It sounds like he’s on the verge of tearing the sink off the wall, so I gently place a hand on his arm in an effort to calm him down. But he only flinches and steps away from me.
“I need a hit,” he hisses, his eyes flashing to the cabinet above. He flings open the mirrored door and reaches up to the top shelf, his hand grabbing a wad of cash. I notice the collection of prescription pills and tablets in bottles carelessly scattered along the shelves. But that’s not what I care about right now.
Tyler slams the cabinet door shut again and turns around, but I quickly step in front of him and bump into his chest, blocking the door. “Don’t even think about it,” I warn through gritted teeth.
“Eden,” Tyler says, leaning toward me as his wet lips hover by my cheek, his breath cool against my skin. “I. Need. A. Hit. Right. Now.”
I glance down at the cash clutched tightly in his hand as I take a step back. My eyes flash back up to lock with his. “Because coke is totally going to fix everything, right?”
“Eden,” he says again, his voice hoarse. “Move your cute ass out of my way before you really piss me off. I gotta meet Declan.”
“I’m not letting you,” I snap. Now I’m furious. Of course he has to resort to drugs. It’s just so typical and just so pathetic of him. What is he thinking? I don’t want to deal with something, so let’s fix it by ruining my life? Drugs are for stalling.
Tyler slams his palm flat against the wall by my ear. “It’s not fucking up to you!”
But what he doesn’t know is that it is up to me whether he goes or not, because he inadvertently told me how to stop him. So as he presses his lips together and stares at me, I reach over for the edge of the door, fumbling before I finally get hold of it. And before Tyler can even notice what I’m doing, I swing the door closed, spinning around and shoving my weight against it until it stiffly clicks into place.
The fucked-up lock, as Tyler called it, just became my best friend.
Chapter 24
The small bathroom falls into a tense silence. My heart is beating fast and hard. Under the fluorescent lighting, I can clearly see the range of emotions in Tyler’s green eyes. There’s a hint of surprise hidden in the outrage.
“Are you kidding me?” He glances around the room as if looking for a window that’s never existed, like if he stares at the four walls long enough an exit will suddenly appear. But there’s exactly that: four walls and a locked door.
“No,” I say, feeling impressed with myself for making a split-second decision, and making the right one. The right decision was to prevent Tyler from leaving. I don’t even mind that I’ve dragged myself into this claustrophobic complication with him and that we might be locked in here for hours. Perhaps the only way to unlock this door is to take it off the hinges or ram it down. Perhaps we might have to wait it out until morning when the neighborhood handyman can come to our rescue. Perhaps I just don’t care.
Tyler, on the other hand, does care. Getting out is his only concern, and the locked door is the one thing that’s in his way. He steps around me, his shoulder brushing mine as he nudges me to the side. His long fingers wrap themselves around the handle of the door and he vigorously shakes it, willing the lock to release itself, but his efforts achieve nothing.
“Just give up,” I say as I study the way the veins in his arms tense as he yanks at the handle before finally accepting the fact that tonight he will not be meeting Declan Portwood.
He places both hands on the back of his neck before straining to face the ceiling, letting out several slow breaths as he attempts to calm down. I like the way he sighs, the way his eyes shut for a moment as his shoulders and chest rise and drop back down, sinking low as the oxygen leaves his body. And when he has gathered his thoughts, he tilts his face down and turns to fix with me with an indignant, aggravated look.
“I’m sorry that I actually care,” I tell him. He’s awaiting an explanation and perhaps a real apology, but he’s not going to get either. “You’re just going to have to find another way to distract yourself. An alternative. One that won’t kill you.”
He glances around the room again, still hoping to discover a way out, but only ends up meeting his own eyes in the reflection of the cabinet mirror. He can’t look at himself for long, at the fire within the depths of his eyes, and soon he’s staring at the floor. “You were becoming my distraction,” he mutters, but his voice is not as gruff as it was several minutes ago. “But apparently I can’t have you.”