"No, William."
"You don't..." I have to stop. Swallow. The effort of speaking sends my heart into another sprint. "...don't know what this is. Without it. What I'll be. Three days. Maybe four. I'll..."
I can't get the rest out. My teeth are chattering too hard. But in my head, the words keep going.
I'll see things that aren't there. I'll beg you. I'll scream at you. I'll say anything to make you give it back.
"I don't care," she says,like she heard every word I couldn't say. "I don't care what you'll be like."
"Can't do this."
"You can."
"Can't."
She leans closer. Her eyes are bright. Wet. But she doesn't blink.
"I read your journals."
The words cut through everything. Through the shaking, the pain, the desperate animal screaming in my skull. She read them. She knows. Every honest thought I've ever put on paper. Every weakness. Every confession I wrote was because the alternative was a bottle or a bag.
She knows what I am.
And she's still here. On the floor. Hands shaking. Telling me no.
"I know exactly what you can do." Her voice wavers, but she doesn't look away. "And I know what that shit is doing to you. So you can hate me for this. You can scream at me for the next four days. But I'm not letting you crawl to that drawer."
I stare at her. My body screams at me to fight. To shove her aside. To drag myself the last six feet because the cocaine is right there, right fucking there, and she's the only thing between me and it.
But my arms won't move. My legs won't move. I'm pinned to this floor by my own failing body.
And somewhere underneath the craving and the panic, there's a part of me that knows she's right.
The part that wrote those journals. The part that counted days sober and felt something when the numbers got high enough.
The part I've been trying to kill for months.
I close my eyes. Stop fighting.
She takes it as permission.
I hear her stand. Hear her footsteps cross to the dresser. The scrape of the drawer. A pause as she finds the false bottom. Then another sound. The crinkle of plastic.
"No," I whisper it. "No, no, no."
Her footsteps. Down the hallway.
The bathroom door.
"Aoife. Don't."
The toilet flushing.
Something in my chest collapses. Not my heart. Something worse. The last wall between me and everything I've been hiding from.
She comes back. Crouches beside me. Drops an empty plastic bag and a rolled-up note onto the floor like they're contaminated.
"That was everything?" Her voice is steadier now. Barely.
