Page 12 of Velvet Thorns
Nothing.
It’s gone.
That sketchbook was years of my life, thoughts I couldn’t speak, and pain I couldn’t voice. Love, grief, fury—him.
Every brutal, bleeding line. Gone.
I want to scream, cry, vomit… Maybe do all three at once and never stop.
Shit. Shit. Fucking fuck. Fuck.
I slide down the wall until I’m sitting on cold marble. Did I leave it at the airport? On the plane? Jesus, some stranger could be flipping through my soul right now, seeing things never meant for anyone else’s eyes.
I stare at the TV, letting the screech of some overpaid reality-show brat fill the silence like static in my head. My knees drag across the floor as I crawl toward the minibar and reach for the champagne. I drink until my limbs go numb and the burn in my throat dulls the scream caught behind it.
Chapter 3
SHANNEN
Phoenix,Phoenix, Phoenix…
I’m scribbling his name over and over, the red ink blooming across the paper in front of me. I think I’m in my apartment, but something’s wrong. The ceiling feels higher, the walls are an unfamiliar shade of orange, and the air has a distinct smell. It’s like smoke and spice, and I know I’ve smelled it before, somewhere buried in the folds of another lifetime.
I write to Phoenix the way I do every year. It’s become a ritual now—a wound I keep reopening, but tonight, the only thing that comes out is his name, again and again, as if every other word I ever knew has been erased from my mind.
A wind moves through the room, and the front door slams wide open without warning. I clutch the letter in my trembling fingers and move toward the darkness. Each slow step makes the scent grow stronger, more suffocating, until it’s all I can taste. I reach out, and something brushes against my back—a warm breath that shouldn’t exist, a whisper without words. I turn, and suddenly, something iscovering my face. My hands find nothing solid as I try to tear it away with my fingers. I can’t breathe. I can’t see. I can’t?—
I jolt awake, my heart hammering, the taste of smoke lingering on my tongue, and the scent of spice refusing to let me go. It takes a few seconds for my mind to catch up and remember where I am, but when it does…
Fuck me dead.
I’m going to be sick.
The minibar is completely wiped out, bottles are overturned, caps have been flung around like confetti, and half-peeled labels are stuck to the carpet. I don’t even remember doing that.
Every. Single. Bottle. Empty.
I can still taste vodka, and my head’s pulsing like my brain is slowly swelling inside my skull, but none of that compares to the gaping hole in my chest.
My sketchbook.
It’s still gone.
I push up on shaking arms, the expensive sheets clinging to my sweat-soaked skin, and I have to focus on breathing through my nose to keep from vomiting all over the hotel’s overpriced carpet.
I take a deep breath. Then another. In. Out.
Don’t puke, Shannen. Not now. Not when you’re supposed to be a fucking goddess in a few hours.
I press the heel of my hand to my forehead, grinding it in, begging the pressure to dull the pounding.
But nope.
Still hurts.
Still spiraling.
Still a fucking mess.
