucking high, man?” Rome asks. “What the fuck is he even talking about?”
I’m not sure who he’s asking, but no one responds.
“For the five hundredth time, you did not kill Myth,” Eloise says.
“You sound like her.”
“Cassie?” Eloise asks, and I nod, throwing my arm back over my eyes. “That’s because she’s not as dumb as you, darling brother.”
“They were my drugs.”
That night replays in my head almost every time I close my eyes. Throwing those drugs at Myth when I knew he had a problem popping pills and snorting shit. Not checking into where the drugs came from. Letting him be the first to test them out. Knowing, the moment Adrian told me he was gone, that I was the one who should have been dead.
Incidental or not, I’m the reason Cassie lost her brother.
“Sebastian, you need to let go of that at some point,” Eloise says, like it’s so easy.
“Sure.”
“Seriously, man.” This time it’s Noah, and I can tell he’s leaned in closer. “It doesn’t matter whose drugs they were; Myth was gonna snort that shit. Dude could not get enough of anything. Women, men, coke, heroin.”
I sit up. “What do you mean, heroin?”