Have you gone too far?
Do you have a problem, Remi?
He scrolled back to the photo and almost couldn’t recognize himself, not the way his pupils were blown wide, the flush on his face, the faraway look of someone clearly out of it.
He definitely didn’t recognize the outstretched hand, offering him the needle.
His memory snapped back to the moment the photo was taken.Of course, the next part hadn’t been captured.
He’d shaken his head and passed the heroin back to the person who’d handed it to him.
“Not for me,” he’d said, slurred probably.Something sizzled through him, awareness, maybe.It cleared the drugs and alcohol from his system for a bright, blinding moment.
He stumbled out of the packed hotel room, tripping over his feet in the hallway and crawling on the ground until he found the room he was looking for.
Remi pressed his forehead to the door and knocked for what felt like an eternity.When the door finally swung open, he couldn’t catch himself from falling into the room.
“Rem,” West said his name on a sigh.“Come on, buddy.”
“I’m sorry,” Remi said.His cheeks were wet, but he wasn’t crying.He didn’t cry.That’d be humiliating.
His best friend crouched down and scooped him up, helping him the rest of the way inside.
“I know you are,” West said as Remi continued to wail about how sorry he was.“I know.”
He remembered being forced to chug some water and then being tucked into bed.
He was pretty sure he was supposed to still be out of it when West had murmured, “Fuck, Remi.You gotta stop this shit.You cannot make me go through losing both of you.”
But maybe he’d misheard because Remi was too fucked up to remember anything else after that.
Chapter Twenty-One
WestshowedSkyethephoto the next day.His aunt had called him first thing in the morning, concerned about what the tabloids were reporting.
The entire band was on the tour bus, about to set off to the next city.Well, almost all of them.
Remi had slept in West’s room last night, but apparently, he wandered off at some point, and now he wasn’t answering his phone.
Ollie and Liam had searched the closest coffee shops, grocery stores, and gas stations.West called all the hospitals, and Skye walked around, holding her necklace, trying to get the shadows to tell her where Remi was, as if they could work like some locator spell.
No one could find him.
When the rock star in question finally deigned to show up, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief.
Remi wore big black sunglasses and a black hoodie that was pulled up and tied under his chin.He ignored all of their probing stares as he walked onto the bus.
“Where the hell have you been?”Skye asked.
“What’s wrong with you?”Remi said, pushing past Skye and opening the cabinets in the kitchen.“We’re leaving at ten.I’m literally fifteen minutes early.”
“No, we were supposed to leave ateight.Not spend the last two hours looking for you!”Skye said, throwing her arms up.Not spend the last two hours wondering if he was nodding off on heroin and dying in a ditch somewhere.
“Jesus.I’m sorry, alright?I got the times mixed up.Won’t happen again,” Remi said.
“Where were you, mate?We looked everywhere.You weren’t answering your phone.Goddamnit, we were worried,” Ollie said.
“I said I’m sorry!My phone’s dead.”Remi said.“Fuck, since when were you guys all about punctuality?I just took a walk.I swear I won’t fucking leave the five-block radius of the tour bus ever again.Here I was thinking I was being responsible by being early.”
