Elle stayed up for the rest of the waning hours of the night, alternating between singing along to metal music set on scream to get out some of her aggression and dancing around the room to burn off some energy. When she lost interest in doing that, she dug her worn mini notebook out of her tiny clubbing purse and was about to scribble some random, disjointed lyrics that kept replaying in her head.

Then she remembered, duh, right-handed. She tried to write a little, and managed it, but the second her nerves started to dance with irritation, she tossed aside the notebook and stubby pencil.

She’d only managed to decipher two words out of the jumble in her head anyway.

Beautiful nightmare.

What did that even mean? Nightmare worked for Mal, but beautiful he was not. His cock kind of was, although not physically—cocks as a rule were fairly ugly, even if they were sizable. His definitely qualified as that. Right now, she could barely remember her own cell number but the imprint of his dick on her ass earlier had made quite the impression.

Of course, she’d also seen it naked in person. Multiple times. The guy had an exhibitionist side as long as her legs.

Long, yeah. And wide. Her thoughts were concentrated in one area, and that was nowhere good.

She grabbed the second pillow she’d attempted to do inappropriate things with earlier and shoved it under her head to join the first. They were both lumpy, and she was too wired to sleep. She still didn’t fully remember taking the E earlier. It was as if she’d zoned out for the moments between walking down the hallway to the bathroom and returning to her table in the club. Teagan had been laughing, and she’d bought them a couple of drinks, though she’d been careful to ask, “You sure this is okay?”

Elle had already been drinking it by then, and hell yes, it had been okay despite her usual disinterest in alcohol. But she’d been floating already, and nothing seemed as hard or scary with that cushion of chemicals between her and the world. She’d grown too used to having it, and then she’d grown almost as used to having nothing between her and life except the cold, rough ground of reality.

But within a few minutes, all of that had faded away into a blissful fog of nothing. Jules didn’t hate her anymore. Nicky and Li weren’t watching her like hawks.

Randy wasn’t dead.

She shut her eyes as her throat grew tight and hot, then struggled up into a sitting position. No. Trying to sleep and failing was the worst thing she could do while she was crashing. Or on her way to crashing. She didn’t even know anymore. She’d had a lot of alcohol. At least it had seemed like a lot. Everything was indistinct, except Teagan asking again and again, “Is this okay?”

Teagan had been around when Elle had first started to spiral in high school. Back then, her friend was known as squeaky clean. The kind of girl you didn’t party with, because she was too pure to taint. Elle had liked her a lot so she’d hidden some of the harder stuff she’d been doing. Teagan had figured some out as the years passed, and then she had moved away with her family for her senior year in New York and she’d never realized exactly how deep Elle had gotten.

God willing, she never would—because Elle wasn’t going back to that place. She wasn’t. One fucking slip wasn’t going to define her.

She climbed off the bed and threw back her head as her stomach pitched. Christ, she already wanted more. Once the taste was in her system, she craved it like she’d never craved anything else.

Except love.

Her head was still messed up, and her thoughts were all over the place. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t settle.

So she went back to the one thing that soothed her even in the midst of chaos.

Music. Always music.

She scrolled to a different playlist with thick, fumbly fingers. Her anger was gone now, drained into despair. She needed to sing and dance, to make this room disappear.

To forget that she’d shit where she ate, and now Mal knew she was a fucking junkie. Though he’d seemed as if he’d known before. He’d always acted as if he knew something.

She tried to line up her memories of Mal. The weird looks, the sly comments that were too knowing. But everything dissolved like sand under the wind. She couldn’t hold on to anything but the R&B music coming through her headphones.

Thank God she had those with her. She never left home without them. In case.

None of the songs were just right. They made her edgy too. She tried singing along with a few of them. Probably sounded like a dying cat. Maybe Mal’s neighbors would get mad and kick him out. That made her smile. Almost. This was a rental, right? Had to be. Mal wasn’t a New York sort of guy.

She wasn’t a New York sort of girl either, but she didn’t know if she could ever go home. If she even had a home left.

The next song came on and she started to sing without thinking. When the smooth oldies R&B hit ended, she hit replay and sang through it again, stumbling over the words, making up new ones. Laughing a little with every mistake.

If you were a lifelong screw-up, you should at least laugh, right?

She’d been singing this one since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. Little Ellie who sang and played guitar like she breathed and was such a good girl until she was the motherless child who needed another fix.

Still was. Would always be.

But she kept playing the music. She didn’t know if he was listening. Didn’t care if he was. He could’ve been standing outside the door and she wouldn’t have stopped, flubs and all. Thought she could sing, did he? Well, here he could hear all of her, flaws and all. Nothing censored. Nothing held back.

When her throat was scratchy and raw, and light was beginning to peek through the slats on the blinds, she crawled into the bed that wasn’t her own. And clutched the pillow to her chest as she prayed for sleep to take her.