PROLOGUE
My entire life changed on a cold Tuesday in January.
“Why weren’t you there to pick me up from the airport, Josh?” I asked, throat scratchy.
He clenched his jaw. I used to think it looked sexy. “Reece. Let’s not do this right now. You should rest.”
I couldn’t really rest, though—not after all the steroids I’d just swallowed. And I wanted answers.
Weight braced against the kitchen counter, I threw back the last of my pills, grimaced, and chased them down with a big gulp of water. God, if they didn’t kill me directly, the taste sure as fuck would.
No,I thought.I refuse for that to be the last thing I eat before I croak.
My last meal should be something good, like pasta. Or tacos. Or beef tips and gravy over mashed potatoes.
Fuck, when was the last time I ate mashed potatoes?
My stomach roiled. Too bad I was far too queasy at the thought of consuming anything more than a handful of saltine crackers right now.
Double vision was a bitch.
Steroids were a bitch.
My boyfriend forgetting me at the airport because he was probably fucking someone else was a bitch.
Finding out I had multiple sclerosis at thirty-four years old was amother-fuckingbitch.
I set the glass on the counter and watched as an identical ghostly image drifted up toward the right before I blinked, snapping it into place.
It drifted again…Blink.Back into place.
Two water glasses…Blink.One.
Progress. A day and a half ago, I couldn’t even do that.
I should go lie down.
“Tell me why you weren’t there. I need to hear you say it.” Why was I so calm? I should be crying, or maybe screaming. I’d already done both, but not because of him.
The room spun when I turned. Both Joshes stood in the kitchen doorway, shoulders up around their ears.
Blink.One Josh.
He didn’t reply. He stepped aside when I shuffled by, one hand braced against the wall while I made my way toward the stairs. I took one step up and stopped, leaning heavily on the railing while the carpeted floor tilted beneath me.
Woah.Too quick.
Josh rushed forward and grabbed my arm. “You always do this. You steamroll in at the worst possible moment. We don’t need to talk about this right now. You don’t need to talk about this right now.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “And you always do that. Dance around the fucking question. Now just give me a minute.”
Forehead braced in the hand not supporting my weight, I suddenly felt very heavy.
I wanted to sleep. The kind so deep that for just a few seconds after I woke up, I wouldn’t remember who I was, where I was, orany of the awful shit life had thrown at me in the last forty-eight hours.
That sleep would evade me for a while, though. My body vibrated as the steroids kicked in. Twelve hundred and fifty milligrams worth. Twenty-five pills a day, for three more days. Enough to kill a horse.
Well, not really. Or not enough to kill me, anyway, and while I was a big guy, I didn’t weigh more than a horse.
