My heart dropped, my breath shook, and my mind filled with what-ifs. “He couldn’t have. Lucas, you wouldn’t have, right?” I asked him, hoping he would answer. Hoping like hell my best friend could hear me and would pop out of his sleep and laugh. It would have been a cruel joke, but I’d have welcomed it.
Instead, he didn’t move, and my soul, my being, my mind, sloshed around in a river of disbelief. This had to be a dream. This couldn’t be happening.
As I tried to lay Lucas back down on the couch so I could do something, I screamed at Cade, “Call 911! God, what are you doi—”
Cade’s monotone voice cut me off. “Calm down.” And then he lifted the phone to his ear. “Yeah, we need an ambulance. One of my employees OD’d.”
“He didn’t do this,” I hissed at Cade. How dare he accuse him of it? My friend was sober; my friend was clean. We’d done the work, we’d put in the time, we’d had the meetings, the talks, the exchanging of promises.
I rubbed Lucas’s face, his strong jaw, his lips. Every part of him that was normally so full of life held death right at his doorstep.
My throat closed, and my gut twisted in fear. I couldn’t lose him to our shared weakness, not when we were this close to being stronger than it.
“Please, please, please. Please be okay. Just stay with me, Lucas. Do you hear me? I need you. We all need you.”
I broke, and the tears spilled from my eyes as I pulled him close, his head falling to my shoulders.
“Yes, I’m aware. He’s alive. But I need an ambulance here immediately. We’re at Liberty Greene Apartments, number 307.” That fucker’s monotone voice as he said the words grated on my every nerve. I wanted to kill him, my rage at the world directed at him and anyone if they thought they could be above us, if they thought this wasn’t an emergency.
He didn’t understand.
Even if Lucas had slipped, this wasn’t his fault. It could never be his fault. Didn’t people get that? That we struggledevery dayto come back from something that clawed within us to get out.
Cade’s boot tapped as he glared at us while he waited for whatever the dispatcher was saying. “I can check for a pulse, but he’s alive.” He waited a moment. “Because he hasn’t yet turned the color I know so well.”
His admission was a reminder I needed for later, one I’d filed away. Cade had seen dead bodies before—he’d killed before. I knew from working undercover what the Armanelli name meant. And even if they were reformed, even if he and his brother didn’t want to do anything bad, they still could.
“Well, I’m not going to be in the ambulance, that’s for sure,” he said like he was affronted. “His friend is here. She’ll need to be checked also. They were together, and she’s hyperventilating.”
I wouldn’t correct him about anything.
“I’m not sure what she’s done.” Cade eyed me suspiciously, and I accepted the fact that not even he would ever consider me as anything but a flight risk. Even if I believed in myself, I’d always be the first one they looked at as an addict, the one who may have grabbed the drugs and risked her life. “But I’m sure she’s not on drugs. Just her friend.”
His assessment had my jaw dropping.
He continued, “Also, this won’t be logged. I need to talk with the chief. You can tell him it’s Cade Armanelli.”
“What are you doing?” I whisper-yelled at him. “Just hang up. I need your help.”
“There’s nothing to help with. He’s out cold right now.” Cade lifted a brow like I was stupid.
“He could die!” I screeched.
“Dollface, your friend will be fine.” He pulled a lock of my hair. “His breathing isn’t shallow enough for death. A coma at the most. It’s not your fault, and we’ll get through this, but I have to talk with the chief.” He shrugged like it was no big deal and then turned around to speak with the chief of police for some unknown reason. “Yeah. It’s Cade. You need to check the cameras of this building. They’re not secure anymore.”
I held my friend as Cade walked out of the room. I rocked him back and forth, back and forth. I cried as I sang a song my mom used to sing to me as a kid. Maybe he’d be comforted by it, or maybe it was a comfort for me, I wasn’t sure.
As the paramedics rushed in, I held his hand until they wouldn’t let me anymore. I rode in the ambulance because Cade demanded I be let in after he threw his name around.
The shift in treatment was immediate. They administered Narcan to reverse the drug overdose as I stared on and then took him back to the ICU, but the doctor came and gave me information on him immediately. There were no wait times, no brush-offs, and no checking of my credentials. This was the Armanelli treatment, and I was very aware that it was different from what a normal person walking in would experience.
But Cade was gone. He didn’t ride in the ambulance with me. Instead, two men in suits walked up as I left the ambulance. One introduced himself as a friend of Cade’s and said he would be staying with me until Cade returned.
“What do you mean?” I huffed. “I don’t need someone here with me.”
“Tough, Ms. Hardy. We will be with you for the near future.”
A nurse told me they would give him fluids and run tests and that I could wait in the lobby. So I sat in the waiting room, staring at a screen, not sure who to call or what to do. Lucas didn’t have much family that he kept in contact with, and I didn’t want to tell anyone he’d OD’d. He could do that when he was ready.