Breathe.

Just Breathe.

"Fuck you—you're a motherfucking asshole." The part of my brain that hated the person I had become was screaming at me until my eardrums felt like they were going to bleed.

I smacked the feeling back into my face with my wet palms. They were covered in my sweat and tears, leaving a stinging ring around the edges as my hands crashed into both of my cheeks over and over again. I couldn't clear my head and make any sense of what I just saw or what had happened in my room with Riley.

Even though I was coherent enough to realize what I saw was another hallucination, it didn't relieve the agony created by my guilty conscience. The awareness wasn't enough to stop me from sinking deeper into the darkness my memories of the accident carried.

I wanted more than anything to be better for a change, but the pain spreading through my body like cancer was the only thing I could feel any longer. I wanted to tear the disease out by the root and light fire to it until it was just ash and dust.

There was no cure for my sickness, and I was ready to give up trying—but I just couldn't let go because of the green-eyed drunk girl crying her eyes out in my room.

Losing myself once and for all would mean I would lose Riley too. Even if she was better off without me, I was such a selfish prick that I couldn't let her go—not now, not ever.

"Ezra, get your ass up and go back upstairs to Riley. She needs you." My subconscious commanded.

He was more right than even he knew. I was a complete moron for leaving her side. No matter how bad I was at managing my own self-pity, it didn't justify my actions.

Riley was drunk and completely alone.

The heartbroken girl was sobbing in my room with the door wide open. There was a freshly tattooed target on her back. The guys who frequented the house during Sean's get-togethers weren't the same kind she was used to being around. These snakes were predators and had an alarm set to go off whenever a girl as sweetly innocent as mine was within a hundred feet of them.

Riley would never survive the night alone.

I shook away the tingling in my hands and pushed myself up from the cold, stone floor of the unfinished basement where I was hiding. I ran back up the stairs, taking them two at a time to get to Riley before it was too late. The whole way up, I thumbed through the index cards of arguments my brain concocted to convince her to stay locked upstairs with me in my room the rest of the night.

Of course, none of the ideas included revealing my addiction, relapse, or anything close to the truth about what was happening inside my head.

It was too dark of a place for someone with Riley's kind of light to be trapped in—she would suffocate under the weight of carrying my self-inflicted burden.

When I got back upstairs to my room, two bodies were taking up all the space on my bed. The shadowed figures were locked tightly together, moving perfectly in sync against each other like they shared one mind.

Shit—someone had already gotten their hands on Riley.

My vision darkened until I couldn't see anything except the guy on top of my girl, grinding his hips into her as she moaned breathlessly for more. I ran to the bed and pulled the guy up by the back of his collar before launching him across the room to the floor.

"Riley, fuck. Are you ok? Did he hurt you? Talk to me, baby." I placed my knee on the bed to crouch protectively over her shirtless body. I cupped her cheek with my hand and pulled her head into my chest.

Unfamiliar broad palms pushed at me frantically, which brought me back long enough to look down at the small girl in my arms. My eyes were met with a pair of terrified chocolate-colored ones instead of the luminous green I should have found.

The girl beneath me wasn't Riley.

She wasn't even close.

My head spun around the room, looking for my girl and landed back on the guy still lying on the floor. His shirt was torn near the neck where I grabbed him and he was inching away from me slowly, like he was scared I would go after him again.

"Fuck." I growled and grabbed my hair wanting to rip it out.

I climbed up off the bed and left the duo behind in my room without offering an apology to either one. I didn't have any time to waste if I had any chance of stopping Riley from leaving me.

When I returned to the main floor, the metal front door was hanging open, swinging freely. I ran towards it, knowing without a doubt Riley had already walked through it.

When I ran out the open door, Sean was trudging towards the porch, shoving his keys back in his pocket with a frustrated scowl on his face. Something had soured his mood since the last time I saw him. He looked both pissed and dejected at the same time.

A better person would have stopped and asked their friend what was wrong—but I didn't give one fuck about anything other than the missing girl.

"Riley?" I questioned him as he walked by me.

Sean pointed towards the end of the street without uttering s single word to me.

I turned my head to follow the path of his finger just in time to see the drunk girl stumbling around the corner towards the main street. She stopped and looked in both directions like she wasn't sure which way to go. She raised one of her hands to her mouth and bit down on her fingertips as she contemplated her decision.

Riley turned her head right and gave herself an encouraging nod. With her finger pointing at the ground, she began walking up the sidewalk while staring at her feet.

I took off in a sprint after her. The sound of my feet pounding against the ground echoed out in the empty night. When I got to the corner, I found her about fifty feet in front of me, struggling to stay up on the uneven sidewalk. Her left foot kept landing on the lower-level street, making her inebriated gait even more unsteady.

A white SUV, going way too fast for the road, flew by her and narrowly missed the drunk girl walking in zigzags while staring at her toes.  The driver slammed on the horn, weaving around her at the last second.

Riley lifted her head and threw up her middle finger, cursing gibberish as the guy behind the wheel screamed at her. The girl was trying to get herself killed tonight and I was going to jump in traffic right along with her to keep that from happening.

Riley started to veer right when I was still way too far behind her. She had turned her attention back to the ground again and began following the white line until the street opened up to connect to another. She crossed the road that ran perpendicular to the main street and then turned sharply when she hit the center line.

She was walking up a fucking exit ramp to the highway.

I pushed my body as fast as I could when I saw where she was heading.

"Riley. Stop." I yelled out to her, which made her freeze in place and look around. She raised her head to the cloudless night like she would find me above her.

I caught the bottom edge of the back of her dress, stretching the fabric almost to the point it tore. She leaned her body weight forward and then snapped backward, smashing back into me so hard that she practically bounced away again. I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her off her feet, out of the way, before she ended the night as roadkill.

I was vibrating on the inside and my heart was racing so fast I swear I could feel it shaking the ground. The fear and panic flowing through me had created an earthquake that rebounded in shockwaves all around us. Everything was blurry and  twisting around me.

Except for Riley, she was eerily still in my arms.

"Not that way, Beautiful," I whispered in her ear as my lungs burned with every breath.

"I knew that." Riley slurred and spun around like a ballerina with two left feet. She wrapped both of her arms around my chest before burying her nose in it.

Fuck, we were both such a mess.

"I know you did, Ry." I cupped the back of her head with my hand and held it while smashing the top of her head with my lips until they went numb. "You scared the fucking shit out of me. You shouldn't have left without me."

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to go home." She whispered into my shirt. "I'm just so tired."

"Me too." I agreed. I was exhausted from pretending everything would work itself out and be better than before when it clearly wouldn't be. I kept slipping further down in my madness and Riley was plummeting down the hole right behind me.

"I'll take you home," I told the girl in my arms.

Apparently, that was the worst thing I could have said to her.

Riley wiggled free of me and glared up at me with a glassy-eyed stare—the same one that said she was winding up and ready for take-off. She was never going to make anything easy for me, even in her intoxicated state. If anything, her combativeness would be multiplied tenfold since her body had was currently composed of ninety percent alcohol.

Fuck, she was so god-damned, adorably irritating.

"Oh, no...no...no. You are not taking me home this time. I will be walking myself. You, mister, imaginary Ezra, are not allowed to follow me." Riley argued and pointed her finger at my chest.

"Imaginary?" I asked and cocked my eyebrow up.

"Yes, you are not here, and now neither am I." She slurred and patted my chest.

The dramatic girl spun around and began walking across the road again. Her dress swished and swayed with every determined sideways step she took. Her words and abrupt exit would have been more devastating to me if she was actually able to walk in a straight line.

I rolled my eyes and continued to follow behind her without her permission. There was no way she was going to make it there on her own. She would either get lost, pass out, or do something stupid enough to end up in the back of a police cruiser for public intoxication.

Riley hummed to herself for most of the walk back to her apartment, seemingly oblivious to the fact I was still walking less than ten feet behind her. Every so often, I would have to speed up my steps and use my hand to guide her in the right direction when she wouldn't stray off course.

About ten minutes into our conversation-less walk, Riley decided she was going to sit down on a hedge at the end of the entrance to her apartment complex. I stood next to her with my hands in my pockets, blocking her from any potential onlookers as she complained about how scratchy her new seat was.

She raised her eyes to me and I started to open my mouth to ask her if she wanted me to help her up. She clapped her fingers together like a quacking duck in the air as close to my face as she could.

"Shhrppp." She garbled out.

"Ry, I..." I began.

"Shhh, fake Ezra. Just stand there and be sexy....and silent." She hiccupped and batted her eyelashes seductively with her ass still planted on the bush.

Tonight's drunken version of Riley was all over the place and completely confused. I could tell she wasn't entirely in charge of her actions or impulses. I doubted she even knew what she was doing or saying at the moment.

The demon inside was urging me to follow her up to her apartment. It wanted me to use her current state to sneak my way back into her life. Fuck, I wanted her more than anything—even this wrong version of her would satiate my hunger for this chaotic blond.

But it wasn't what she needed.

I shut the voice out and locked it away for the night.

"Why are you still so hot?" She asked me.

I shrugged at her, not even sure what the hell was going on anymore, but the ridiculous question woke up a little bit of life inside of me that I had thought died.

I was really enjoying the time I had spent walking with Riley, even if she wasn't making any sense for most of it.

"I want to go to bed," Riley grabbed my elbow to support her weight as she stood herself up. She raised her eyes to my lip ring and sucked in her bottom lip like she wanted to know what it felt like moving against her.

"It's probably a good idea. You have had a long night." I agreed and cleared my throat, fighting the pure animalistic lust building in the pit of my stomach.

"Will you ever come back to see me again?" She frowned.

"Do you want me to?" I asked, curiously wondering what her answer would be.

"Ask me tomorrow." She answered with a yawn.

"Goodnight, Beautiful."  The corner of my mouth lifted in a smile as I looked into her eyes and saw the first true glimpse of hope.

"Night." Riley yawned again and began walking towards the three-story brick building at the other end of the complex. A few feet away, she paused and yelled out, "Remember to be ugly tomorrow."

"I'll try," I answered with a huge idiotic smile plastered on my face.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and watched the beautiful, clumsy girl stumble her way over the pavement. She weaved her curvy, sexy body through a set of parked cars.  Riley turned sideways and sucked in her stomach through a particularly narrow place where two side mirrors were almost kissing. She began falling and caught herself using her hand on the hood of a blue sedan.

I started to go to her side to help her and stopped myself. I wanted to ensure Riley was in her bed safe and sound, but it was a horrible idea for me to follow her. I couldn't go any further than the spot I was standing in the parking lot, or I would never be able to turn back around.

Riley and I took a huge step forward tonight and that meant something to me. It wasn't the step I wanted, but it was something even better. It felt really good and I didn't want to ruin it when we both weren't thinking clearly.

I only had to wait until tomorrow when she sobered up—until I sobered up—to see her again.

It was just tomorrow and it wasn't even like I had to wait the entire day.

Fuck, I wished it was already tomorrow.