I stood at the front of the room, the weight of the attention on me almost too much to bear. It wasn’t that I wasn’t used to people looking at me. I fricking danced on a stage naked for a living. I was used to it. But I’d never been naked, really naked, in front of anyone but Gabriel. Even then I had a film over my true self so he didn’t see the raw fucking mess I was when I was stripped to the core.
I didn’t even let myself inspect that.
But there I was, in a room full of strangers, except Gage and Gabriel, stripped, to the core.
Nothing had ever been so fucking terrifying in my life.
I swallowed, finding the strength from the man who I’d refused to let give it to me, until now. My gaze touched on Gage. His face was impassive but he gave me a small nod. I nodded back.
“Nat introduced me to it all,” I said, not knowing where to start, but the beginning seemed best. Not the real, ugly beginning—I wasn’t ready for that—but one of the beginnings. “The drug scene,” I continued, scanning the room but not really seeing anyone. Instead I saw the back room of the club and Nat grinning while handing me a little white pill. “She did it in a way that made it seem like nothing, no big deal, no worries. Like the opinion I’d had on drugs my entire adult life had been misplaced and they weren’t as serious as I’d built them up in my head. Like I was only now just getting in on the secret that everyone but me knew. Drugs were okay.” That night, that first night, I got it. This was how people got through life. I’d been stupidly naive in thinking anyone could get through it sober.
I moved my attention back to the room. “She was like my spirit guide, giving me pills to fly me high, giving me more to bring me back down. And finally giving me the syringe that changed it all.” That was another night burned into my existence. Some crappy party. No, not even a party, just a handful of sketchy people in an even sketchier apartment. I’d been anxious to leave but Nat had convinced me to stay. She’d held out the syringe to me and I’d paused. Who would have thought what a ripple effect that pause would have? How much hung in the balance? If only I’d just gone with my gut instead of taking the vial that held my doom.
“I’m not blaming her. I guess that’s what a lot of addicts do, search desperately for someone, anyone, to point the finger at, lay the blame on. God forbid we actually take responsibility for flushing our own lives down the crapper.
“I’m under no such illusions. She may have offered, but I accepted. I swallowed those pills. I injected myself. I was the master of my own destiny.” I paused, the slideshow of horrors from that little room playing on repeat in the front of my mind. I struggled to escape it, to find my way back to the room. My throat was raw as I spoke my last sentence. “In this case, I was the master of my own demise.” My gaze touched on Gabriel’s for the first time since I’d gotten up here. “Or so I’d thought. Someone very important to me pointed out that all of that shit was winter. Drugs stripped everything off me, like leaves from the branches on a tree, and it looked like demise. I didn’t believe him. Then.” I stared at him, seeing myself in those eyes across the room, and for once, I didn’t hate what I saw. “But now I think, if you’ll excuse the Game of Thrones undertone here, summer is coming.”
I walked into the clubhouse and froze the moment my eyes hit the common area—more specifically the sofa and TV. Even more specifically who was on the sofa and what was on the TV.
For once, the common room was empty of prospects, club girls, any old ladies, and any patched members I begrudgingly accepted as family.
Right then there were only two people—three, including me. Gabriel was on the sofa, leaning back with one of his long, sinewy, and tattooed arms draped along the top of the sofa. The other lay softly on top of a dark head which was situated on his thigh. The head of a beautiful little girl who was lying on her side, using Gabriel’s impressive, denim-clad thigh as a cushion. Her little face was scrunched up, a thumb in her mouth, and her eyes were closed in sleep.
I’m not one for womb clenches at any moment, especially at the sight of children. I didn’t like children. I had no desire to have them. No way, no how.