Hope.
That single word was all encompassing. It bled into our lives as something that divided us—a concept she turned away from. It proved that despite our similarities, we were on different paths because of the choices we’d made.
When I finally emerged from the bathroom, my mom was lying on the bed, arms stretched wide. Her eyes were rolled back and vomit slid down the side of her hollow cheek as she convulsed.
I tried everything to resuscitate her. Despite my efforts, my mother died in my arms. The paramedics didn’t go above the call of duty to save a junkie—nothing beyond a few chest compressions.
What made the situation unbearable was that I told them I didn’t know her. I didn’t want the burden of having to pay for her funeral or cremation.
Exposed for what I was, guilt consumed me. I had sunk so low that I sent my own mother to an unmarked grave to save me the expense. After they took her body away, I spent the next three days in her room, overcome with grief. What kind of person had I become? She’d abandoned me and in the end, I had abandoned her. Loving someone is being selfless, and what exactly had I done in our relationship to demonstrate that I was anything but my mother’s daughter?
I took another swig of whiskey from the bottle, wiping my wet cheeks while sitting on the bathroom floor and staring at a pile of pills on my lap. I’d always been the strong one who kept going when the world went to hell. People looked at my bright hair and smile and never knew the life I led or the painful past I had survived. No one ever wants to look that deep. But it didn’t matter because I didn’t want anyone’s pity; the challenges life had thrown at me had only made me want to fight harder to overcome them.
All I’d ever desired was respect. I didn’t want to be judged for where I came from, but where I was going.
“Oh, Reno.” I wept as memories assailed me. “I wish I could do it all over again. I didn’t deserve you.”
Truly, I didn’t. Part of me wished he cared about me as much as I did him, but he could never love a human. I’d learned a lot in my short stint in the Breed world—most looked upon humans as third-class citizens. I was just a curiosity to him, and men like Reno didn’t pine over women who left them for another man. They got over it and moved on. They sought out gregarious, flirtatious women who had their lives together and balances in check. I, on the other hand, was Romance Novel Girl, living in a fantasy world.
“I always knew those books would be the death of me,” I murmured.
My long legs stretched out wide in front of me. My jean shorts disappeared beneath my oversized black shirt, which was heavy between my legs from a pile of multicolored pills. I wanted to see what my mother had chosen over me, so I’d spent the last hour staring at the tiny pills and tossing them into the toilet one at a time.
It was therapeutic.
“April! Open the door right now!” a man’s voice demanded from outside. Not outside the bathroom door, but even farther. Whoever it was hammered on the door several times while I took another swig from the bottle.
I hadn’t truly grieved her loss, and this was my night to get it all out of my system before I moved on. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I didn’t have the heart to call Rose and tell her our mom was dead, although she probably would have just hung up. But the memory of the woman who gave life to me lying lifeless in my arms shattered me.
I tossed a pill into the toilet and spouted off another reason why I hated her. But I was honestly running out of reasons. The main ones had already been addressed, and now I was left with some of the good memories, which made it harder to let go.
A loud crash sounded in the other room and I drunkenly lifted my eyes. The bathroom door swung open in front of me and hit the wall with a thud.
“Hi, Trevor.”
His eyes were wide and staring at the pills in my lap.
“Babe, what did you do?” he breathed, moving quickly until he was kneeling on the floor.
“You’re so handsome, Trev.”
He gripped my jaw and forced my mouth open. The next thing I knew, Trevor shoved his finger down my throat and forced me to gag.
“Stop it!” My words were garbled.
But his hand wrapped around the back of my neck and he pushed his finger in deeper. I bit his knuckle and shook my head until he let go.
“April, how many? How long ago?”
“You’re crowding my space,” I argued.
“Get out,” a man’s voice commanded.
“What is this, a party?” I ran my fingers through Trevor’s perfect hair.
A few pills scattered across the floor and when I glanced up, Reno filled the doorway.
“Why is he here? He’s not really here, is he?”
Trevor grabbed my wrist and shouted, “How many did you take?”