"Riley, baby, please. I need you so badly. Riley, it hurts. I can't do this."

Rolling like thunder through the tomb I was buried in, my dad's choked voice called out the name of the only girl I had ever loved. His thick desperation demanded her obedience. Would she come to him every time he called the same way my mom always did? What the fuck was he even doing here? No one had invited him to this party.

Lost in the haze of my hatred, my eyes snapped open and I searched every nook and cranny for the terrifying man who tortured my mother for years. My limbs seized up while sweat beaded at the nape of my neck and rolled down the center of my spine.

Corey Miller was taunting me from every shadowed corner of the room, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Fuck, it had been a long time since I thought about his name. Just thinking it caused a wave of fear to crash over me. Acknowledging his existence only strengthened his power over me. It was time to end his reign of terror once and for all.

I was going to kill him.

I hated the bastard so fucking much—I fucking hated him. The selfish psychopath only ever cared about himself. He always wanted everyone in the world to be as miserable as he had been. Any time he even sniffed out the slightest bit of light and happiness, he snuffed that shit out quicker than a candle flame in the middle of a tornado.

Why did he always have to try to take everything from me? First, my mom, my childhood, and then the dreams of the man I was supposed to be. But it still wasn't ever enough for him. Corey Miller would never be satisfied until he took away the best thing I ever had.

Riley.

He wanted her too.

He wasn't going to win this time. I would never let him have her. His last breath would be as I wrapped my fingers around his throat and squeezed. My dad deserved a slow, agonizing death— a complete carbon copy of the one he had given to the little boy lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of his own blood and tears.

"Riley. Please, Riley."

My lips moved, but it was his voice seeping out from between them. Clenching my fist, I smashed it against my temple to make the distorted noise stop. When it didn't go away, I struck harder. My knuckles came away slick and covered with something dark, but it wouldn't end. I hammered the side of my head until a trail of blood trickled down from the rings in my eyebrow into my eyelashes.

I closed my eyes and slumped back into the chair, letting myself fade away into the dark again.

A few hours later, I startled myself awake for the millionth time. Riley's name was still the only word falling from my lips. Every time I closed my eyes and drifted away into the nothingness, I would see the beautiful girl's vibrant green eyes pleading with me to stop until her voice became hoarse and she went silent. Ten thousand blades twisted inside my gut when she laid her head in my lap to grieve. She held my knees while sobbing for our lost baby until she disappeared. No matter how hard it was to watch her that way, not having her at all was so much worse.

I had to keep chasing her and bringing her back to me.

Just a little bit more—one more time, just so I could see her again.

At some point between now and my last boot-up, the sky disappeared again into darkness. Outside, the only window in the room was as bleak and grim as I felt on the inside. The perfect fucking backdrop to the desolation and despair I was drowning in.

The tourniquet was still wrapped around my arm from the last time, making the next part a little easier. Three empty bags were strewn around me, more than enough to kill a fucking herd of buffalo. I should have been more worried about how I got that much. I didn't have that kind of cash on me when I came here. The full baggie of pills was still in my pocket, left untouched. There was no way I could have wrangled up enough for the amount of heroin I had blown through without the pills being significantly lighter.

But I couldn't spare even half of a fuck.

I was too aware of my surroundings and everything ached as I started to come back to reality.

I went to work on the poison and lined up the next syringe to stick the needle in again, injecting as much as I could fit into my veins. My whole arm burned from the unrelenting abuse. The crook of my elbows contained too many marks splattered in a chaotic way where I had injected myself hastily. I was going to have to switch to someplace else next time I shot up—if there was a next time.

My vision became blurry, with my eyes narrowing down into tiny uncooperative slits. Feeling the heaviness of my own weight, my body slumped down again on the musty chair. The floorboards groaned in protest with my shifting weight and I wasn't sure how much longer they would last. It felt poetic in some odd, unbalanced way. Being right here, alone and decaying as the house around me sunk back down into the earth to swallow me whole.

My body was blazing in the flames and my head throbbed. My pulse sped up and faded as I fought to breathe through the ash and smoke around me. Sharp shallow breaths left my lungs as they collapsed.

This was it.

"Ezra! Ezra!" Riley's muffled voice called me from the other side of the blazing, endless tunnel I was trapped in underground.

It was good to hear her voice one last time before I was lost.

The vision of my girl came back once again to save me before I let go of the last finger holding onto to the ledge. Below me was a pit full of quicksand, hungry for me to slip and sink under. The Riley in the room was a mirage of my own making, but somehow it was enough to regain my grip to hold on just a little bit longer.

My body was shifted and someone began digging their greedy hands into my pocket. Just another fucking wasted junkie searching for something that didn't belong to them. They could take what I had. It wasn't like I would need all of it to finish the job.

I wasn't ever leaving this room again anyway.

A sharp crack sounded in the silent room and the side of my face slightly stung. Something or someone hit me across the face. Warm hands began roaming over the hard planes of my body, touching me eerily similar to the girl I wanted to die for. My body burst back to life under the sweet pressure. Every cell crackled and shivered simultaneously like a bolt of lightning zapped me.

This last batch I mainlined was the real deal. I would need to figure out how to get more before the new sensation went away.

I opened my eyes to the most captivating jade eyes. They were boring a concerned hole through my hollow body. Fuck, my girl was so beautiful. It wasn't just her body I craved. I wanted everything about that damn stubborn, feisty girl.

"Riley." I sighed, cupping the side of her troubled face.

My muscles gave out and my head fell back against the chair, launching me back down into the darkness again.

"Ezra, look at me. We need to leave now." My Riley hallucination demanded.

The worried girl used something resembling the same tone and pitch my mom always did when she wasn't giving me a choice. Riley Davis would have made one hell of a mom. Her spirit was so fierce and full of love—almost to a fault. But I fucked up and took that away from her. It was my fault she wasn't going to get the chance to have the life she deserved.

All my fucking fault.

Riley's hopeless cries woke me up again. The sound coming from someplace deep inside her tore me into pieces. I hated it when she was in pain or suffering, even if it was just in my head this time.

I had to make it better.

"Don't cry." I opened my eyes to stare at the heartbroken girl again.

My breath caught in my throat as I looked at her—really looked at her.

The girl kneeling before me wasn't the picture-perfect copy etched into my memories. She wasn't wearing the dirty little blue and black plaid skirt with the torn fishnets, or wasn't covered in the sticky dark red blood running down her legs.

In fact, her hair was even different.

The burden she carried was set deeper in her shoulders than I could have dreamt up. If that wasn't enough evidence to persuade me, little frown lines creased the edges of her soft pink lips like she had forgotten how to smile. This Riley wasn't a drug-induced delusion this time. My girl was too real to be an imposter.

Finally remembering where I was, my heart began racing. My brain was shouting at me to stand up and pick her up so I could get her as far away from this place as I could. But, unfortunately, the wires connecting my body had been severed and nothing I tried to move worked.

"What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here. It's not safe." I panicked, forcing the words to come out.

"I'm here to take you home. Please, Ezra, I want to leave." Riley trembled on her knees in front of me.

I battled to hold on to consciousness as my body revolted against me.

"Stay awake a little bit longer. Just fucking stay awake." I willed myself to fight.

But it was no use. I fell under again.

"Ezra, I need you." Riley's sweet voice was all around me, seeping into every pore.

"I need you too, baby." I smiled, already drunk on her.

"Damnit, then help me so we can get out of here."

Riley slid her hands through the space under my armpits. She clasped me around the chest and pulled me forward. My arms slipped up around her neck like she was magnetized, allowing her enough room and a better angle to work with. The tiny girl grunted and swore as she summoned the strength to help my oversized body to my feet.

Once I was upright, Riley tucked her small frame under my right side. I used her shoulder like a crutch even though the angle was awkward. Atrophy had set in from the lack of blood flow and my muscles were shaking under my weight. Her steady hand was gripping the front of my shirt on my stomach, about three inches away from my dick. But I couldn't take the time to enjoy the sensation and lose myself in it. All my energy was needed to keep me focused on getting her the hell out of there before anything terrible happened to her. My foot slid forward barely lifting off the ground as I fumbled wobbly against the floorboards.

"That's good. Just a few steps." Riley kept encouraging me, giving me just enough strength to keep from collapsing to the floor.

My arm bumped the door frame, throwing me off balance as soon as we started down the hall. The jostle was enough to distract me away from the here and now. Within seconds, I was turning my head back to the room to look at the mess I had left behind.

There was still a little more heroin left in the room. It would be a waste to leave it behind for someone else to find. I could go back and make it disappear quickly.

Riley would never even know.

Like she was reading my mind, Riley tightened her hold on me and forced me forward into the hallway, taking each deliberate step slowly. Instinctively, I squeezed her harder each time she moved us forward. Losing the connection between us would put me right back inside that room. I would never be able to walk away from the drug singing my name if it weren't for her by my side.

"That's it. Just keep walking." She hissed under my weight as she shifted a bit to tackle the stairs at the end of the hall.

Sandwiched between Riley and the wall, she managed to maneuver me downstairs. The power this girl had was limitless. After everything she had been through, she was still standing and had conjured up enough stability for me. We started moving towards the door smoothly until the heroin made its last rally cry in my veins.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some guy shooting up across the room. I lost Riley's warmth as she began to turn me around and I broke away from her to see if he was willing to share a little.

My skin began itching and a cold sweat had broken out over my body as I inched away from Riley. The only thing I could see was the dark liquid he was pushing into his veins.

I was so close I could taste the release on the tip of my tongue.

And then it was just gone.

Because all I could taste was her.