Page 56 of Mad As Hell

I dropped back onto the mattress and stared up at the ceiling. A tiny kernel of hope settled somewhere in the vicinity of my heart.

Maybe I hadn’t completely fucked this up.

CHAPTER 15

MADDIE

Years ago I had taken it upon myself to clean out the trailer. Mom had been at rehab in yet another failed attempt at getting sober, and I’d wanted her to come home to a clean place.

So I went to the store, used a bunch of coupons to buy a name-brand cleaner—because it had to be better than the dollar store generic if it cost five times as much—and scrubbed every surface until my fingers were red.

In hindsight, I should’ve used the dollar-store cleaner and splurged on a pair of rubber gloves for my raw hands.

I’d saved Mom’s room for last, because I wasn’t sure if she would want me in her personal space. Inevitably I gave in and tackled her room, starting with the closet.

Buried under a mountain of dirty clothes and towels that were growing moldy was a single sock that had become cemented to the floor by a noxious combination of sweat, old water, and some other substances I refused to acknowledge to this day. But what I remembered was the smell. The old, crusty, moldy smell of mothballs and death.

That was the taste I woke up to in my mouth.

The only thing worse was the blindingly painful headache that threatened to split my skull in half.

I made some sort of half-groan, half-dying cow whine as I rolled over to hide my face from the brutal rays of the sun. The world tilted, and with it, my stomach.

Sweat broke out in places I didn’t know it could as I tried not to vomit all over myself.

I was vaguely aware of a door opening somewhere in the room, but I was too busy trying to extricate from the tilt-a-whirl in my head to really pay attention.

“Shit,” Ryan’s low voice said with a healthy dose of sympathy. “Can you sit up, Maddie?”

“Depends,” I mumbled, face against the mattress. “How much do you care if I throw up all over your bed?”

“I mean, it wouldn’t be the worst thing the pledges have cleaned up in the last twenty-four hours,” he admitted with a laugh that still made my tummy flip.

Or maybe I was just going to throw up.

Yeah, I was gonna go with that excuse.

His hand settled on my back and rubbed slow, soothing circles into my muscles. As much as I hated it, I felt myself relaxing and my body feeling less like it needed to perform a self-induced exorcism.

“I can’t believe I drank that much,” I muttered, more to myself than to the guy I should be running away from.

Ryan gave a soft snort. “You were knocking them back pretty good. I think you out-drank half the guys.”

“That good old Porter metabolism,” I deadpanned. “It’s why we make such excellent addicts.”

Ryan’s fingers stilled for a second before starting up again.

“It’s why I don’t drink like that,” I admitted, not sure why I felt the need to keep confessing. “Mom started with alcohol and kept going. I never wanted to live that life.”

And yet… here I was.

Nursing a bitch of a hangover, in the bed of a guy I should hate, and essentially whoring myself out. Maybe not for a fix, but I was going along with Gary’s shit all the same. My body was the price tag I was willing to pay.

Way to break the fucking cycle, Maddie.

“One night of partying doesn’t make you your mom, Mads,” Ryan told me in what I’m sure would have been a helpful, sweet tone if I wasn’t currently ass-deep in a downward psychological spiral about how screwed up my life had become.

I snorted and instantly regretted the action. Groaning, I squeezed my eyes shut and willed the piercing pains away.

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