That look cemented my outsider status, despite the warmth I got from the rest of the women. Kindness was all well and good, but it wasn’t real most of the time. Disdain may be uncomfortable, but at least it was real. It was too much—the happiness in the room; the hard, kohl-rimmed stare of the biker queen; and most certainly the hazel gaze that itched my skin worse than withdrawal.
I had to escape. The only reason I’d stayed that long was because I loved my best friend and didn’t miss the way her gaze flickered to me every now and then. Didn’t miss the way her smile dampened just a little when she took me in, concern evident on her face. Nor did it escape me that her husband, who had hold of her the entire time, glanced my way when she did, his own gaze hardening.
I tried my best for jaunty smiles when that happened. I wasn’t going to fuck up Lily’s wedding day with a breakdown. I’d done enough.
So it was lucky I slipped outside when both of them were heading off down the hallway to consummate their marriage, based on the look on Asher’s face and the blush on Lily’s.
I sucked in a breath of fresh air, flattening my back to the outer wall of the clubhouse. There was a sprinkling of men in cuts around the grassy area, most smoking and drinking beers. A couple glanced my way but didn’t give me a second look. I wouldn’t give me a second look either.
I tried to suck in another breath. Useless. The air was too fucking clean, too crisp. My shaking hands reached into my bag and I managed to get what I was looking for.
Sucking in the poison and smoke was a relief. One that curbed the craving—not a lot but a little. Enough that I could go on standing and not curl into a little ball in the corner.
I didn’t smoke before. Abhorred it, actually. Being premed, I’d learned all about the effects of the little death sticks. Yellow nails and decaying teeth? No, thanks.
Ironic that I stayed away from cigarettes but took the needle without as much of as a second thought. They were the only things that got me through, swapping one addiction for another. Though the way I was feeling right then, an early grave was a little too enticing.
I managed about five seconds of peace with my death stick. Alone time wasn’t something you got even when you lurked on the fringes of this outlaw family.
“You doing okay, sweetie?” Rosie asked softly, her brow furrowed in concern as she leaned beside me on the wall.
Like Evie’s, that look punctured my shell too, but for a different reason. Because it was genuine. Because she cared. Ever since that day at our place, she’d treated me with respect and kindness, not with judgment or disdain for dragging her into my twisted world. It was unnerving, something I could get used to but something I didn’t deserve. I couldn’t escape it, though, as she texted almost every day and came around to Lily’s, all the while acting like I was a girlfriend, not an ex-stripper junkie.
I did my best to smile at her. “Totally fine. Peachy, in fact.”
She raised a perfectly plucked brow at me. Everything about the fucking women in this club seemed to be perfect. Gwen and Amy looked like they strolled straight out of Vogue and their outfits could fund a deposit on a house. Or keep me in drugs for the rest of my life. You know, if I did that sort of thing.
Rosie was different. From what I’d seen of her she changed personas with her outfits. Right then her chocolate curls were a mass of plaits on her head, spiraling down her back. She was wearing a vintage maxi skirt with a huge split down the thighs and a barely there crop with a multitude of tribal necklaces looking like they’d snap her skinny neck.
I looked like… exactly what I was beside her. A junkie stripper.
“Bullshit,” she said, snatching the smoke from my hands and taking a puff for herself.
Now it was my turn to raise a brow at her. Normally such actions would unleash my inner bitch, but my inner bitch was in a death match with my inner demons. Even if she weren’t, I didn’t make a habit of being a bitch to people I actually liked. I was a bitch to a lot of people, sure. But that was because I didn’t like many people.
She inhaled and exhaled, blowing smoke from her blood-red lips. “You look like shit,” she continued. “Not as bad as you should, mind you.” Her heavily made-up eyes flickered up my body. “Somehow you’re working this.” She waved her arm at me and my black lace ‘bridesmaid’ dress, which I’d paired with combat boots and winged liner, of course. “Takes a special person to look hot while recovering from what you went through.” Her eyes went soft as she handed me back my smoke and squeezed my other hand. “Also takes a special kind of person to stand next to their best friend at her wedding, fake a smile and happiness while she’s crumbling on the inside.”