Don’t go.
Catherine didn’t move, despite the words her mind screamed silently.
Please don’t go.
She sat on the edge of the bed, while Cross strolled out of the walk-in closet with a pile of clothes in his arms. He dumped the items uncaringly into the duffle bag. His hand reached out to her, and his thumb stroked her cheekbone.
Stay with me.
Catherine turned her head into Cross’s palm, and kissed his skin.
“You good?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she lied.
She was dying.
Inside, she was blackening, rotting, and dead.
She hadn’t been good for a while.
She was better with Cross.
I need you here.
“This one is going to be a while,” he said, referring to his trip.
Catherine nodded, but stayed silent.
Cross headed for his side of the bed, and she felt the loss of his hand on her before it was even gone. He pulled out that gold-tinted Eagle he loved so much from under his pillow, checked the clip, and slid it back in with a snap, before putting it back.
“You know where that is and how to use it, if you need it, babe.”
“Thought you said it would break my wrist?”
“A broken wrist is worth a living Catherine,” he murmured, dropping a kiss to the top of her head.
Then, he was heading back into the walk-in closet again.
Don’t go.
It’s black in my mind without you.
I’m not okay.
Please don’t go …
Catherine didn’t—couldn’t—speak up. Her screaming thoughts echoed through a catacomb, but stuck to her tongue like tar. She couldn’t get them out.
Cross was checking his phone as he came out of the closet once more, saying, “Shit, my flight got rescheduled. It’s a half hour earlier, now. I’ve got to go.”
Don’t …
“You’re going to call me, right?” Catherine asked.
“As much as I can.”
You help me to breathe.
It’s easier when you’re here.
Cross came to stand in front of her, and his fingers slid under the line of her jaw. Catherine tipped her head back to take his kiss. She sucked in one last, large gulp of air.
It was going to hurt to do that for the unforeseeable future.
It would hurt to even breathe.
“We’re good, right?” he asked.
I am broken.
I am wrong.
Don’t go.
“We’re perfect,” she said.
That was the truth.
It was her that was a lie.
She took one last kiss from him, and stayed on the bed as he gathered his duffle and headed out of the bedroom. She didn’t want to say goodbye at the door. She might not make it back to the bedroom where she wanted to stay until he got back.
Catherine heard the front door slam.
Her chest tightened painfully.
Alone.
Lost.
Too quiet.
Black mind.
Tired.
Restless.
Without.
Why did you go?
Don’t you see me?
Catherine needed to breathe; the anxiety in her heart and mind started to build like a fast rushing wave that she couldn’t escape. The panic spiked higher; her fear of being alone and broken and frightened by her own mind and a body that felt dirty when it wasn’t being held by someone who adored only her.
Before she knew it, she was in full meltdown mode on the edge of the bed, a fucking mess, hungover, sobbing, and unable to get enough air in to satisfy her need.
One breath … two.
Two breaths … three.
That had always helped her before. Always kept her steady.
It did nothing now.
Catherine stumbled her way to the kitchen, and pulled open the fridge. There, she found something that helped. At least, for a little while. She downed a bottle of white wine she needed for cooking.
She was drunk.
She was stupid.
She was alone.
She could breathe.
Catherine stared at the ceiling of the bedroom, unmoving on the bed.
She hurt.
Her whole body ached.
She didn’t know why.
She just wanted to be numb.
Her alarm had gone off two hours ago. She let it ring through. Five reminder alarms went off, too, but she didn’t bother to move. She missed her first class. She was late for her second. She was well on her way to skipping the whole day altogether.
She’d already missed three days that week.
She hadn’t even been sleeping, simply staring. She couldn’t sleep. Her dreams were not nice places lately. Her dreams were not dreams at all.
They were nightmares.
Her phone rang, and for a moment, Catherine thought it was another alarm. She didn’t bother to reach for it right away, until she realized Halsey’s Now or Never tune was actually the ringtone she had placed for Cross’s number.
He’d been gone three weeks.
He called twice since then.
Catherine broke from her daze, and grabbed the phone on the fifth ring, just before it would go to her voicemail. She picked the phone up just in time. “Cross?”
“Hey …” The phone crackled in and out for a bit, making Catherine want to cry. “Shitty service, though.”
“It’s okay,” she lied.
She was lying a lot more lately.
She was falling, too.
Constantly, relentlessly falling into a black abyss she had made. It was cemented by a depression she couldn’t shake, by thoughts that scared her, and memories that haunted her. It was made worse by a man she needed to keep her steady, but wasn’t close enough to touch.
Now, she couldn’t even hear him.
“Maybe two weeks, okay,” she heard him say.
“Two and you’ll be back?”
“Or …” The phone crackled again. “Damn, I have to go, babe. Love you, huh?”
“Always,” Catherine echoed.
The phone went dead.
His voice got her out of bed, though.
The orange prescription bottle, compliments of a doctor she had decided to see, got her out the door with two Xanax. One more pill than she was supposed to take, according to the label. She didn’t bother to consider that the one blue pill she took at night was supposed to make her sleep, but it only worked if she doubled that, too. Sometimes, tripled it.
She didn’t think about it at all when she dropped back two anti-depressants as she sat in the parking lot of the college campus. Another prescription that was supposed to be helping.
Her hands trembled as she rested them on the steering wheel. They had been doing that a lot since she started adding three or four glasses of wine to wash back her sleeping pills for longer than she was willing to admit.
Catherine let out a slow breath, finally feeling calmer.
Slightly.
It wasn’t so much calm, as numb. She liked that blissed, numbed place the meds got her to; a place where she didn’t have to think very much, or feel, if she didn’t want to.
She didn’t have to think.
The only problem with being numb and dazed?
She couldn’t fucking concentrate.
She lost seconds.
Minutes.
Several …
She blinked, and she was sitting in her fourth and final class, listening to a lecture.
Catherine wasn’t even sure if it was the same day.
That terrified her.
It kept getting her through the day, though. It kept getting her to sleep. It kept getting her out of bed. It was doing what it was supposed to, right?
“Did you get that last note?” the girl next to Catherine asked.
She stared at the girl, unsure and slow in her mind.
A bit too in the clouds.
Light on her feet.
High.
“No,” Catherine said, “I didn’t get anything he said at all.”
The girl laughed. “Damn. Trouble concentrating today? That’s me, like, all the time. I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your name?”
“Catherine.”
“June.”
The pixie-like brunette with the short, short hair dug in her bag, and pulled out a blue bottle. It looked like Catherine’s prescription bottles for her sleeping pills, but without a label to say what was inside or who it belonged to.
June popped open the cap, and tipped a small white pill out into her hand. It was stamped with CIBA on the top. “Here, try it.”
Catherine hesitated. “What is it?”
“Ritalin. It’ll calm you down, make you focus. I’ve been on it for, like, seven years, but they won’t up my dose, so I know a guy I can get some from.”
Catherine plucked up the little pill.
She tried to remember what she had already taken in the last twenty-four hours from her own goddamn pharmacy. Something to sleep, something to breathe, and something to make her mind happy. Wine, too.
“You want it, or not?” June asked.
Catherine tossed back the pill, swallowing it down dry.
“Let me know if it works for you. We all have to get through this shit show somehow, right?”
Right.
“Catherine, are you listening to me?”
She blinked across the large dining room table, seeing that almost all of her family’s eyes were turned on her, but it was her father’s she wanted to shrink away from. His familiar green gaze was searching her face, looking for a problem, reaching into her mind and pulling out truths without her needing to say a thing.
“Are you okay?” her father asked.
Her gaze skipped over the faces of her cousins, her mother, brother, his wife, and her aunts and uncles. Even her grandparents were watching her like she was a baby deer ready to bolt.
“I’m fine,” Catherine said.
Why did her voice feel like an echo?
“You sure?” her brother asked. “Because you’re a little out of it, Catherine.”
“Tired, that’s all.”
“Are your classes keeping you busy?” Dante asked.
“Yeah, classes.”
“When is Cross getting back?” Andino asked, from four seats down.
Catherine shrugged. “Soon.”
He’d called again—a week after his last call. The service was better. He talked. She listened.
Catherine was high the whole time.
He didn’t even know.
She cried herself stupid when he let her go.
“You don’t know when he’s getting back?” her father asked.
“Soon,” Catherine repeated, getting irritated.
“Lay off the wine a bit,” her mother said, reaching over to snatch Catherine’s glass.
“I’m fine, Ma,” Catherine said. “Leave my glass alone.”
Catrina cocked a brow. “You heard what I said, Catty.”
They didn’t mind her drinking wine at dinner.
She started having glasses at celebrations when she was sixteen.
Now they wanted to fight her on it?
“Fuck this,” Catherine muttered, getting up from the table.
Standing fast made her tipsy.
The ground moved under her feet.
She managed not to show how dizzy she was. She didn’t look anyone in the eye as she darted for the dining room’s exit in her grandparents’ home. Footsteps echoed behind her, but she kept walking.
Andino caught up with her, and grabbed her arm to spin her around. Catherine glared at her cousin. “What the hell, Andi?”
“What’s up with you?”
“Nothing,” she mumbled, brushing him off. “I’m going to head back to Manhattan.”
Her cousin stared hard at her. “Do you need a break or something? Do you want to chill out for a bit, maybe?”
“Andino, I am fine.”
“You sure? I mean, Cross mentioned getting you to back off a bit, and maybe he had a p—”
“I am fine!”
Andino took a big step back, and his hands came up in surrender. “All right. We hitting that premier party next weekend?”
Catherine nodded. “Yeah.”
When she was Catty, when she put on that mask and worked her act, she was higher than ever. She didn’t need a drink or drug to get her there, either.
She didn’t have to be a broken girl.
She didn’t need someone who wasn’t there.
She was just Catty.
Unobtainable.
Unreachable.
Un-fucking-touchable.
That rush was everything.
“Surprise, babe,” she heard murmured behind her.
Catherine stiffened, and quickly tossed the Ritalin and Xanax down her throat. She turned on her heel to find Cross leaning in the master bath doorway with a sexy grin that made her heart pick up.
Five long weeks.
He’d been gone five long fucking weeks.
“Cross,” she breathed, her smile growing.
“Come here,” he demanded.
She let her purse hit the bathroom floor, and flew into his arms. He had her picked up and turned around before she even knew what happened. His mouth was on hers, kissing and taking and waging war. His tongue darted past her parted lips to get a taste, and hers was already there to meet his.
“Fucking missed you,” he mumbled against her mouth. “I’m not going anywhere for a couple of months, so I’m all yours, Catty.”
Yes.
Her back hit the bed in a blink. She had so many damn questions to ask him. Where had he been, what took so long, and why in the hell didn’t she get more calls? She didn’t ask any of those things because he was distracting her with something far better.
Stripping her of clothes, and pulling off his own.
Naked and heavy between her thighs, his mouth at her throat.
Teeth, and lips, and tongue.
Biting, kissing, licking.
Down her stomach, nipping at the barbell in her naval, and then lower. Again and again and again, tunneling and fucking her with his fingers and his tongue until she was begging for something else she loved from him.
“Fuck me, fuck me,” Catherine whispered, pulling him up her shaking body.
His wet lips—tasting of her and sin—pressed hard kisses along the seam of her mouth as he spread her thighs wider and fitted himself between her thighs. God, she loved the feel of him, pulsing and hard, and almost there.
Cross thrust in, filling her instantly.
Catherine was in heaven, so blissed.
High from something else, and dazed by him.
It was a perfectly dangerous combination.
He fucked her hard, and deep. Faster when she begged, rougher when she yanked him down for another kiss that tasted like her sex.
Dark eyes watched her.
A sinful mouth promised love.
Hands drove her crazy.
She didn’t even feel the orgasm until it was already there.
“Again,” Cross breathed into her mouth. “Come for me again, Catherine. Fucking give it to me; it’s mine, and I want it.”
He pulled out, and put her on her knees. His hand pushed at her back until she was buried into blankets and pillows, and he could take her from behind. Two smacks to her ass likely left red prints behind, but all Catherine could do was sigh.
Here.
Home.
Him.
Them.
That was what she needed.
He could fuck her even harder when she was on her knees, and he pinned her arms at her lower back with one of his hands. His other hand snaked around her thighs and between her legs. His fingers worked her, while his cock fucked her.
Deep thrusts.
Rough circles.
She shook and came again.
“Shit, yeah,” he mumbled. “So damn tight, God.”
“Come on,” she said, her voice airless. “Fucking come, Cross.”
He fucked her through that orgasm, and she backed her ass into every flex of his hips. She felt his tremor, his hand in her hair tightened, and then she felt him pull away. Hot, ropey streams of his cum painted her back as he groaned her name low.
“Jesus Christ,” Cross grunted.
His hands let her go, and he fell into the bed. She rolled over, not even thinking about the sticky mess he had made on her.
“I have to change the damn bedsheets now.”
Cross laughed, husky and sinful. “I’m out of condoms.”
“Couldn’t tell,” she mumbled against the back of her hand.
“I’ll help you change them after we shower.”
He was up off the bed and heading for the bathroom in a flash. She heard the shower turn on while she was still trying to catch her breath. By the time she got into the bathroom, he had already stepped in behind the frosted glass. Her hands were shaking again, and she didn’t want Cross to see it. She grabbed her purse off the floor where she had left it earlier.
When one or two of her meds wouldn’t do, she just added another to the mix. Like a cocktail of numbed perfection.
Catherine found what she was looking for, and dropped the pill back.
“What the hell was that?” Cross asked.
Catherine found him staring at her from around the glass door of the shower. Her lie was already ready, but her heart beat heavily in her throat. “Birth control.”
“Since when did you switch from the shot?”
“A couple months ago?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s easy,” she said.
Cross tipped his head to the side. “Taking a pill every day is easier than getting that shot once every four months or so?”
“What does it matter, Cross, as long as we don’t end up with a damn kid?”
“My bad. You have plans tonight, or do I get you all to myself?”
Catherine smiled over her shoulder at him. “Tonight you do. I’m going out with Andino to a premier party tomorrow night, though.”
Cross’s gaze darted away, a sure sign of his displeasure. He didn’t say a thing, though.
“What do you want to do tonight?” he asked.
“How about we shower, make a mess in there, fix the bed, and then you take me to dinner since you owe me for being gone so long. We’ll see where we go from there.”
He smirked. “We can do that.”
Catherine was late.
In two ways.
Late for class, for one.
Late by three days, for her period.
This wasn’t supposed to happen—her shot was super effective, and she made sure to get it on time whenever the appointment came up.
She sat on the toilet, and ignored the buzzing of her phone on the counter sink. She was too busy staring at the small piece of plastic in her hands.
Her knee jumped as she counted seconds in her head. Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five …
Two minutes, the box said.
One line, negative.
Two lines, pregnant.
Her phone stopped buzzing, and then started ringing right after. Cross’s ringtone, his familiar tune. She was too numb to reach for it, and too frozen in place.
One pink line had lit up the test instantly.
The other, she was still waiting.
Catherine tapped the test against the palm of her hand, lost in her thoughts. She didn’t even hear the footsteps echoing throughout the penthouse until a form darkened the bathroom doorway. Cross stared down at Catherine, his gaze darting to the test in her hand, and then to her face.
She wished she wasn’t so numb right then.
She wished she wasn’t so fucked up in her head.
She wished she didn’t need anxiety, depression, and someone else’s medication to get her out of bed in the morning. She wished she didn’t need wine and sleeping pills to get to bed at night. She wished her hands didn’t shake if she didn’t pop back at least twenty pills before supper, and that she wasn’t up to a bottle of wine a day. Just having her older friends constantly buying her alcohol was starting to get troublesome because they were starting to take note of how often she needed them to pick it up for her.
She didn’t know how she had gotten to this place in just a couple of months’ time. She didn’t know it got this bad so fast, or how she was supposed to fix it.
“You weren’t answering me,” Cross said, “so I came home.”
Catherine shrugged helplessly.
Because she was.
Helpless.
Messed up.
Depressed.
Ruined.
“Cross—”
The words wouldn’t come.
Tell him.
Tell him, tell him, tell him!
Catherine started crying instead.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he murmured, closing the distance between them. He was on his knees in a blink, and his hands were on her. She didn’t feel so numb when he touched her. “Jesus, don’t cry, Catherine. It kills me inside. Don’t cry, my girl.”
Sweet, soft kisses dotted over her cheeks, her jaw, and her lips. His hands, never hurting, never hurtful, cupped her cheeks, while his thumbs stroked her skin. He wiped away her tears, and she breathed again.
“I’m so messed up, Cross,” she mumbled.
“Nah, Catty, this isn’t a big deal.”
“Not this—not us.”
“So we’re eighteen and twenty, who fucking cares? It’ll be fine.”
Twenty.
The number rang around in her head, loud and taunting.
Catherine’s glazed, too-heavy lids lifted so she could look at the man who had loved her from damn near the first time he met her. “I missed your birthday.”
Cross frowned. “I don’t do fuck all for it, Catherine.”
“No, I mean … Cross, I don’t even know what day it is right now. I’m pretty sure I’m late for class, but I don’t think I know what time it is. It’s November, but what day is it? I only know my period is late because my stupid phone kept wanting me to log the start of my cycle. I’m messed up—I’m fucked up.”
He just stared at her.
She couldn’t speak again.
Catherine grabbed her bag on the floor, and decided to show him instead. She dumped the purse out, and all the contents fell across the bathroom floor. Prescriptions that were hers. Over the counter sleeping aids, and sleeping pills that had been prescribed. White pills in a small baggie—thirty all together that she’d picked up just a couple of days before when she was at college. And a new pill, a little blue bitch that literally made her nod off when she dared to toss it back.
“And wine,” Catherine said quietly. “I drink all the time; it feels better. Some of it was supposed to help with the anxiety and depression, but I kept doubling and tripling it just to breathe. I couldn’t breathe, Cross. I’m messed up in my head. I don’t know what to do.”
Cross’s hands tightened on her. “Okay.”
That was all he said.
Okay.
Then, softer, “Check that pregnancy test, babe.”
She did, but the window pane still only showed one line.
It was long past the time for it to show up positive.
“Negative,” Catherine said.
The relief was sweet.
Her guilt and sadness was heavy.
“What am I going to do?” she asked.
“We,” he replied, his dark, familiar eyes turning on her. “We, Catherine. We will figure it out.”
He never failed.
She had never doubted him
It still terrified her.