I can also hear loud crying in one of the back rooms and a lot of banging. It sounds like someone is being tortured.

I glance at Donny, who’s still got his tire iron out. “Where’s Tristan?”

A sly grin curves up on his face. “I’ll tell you just as soon as you show me where the drugs are.”

More violent water crashes over me because I think they’ve already done something to Tristan. The water’s about to push me down, bury me alive. Yet I somehow keep walking, keep breathing, keep living this piece-of-shit life.

Donny follows me down the hallway and toward my room. I pause beside Delilah’s door, the crying and banging coming from the other side.

“Your friend Dylan gave up his girlfriend pretty easy to get himself out of this mess,” Donny says, nodding toward the door. “Something you maybe should have considered.”

I force back the vomit in my throat as the crying gets louder and louder, then suddenly stops. How did I get to this place? How did I think living this life would be better than being dead?

Donny nudges me along and I go into my room, feeling this strange numbness wash over me, like my mind’s trying to shut down. As I’m getting the crystal out from under my mattress, I notice that a small area of my roof has caved in, right where the water stain used to be, and now there’s a giant hole in its place. Everything’s falling apart and I don’t want to fix it anymore.

I get what crystal I have left and toss it to Donny. “Here you go.”

He catches it and then stares down at the small quantity in his hand. “Are you fucking kidding me? You said you had a few ounces.” He holds up the bag. “This is barely a fucking line.”

I shrug. “I guess I miscalculated how much I had.”

He clutches the bag in one hand and the tire iron in the other. “You said you knew where Dylan’s stash was.”

“I lied.” I’m surprisingly composed.

He stares at me for a moment, baffled that I’d screw him over, although I have no idea why, since that’s what everyone seems to do to everyone else around here. His bafflement shifts to anger, his face tinting red as he raises the tire iron to hit me. I’m disappointed that he doesn’t grab the gun, because it’d be over more quickly. But instead he hammers his fist into my face. I don’t even flinch as he collides with my jaw. When I fall to the floor, I don’t get up, even when he kicks me in the rib cage repeatedly, steps on my hand, stomps on my face, asking me why I seem to enjoy getting my ass kicked. I keep waiting for him to pull the gun out, but he never does. I wonder if he knows just how much I want this to all be over, that that’s why I don’t run. Maybe he can see it in my eyes that I want to die and that by not killing me he’s making this even more painful. I don’t know, but what I do know is that when he walks away without killing me, I feel disappointed. I lie there for a while on the floor before I finally sit up, my lip bleeding, my whole body feeling exactly how it did the first time Donny beat me up.

After a while Delilah appears in my doorway. Her shirt ripped and her shorts unbuttoned. Her face is smeared with mascara, her lip is split open, and large welts cover her arms and thighs.

“You should go,” she says numbly. “Dylan’s not going to let you walk out of here breathing, if you’re here when he gets back.”

I put one of my hands down on the floor and ungracefully push myself to my feet, my body aching in protest. “Where is he?” I ask, hunching over.

She shrugs, her face emotionless. “He took off after he offered me up, but I’m sure he’ll be back.”

I brace my hand on the wall for support, feeling sorry for her. “Do you need any help with anything?” It sounds so lame when she looks so broken and I can barely stand.

She laughs, but it sounds hollow. “You’ve got other problems to fix,” she says, turning her back to me. “Before you showed up, Trace and a few guys took Tristan out back. And he was barely coherent, since he just shot up.”

“Shit!” I hobble out the door, pushing her out of the way as I stumble down the hall. The pain in my body is blinding, but I know it’s going to be minimal compared to the internal pain I’m going to feel if anything happened to Tristan. If I’m too late again, like I have been in the past. Always too late.

I limp across the balcony for the stairs, past memories swarming through my head like bees as I run into the unknown again, not knowing what waits for me ahead.

“Lexi, God no!” I cry out to the stars. “Please don’t leave me.”

I drag my ass down the stairs, my heart knocking in my chest, my skin coated with sweat. My legs are so sore it feels like they’re going to give out on me and my hand might be broken, but physical pain is nothing. I’ve felt a lot of it over the last few years and it’s the most bearable part of life.

Her body goes limp in my arms, her head slumping against my chest, which is split open, spilling out blood—life.

I look into Lexi’s eyes, but there’s nothing left inside them, and I know that pretty soon nothing will be left inside me, so I lie down on the ground with her and take her hand, allowing myself to bleed out.

The Cadillac is gone, but I’m not sure if I’m relieved or not, since it means that whatever they were going to do to Tristan, they’ve probably already done to him. I limp off toward the back of the apartment building, my arms and legs sore and stiff, my movements lethargic.

Everything is stilling inside me—I can feel it. Darkness sets in as my life slips away. I can feel myself being pulled somewhere and I swear I can feel Lexi with me, so close, yet at the same time so far away. Don’t leave me. But she is, or maybe I’m leaving her. I feel myself being pulled back, people calling out my name. I hear the beeping of machines, feel needles sinking into my skin, giving me life, and I hate them for it. I want them to take it away…

I round the corner and see someone lying on the ground, arms and legs sprawled out, unmoving. Hang on. I rush up to Tristan and I shudder at the sight of his face, slit open and bleeding onto the rocks below his head. His eye is so engorged it blends in with his face and his arm is scraped raw. The only good thing about the sight is that he’s breathing, and when I check his pulse, it’s erratic and unsteady, but I’m not sure if it’s because he’s on smack or because he’s been beaten up.

“God dammit, Tristan,” I say as he rolls over, groaning about needing it to go away while his body trembles. “Why did you have to screw Trace over?”

“I…don’t…know,” he mutters, pain straining his voice, and his syllables are all messed up so it’s hard to understand. “I…fucked up. And I tried to fix it—give them money. But it wasn’t enough.”

I’m not sure what to do, but I know I’ve got to get him out of here, in case the guys come back or Dylan shows up with his stupid gun. I’m not even sure where the hell they went, if they’re planning on returning, or if they’re done here. The entire situation is a mess and I need to get Tristan up and out of here, because from the look of him, if there’s a next time, he won’t make it out alive.

I drag my fingers roughly through my hair, looking around at the desert behind me and then at the stores and old houses to the side of our building. I need to find somewhere we can hide out for a little while, someone who might let us stay with them. I need a lot of things at the moment, like a line or two because I feel like I’m melting under the pressure, heat, and emotions inside me. If I’m going to handle this—keep it together enough to help Tristan—I can’t be crashing.

Blowing out a breath, I lower my hand and reach down and grab hold of Tristan’s arms. “All right, we got to get you out of here,” I say, then lift him as best I can and try to get him to his feet, grunting and cursing as he puts most of his weight against me.

I manage to get him standing, but I’m not sure if he’s even aware of it—if he’s aware of anything going on right now or if he’s got too much smack in his system, or whatever he was on when they showed up. I get his arm around my neck and then support most of his weight as he drags his feet and struggles to walk back toward the front of the building.

I can barely walk myself and I end up going to Nancy’s, since it’s close and she’s a somewhat decent person and I know she’ll probably let us crash at her place, although I’m sure we’ll owe her for it. But I’ll figure out that part later. Right now I just need to get Tristan inside and a few lines into my body because it’s screaming at me to feed this, otherwise I’m going to break. And I can’t break yet.

Tristan leans against me as I knock on Nancy’s door. She doesn’t even look surprised when she answers it. She’s wearing a robe, her hair pulled up, and she easily lets us in.

“I knew he was going to get into trouble one of these days,” she says as she shuts the door behind us and I help Tristan sit down on the torn sofa in the living room. When I move my arm away from him, he collapses to his side and presses his puffy cheek to the cushion. It’s actually oozing out blood on her plaid seventies-themed couch, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

“Do you have something to clean his cuts up with?” I ask Nancy as she stands near the back of the couch, watching Tristan with fascination. Her pupils are dilated and ringed with red and she keeps sniffing. I know she’s on what I want and I wonder if she has any she’ll share, but then again, if she does, it probably won’t be without a price. But I don’t really care. I just want it. Need to breathe again. Forget everything that’s happened over the last couple of minutes. Hours. Days. Forget who I am and what I’m feeling. Things are so much easier that way.