I leaned in close and inhaled.

Deep. Hard. Again.

Closing my eyes, I tilted my head back, my hands braced against the wall on either side of the mirror.

Breathe, Casey, breathe.

And I did, inhaling and exhaling slowly, knowing that it would take a while to hit, but feeling calmer already, the trembling in my limbs finally easing up, even if the pain hadn't yet.

Bloody footprints caked the floor, a macabre map of my movements that trailed all the way from the front door, up the stairs and into the bathroom where I now stood.

It had been inevitable I suppose that my first point of call as soon as I had arrived home was to head straight to the bathroom and cut some lines on the flat-top of the basin unit, using Davey's razor blade to slice up three perfect little rows. I'd probably lost a few layers of skin on my feet and was bleeding all over the tiles, but what did a bit of blood matter when I needed to get high?

And I needed it so fucking much. I opened my eyes and remembered watching my hand disappear into the void, felt the air sucking voraciously on my flesh and immediately leant down and inhaled the last one. One more for luck. One more to forget.

How much would I need to forget everything?

Brushing away the last powdery specks from my nose, I hobbled over to the shower, reaching in and turning the dial until a wispy cloud of steam rose from the water hitting the tiled floor of the cubicle. Unzipping the dress, I threw it into the corner of the room, feeling the weighty shame once again when I remembered Oscar's hand on my thigh and hating myself for wearing it, hating Davey for making me. With the hand-towel, I rubbed half-heartedly at the stains on the bathroom floor, doing little but smearing them in a wide bloodied arc and in the end, I just lay the towel out to cover the blood while I showered.

I stepped into the warmth of the stream, letting the flow hit me on the back of the neck, watching numbly as the smoky tendrils of blood and dirt snaked out from under my feet, making swirling patterns in the water as it drifted closer and closer to the plughole. I might as well have been standing on hot coals, but I bore the pain, relishing the sting and just praying, hoping, that the coke would kick in quick and make everything okay again.

Because everything would be okay. It would.

I'd read once, having had a leaflet shoved into my hand during a visit to my doctor's surgery accompanied by the usual look of weary disgust and despair, that long-term abuse had numerous side-effects. Read it, Miss Brogan the doctor had said, it might just save your life.

Yawn. Whatever.

But I had read it, skulking just inside the park entrance and probably looking like one of the junkies that queued up outside the drop-in centre in town. I'd love to have said it had been a riveting read, but there was nothing in the two-page glossy pamphlet that inspired me.

Paranoia.

Anxiety attacks.

And the plot twist? Full-blown psychosis.

The individual can lose touch with reality and experience visual and auditory hallucinations.

I'd thrown the leaflet in the nearest rubbish bin that day, but I never threw away the words, despite how much I tried to convince myself it was meaningless twaddle for do-gooders and losers. I was glad I hadn't now, I was glad that somewhere inside, I'd stored it all up, because there had to be a reason for what had happened. I needed a reason, because without one, what the fuck was I meant to do? How was I meant to process it?

No. It was a hallucination. Just my mind's way of saying, you want an escape, Casey? I'll give you an escape that will blow everything else out of the bloody water. And it had. In fact, it had blown me so far off course from reality, that I was no longer sure how to find my way back from it.

But of course, that didn't explain away my mysterious hero. He hadn't been a hallucination. Couldn't have been. I could still remember the heat of his hand in mine, the fury in his eyes. Had I hallucinated how he could manipulate the air too, just as I'd hallucinated the creature?

It terrified me to think about it, because either way it meant everything was truly fucked up.

Davey hadn't been in when Addi and I had got home, but I heard him thundering up the stairs now, calling my name as I stepped gingerly out of the shower, and I knew Addi must have phoned him. I wrapped a towel around myself and winced as he hammered on the bathroom door.

'Case? Babe? Open the door, yeah?'

My hand hesitated over the lock before opening it. It had barely clicked when he was already pushing his way through the door and I had to step back, in fear he'd step on my already-tortured feet.

'Case?' He grasped my shoulders, but his gaze swept over the bathroom, eyes-widening when he saw the bloody stains on the tiles, the remnants of my last hit, the razor blade.

'I'm sorry,' I mumbled. 'I'll clean it all up.'

'Never mind that now,' he said, pulling me against him.

I hated it sometimes when he did that, because no matter what was going on, no matter how I was feeling or how pissed off I was at him, the crook of his neck always felt like a safe-zone. If I stayed there, with my face pressed against his skin, everything would be okay. I inhaled instinctively, breathing in his scent, feeling the heat of his embrace mingling with the heat of the coke as it started to embrace my veins.

'Addi said someone was chasing you, was it someone we know? Did you recognise his face?'

I stiffened.

That face.

Goose bumps rose on my skin, prickling down my back.

'No,' I said, taking a deep breath. 'I've never seen him before.'

'You're sure? I mean, you're sure you haven't seen him hanging around, at one of the club nights, maybe?'

I frowned against his throat. 'What? No, course not. Why? Do you know who it might have been?'

This could be good. If Davey was worried about someone hanging around, everything would become real. A real person distorted by my hallucinating, coke-fucked mind and not some air-shifting ghoul with the power to pull me into an invisible void.

'No one in particular,' he replied, kissing the top of my head as he wrapped his arms tighter around me, which was a good job considering the much-needed buzz was about to deflate as quickly as a week-old party balloon. 'But I've spoken to Oscar, told him to check his CCTV out back of the club and see if he can recognise the bastard.'

'O-Oscar?' I managed to stutter. 'You told Oscar?'

'Of course I did, babe. If someone's after the gear, he needs to know about it, eh?'

Right. Of course. The drugs. Twenty grand in pills and thrills. Never mind the fact that someone had chased me through the streets and tried to kill me. Never mind the fact that my feet were screaming and there was blood all over the place. The drugs were what really mattered. They always mattered and I knew that more than anyone.

'Great. Okay.' I sniffed, pulling out of his bear-hug and sidling past him out of the bathroom.

In the bedroom, I threw off the towel and grabbed a longline t-shirt off the bed, slipping it on over my head. My hair was still wet from the shower and I used the same towel to dry the ends off, trying not to think about my stash of pills in the drawer of the dresser.

The coke wasn't going to be enough. Not this time. I could feel it, even as it sent little sparks of heat firing up my veins. A short-lived high wasn't going to whitewash the numbness swelling inside. Maybe something else from the emergency stash would help.

Davey appeared in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame and brushing a loose lock of dirty-blonde hair back behind his ear as he watched me.

'What's wrong, babe?' He was using that voice. The quiet, concerned one. The one that he rolled out every time he needed me on side.

'Oh, nothing,' I said, yanking the brush through my hair now. 'I mean, I've only been chased bare-foot through the bloody streets until my feet have barely any skin left on them. I've only put my fucking life on the line to bring you back your bag of tricks and it turns out that's all you're really worried about anyway. Not me. The bloody drugs.'

Davey chuckled, shooting me that devil-may-care grin, the same one that had started it all back in Ibiza, when I'd been dancing at the pool-party, buzzing off my head, just so I didn't have to put up with all the chav losers who'd flown out for the summer in the hope they'd get laid by girls who didn't know what class was, even if you slapped them across the sun-burnt tîts with it. Discovering that we were from the same neck of the woods had seemed like fate then. I wasn't sure what it felt like now.

'You don't really think that,' he said. 'You know you're my number one.'

'So, that's why you shagged that little tart then, is it?' I raked the brush through my hair harder, hard enough for my scalp to yelp.

'Is that what this is about?'

I wanted to tell him not to be so bloody stupid. Star Adams and her Oscar-worthy orgasmic performance was the last thing on my mind right then, but what else could I say?

Actually, babe, I've just had some Matrix-freak creature try to suck my flesh into a fiery void of Hell and I'm so fucking terrified I'm losing my mind that I'm thinking of swallowing as many pills as I can just to blot it all out?

He walked over to where I stood in front of the dresser mirror and put his hands on my waist, nuzzling at my ear as his eyes locked with mine in the glass.

'I was angry, you know that. You fucked things up, babe. Big-time. She came around, doing her usual routine and what can I say? I had a moment of weakness, but I didn't want her, not really. I was just mad at you for screwing everything up. It's you I want, you know that.'

His hand slid up my body on the outside of my t-shirt, cupping my breast, fingers expertly gliding over my nipple which traitorously hardened at his touch. He grinned and kissed my neck, sending a buzz rippling down my back, culminating between my thighs where I ached for his touch and hated myself for wanting him even though I was pissed as fuck. The kisses became more fervent, and he sucked on the skin there gently, his body pressed against mine, heat cascading down my spine.

When he pulled the t-shirt up over my breasts, I dropped the hairbrush to the floor, knowing that all was lost and that what I needed right then was not another pill. I just needed him to fuck me. I needed his hands on me, inside me. I needed him to make me scream his name and beg for more and to Hell with everything else.

I moaned as his hand wandered down my stomach, his gaze never leaving my own as his fingers slipped between my legs. I was hypnotised by the movement of his hand in the mirror, the way I began to move my hips with each stroke of his fingers, jutting forward to urge him further, deeper.

Voices drifted up from downstairs through the open bedroom door and I knew we weren't alone in the house, but right then, with the coke rushing through my veins and Davey's hand between my legs, I didn't care. Hell, they probably could have come upstairs and gotten themselves a good look, and I don't think I would have given a shit. Nothing was going to stop me or this.

Davey tugged the t-shirt up over my head, throwing it to one side and I stood there for a moment, looking at myself completely naked in the mirror, his hand on my throat, the other holding me against him as he nipped along my shoulder.

'You'll always be my number one, Case,' he murmured against my skin. 'I'll never want anyone as much as I want you. You and me against the world, eh babe?'

I'd wanted to believe that once. Almost had, if I was being honest. I'd wanted to believe I could have that kind of relationship mentality. The kind when you meet someone and it feels like nothing could penetrate how strong you are, that nothing could ever destroy what you have, just as long as you stick together.

Us against the world. Us against the whole fucking universe.

But the truth was, it had never been like that at all. We were together because we weren't so very different, Davey and I. We pushed the boundaries. We didn't give a shit. We loved excess and excitement and just lived for the buzz. We egged each other on, dared each other to go further, took each other to the edge and looked over the sheer drop and just fucking laughed at it. That's who we were. That's what this was. No big love affair. No romance. No wedding in the Seychelles and a happy-ever-after. Just fucking him even though he didn't deserve it. Just fucking him with the door open and his crew downstairs. Just fucking him with three lines of coke up my nose and in my veins.

I wriggled out of his grasp and turned around, tugging at the button on his jeans as he yanked off his t-shirt. Dropping to my knees, I pulled his jeans down low over this hips, getting a little kick to see how hard he was and I took him into my mouth, hearing his low moan as I moved my lips from tip to base. Sweeping my tongue over him, I glanced up to see him grinning down at me, his hands moving to entwine his fingers in my still-damp hair. Music began to thump through the floor, followed by peals of laughter, but that just spurred me on more and I increased the pressure, taking him in deeper, knowing how much he loved it.

The heat was building, a delicious warmth that danced over my body as he pushed against me, making small gentle thrusts into my hungry mouth. I dug my fingers into his hips and he sucked in a breath, tugging on my hair. Just when I thought he was close, he drew back, pulling me to my feet and snaking a hand around the back of my neck. Leaning in close, he grazed his lips against mine, teasing me with the softest of touches I knew would never last, not that I cared whether it did or not. All I wanted right then, all I needed, was him inside me. I didn't need gentle. I needed hard and fast and earth-fucking-shattering.

As if sensing my desperate need for him, he laughed against my mouth, before pushing his tongue inside, lapping at my own with deep, hungry strokes. I'd always loved the taste of his tongue against my own, loved the taste of him on my lips, loved tasting myself on his.

Pulling away, he pushed his jeans all the way down, tugging them off his legs as I watched, climbing onto the bed as I did so. His body was always perfection, all hard lines and toned muscle, tattoos stretching across the smooth skin of his broad chest, the tantalising trail of darker hair underneath his bellybutton. I drank him in as he walked over to the dresser, opening the drawer and giving me a good look at his arse. With my mouth watering for him, my gaze drifted upwards to the small of his back, the curve of his spine.

The scratch marks that I hadn't made.

God, I hated her. I even hated him a little bit, but not enough to stop. Instead, I let the anger fizzle through me, feeling the burn of it deep under my skin and knowing that I'd use it, I'd let the rage fuel me almost as much as the coke was. I was going to fuck him regardless, and no scratch marks from some skanky, two-bit slut was going to stop me. Not now.

He turned back to face me, brandishing the small silver foil packet in his hand and tearing off the top. I watched, enthralled, as he stood in front of me, ever the crowd-pleaser as he rolled it on, a wicked glint in his eyes that told me he was getting off on me watching him, maybe enjoying it almost as much as I was.

Grabbing my ankles, he pulled me towards him and knelt on the edge of the bed, spreading open my legs. He stayed there, looking down at me and rolling one of my nipples between his thumb and forefinger, until I thought I would scream with want. I hated being kept waiting. Hated this little moment of power he liked to hold over me, knowing full well how much I wanted to be fucked.

'Look at you,' he said. Another smile. Another maddening grin. 'You just can't get enough, can you? You're pure fucking filth, Casey Brogan.'

Just. Fucking. Fuck. Me.

And he did then, taking himself in his hand and guiding himself to the right spot, easing in slowly which I knew was another game for him. Like I said, Davey didn't do gentle.

He thrust in hard, really hard, and I cried out, not just because it felt so bloody good, but because finally I was getting what I wanted. I was getting my hit of him, the hit I'd craved, the hit I'd hoped would make me forget.

Only the harder and deeper he moved inside me, the more I remembered.

It came at me in sharp, blinding flashes, the impact of each memory making me cry out, the impetus of each thrust of Davey's hips intensifying everything - the feel of his breath on my face, the way his hand gripped mine tightly, the fierce fire in his eyes. Everything became about him, the man who'd saved me, as my mind overwhelmed me with images I didn't want to see, drowned me in sensations I didn't want to feel and yet, even then, as I desperately tried to tear myself away from it all, I found myself gripping Davey even tighter. I closed my eyes to it all, willing myself to stay with him, to stay here.

Fucking fight, damn it, the man whispered into my ear.

I came hard.