One step at a time, I make it up the stairs. I walk to Margot’s room, placing my ear against her door.
“Margot?” I repeat, tapping my knuckles against the wood.
Again, nothing.
My heart bounces against my ribcage. Fear ices my veins, and I squeeze my eyes shut to compose myself.
She’s just sleeping. The thump I heard was something falling off the bed, or her fist hitting the wall in her sleep. The shuffling and moaning was a bad dream.
Everything is fine.
Yet even before I push the door open, I know that everything isn’t fine.
Far from fine.
Everything is about to fall apart.
24
Luca
When I get back to Farcliff Castle, I make my way back to my chambers and flop down onto my bed. My body is still buzzing from what happened in the pool house. For the first time in years, I’m not waking up with debilitating nerve pain.
I can walk. I can move. I can laugh, and talk, and feel Ivy’s hands on my body without feeling like I’m lying on a bed of pins and needles. I haven’t needed a painkiller in days. I haven’t smoked in over a week.
Turning my head to the side, I see a fresh bottle of painkillers on my bedside table.
The doctor must have brought it while I was out.
I take the little white bottle in my hands, turning it around and listening to the pills rattle inside. These pills have been everything to me. They’ve blanketed me in a haze of numbness for the past five years. They’ve been my crutch ever since my body failed me.
At first, painkillers helped me live. They helped me learn to walk again, and made it possible for me to live my day-to-day life.
Now, I realize that I’ve been relying on them for something different.
It’s not physical numbness I’ve been chasing. It’s the chemical haze in my mind that has attracted me. I shake the bottle again, sighing.
If Ivy can make me feel brand new again, why do I need these?
Maybe the doctors are right, and a lot of my nerve pain is psychosomatic. It’s created by my mind—not my body.
At first, when the doctor told me that the pain might be in my head, I was deeply, deeply offended. How dare he tell me that I’m imagining it? How dare he insinuate that my body was healthy, when I couldn’t even lay in bed without feeling like my spine was being torn apart by a giant’s hands?
I realize now that the doctor may have been right.
It’s not that I was imagining it, it’s that my mind was sick—not my body.
Now, I’m pain-free. Without drugs. Without pills, or weed, or alcohol.
Without Cara.
It hits me like a bolt of lightning. Over the past three weeks, I’ve thought of Cara less than I did in a single day over the past five years. I haven’t felt like gouging my eyeballs out with my own fingernails, or tearing the skin off my flesh one strip at a time.
To put it simply, I haven’t cared about her at all.
Blowing the air out of my lungs, I swing my legs over the side of the bed. I take the bottle of pills over to the ensuite bathroom and unscrew the top.
Frowning, I notice that the seal is broken.
Underneath the cotton ball at the top of the bottle, I pour out a couple of pills into my palm.
Staring at them, something stirs in the depths of my chest.
You should take a couple, for old time’s sake, a voice croaks in my head. Chase the numbness once more. Feel nothing today, and then tomorrow you can give it up. You can stop anytime you want—why not enjoy it one last time?
The thoughts seep into my bloodstream, and I stare at the pills. My hand begins to shake.
Just one won’t hurt. Dump the rest.
I pour the contents of the bottle into the toilet before I change my mind, and then turn my attention to the six pills that remain in my palm.
They feel heavy. All I have to do is angle my palm downward, and they’ll tumble into the toilet with the others.
But I don’t.
I stare at them, listening to the voice in my head.
Come on, it says. It’ll be fun. Get high. Get numb. One last time.
I realize I’m trembling. I look up and see myself in the mirror, shocked at what looks back at me. The hollowed-out cheeks, the dark eyes.