Strung Out (Needles and Pins #1) (12 page)

I couldn’t wait to strip off my clothing and stand beneath the shower. I wished the hot water and perfumed gels would cleanse away the imageries of tonight etched in my thoughts, but they didn’t.

If I went downstairs and found a wine bottle, would the contents banish paddles and whipping benches from my memory? Would the strangely erotic fantasy fade—of me, one knee on each side of Gage’s waist as I carefully poured wax down the contours of his chest or back?

Watching as it dribbled toward his bare ass or down his flat abs
?

My Lanta
! My imagination was pleasuring me more than any video or picture ever had…

“It was the stranger pouring it on me that killed it for me. I could totally get into that in a differ
ent setting.”

An actual growl had rumbled his chest into our kiss when I’d scratched and pulled at the wax.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

And with the echo of my own words, I realized I had practically said verbatim the very opposite of what he had that night almost a decade ago. “
I shouldn’t have. I know. But I’m not sorry. I don’t regret it.”

I paced after smearing a light moisturizer across my cheeks and beneath my eyes.

“It’s fine.”

Jerking back the spread, I enveloped myself between the bedding. My fingers drifted, settling on the silk of my panties. Closing my eyes, I didn’t resist when his face drifted to the forefront of my mind.

The touch of his tongue and the rumble of his voice…

That makes you hot blooded.

“I like the name Scarlette… It’s sexy.”

“Well, I’m proud of you.”

Soon sated, I dozed with all the unpleasant memories of the night sorted and pushed far behind the best ones.

I awoke while it was still dark. No morning light struggled to shine through the blinds. Rolling to my back, I let my eyes adjust, wondering what had jolted me to this wide-awake state. The bathroom urge hit me, but I was sure it hadn’t roused me. The house hummed with a weird energy.

Swinging my feet to the floor, I stood and almost tripped over Rascal on my way to the bathroom. “What’re you doing in here, boy?”

The canine always slept at the foot of Gage’s large bed. A minute later, I froze for a second with an uneasy thought. Leaving the light on in the bathroom, I looked beyond Rascal, beyond my partially opened bedroom door to the hallway.

Had Rascal been exiled from the master bedroom? A late night booty call wouldn’t be at all unusual, especially for a rock star like Gage. Any woman would come running with a moment’s notice. Right?

I suddenly felt sick. The atmosphere of the night felt different. I knew I was right. I was so sure, I almost slammed the door, crawled into bed, and immersed myself in my headphones to ensure I wouldn’t hear any sound that might drift from his bedroom.

Rascal padded to the threshold and turned to look at me. Did the animal need to go outside? Had he been fed this evening? Or had Gage forgotten him when we went to Outpost Drive, made out atop a mountain beneath a blanket of stars, and then called another woman to satisfy him while I bopped myself off thinking of him!
The fucker! Damn fucking rock stars
!

Breathe, Scarla. You emotional freak. It’s not your business, but if you’re so damned bent over it, at least check it out before you jump to conclusions
.

I pulled a tee shirt over my thin tank top and stepped into a pair of men’s boxers—the kind I sometimes slept in.

The door to Gage’s room was partially open. Lamplight cast a parallelogram onto the planked floor. Rascal darted into his master’s room and again circled, looking back at me. I crept closer. The weird feeling pervaded. Standing on the threshold, I surveyed the room.

It wasn’t neat, nor was it cluttered. A few clothing items were strewn around. A guitar lay on his huge unmade bed. The television was muted. Running water sounded from beyond the bathroom door, closed with a dim sliver of light showing through the bottom.

The dog’s paws clipped across the room until he nosed the door. I backed up a step or two, biting my lip against the image of Gage and some woman in his shower or tub. Rascal retraced a path back to me, but stopped halfway and went back to the bathroom door.

I was never sure why my feet moved forward. Whether my curiosity got the better of me; whether Gage was apt when he’d declared me a voyeur earlier tonight; or whether my sixth sense that something was off finally alerted me that ‘off’ could be bad in a way I hadn’t yet imagined.

With my ear practically pressed to the door, I heard nothing except a muffled beat of music and the running water of what sounded like the shower as opposed to a bath. A minute passed. Two more. Possibly five.

There was no variance in the water like there should be if the shower wand was moving or someone was moving beneath the spray. No thud of a shampoo bottle. And if—if—he wasn’t by himself simply bathing and washing his hair, shouldn’t I have heard
something
by now? Sex in the shower
couldn’t
be that quiet.

Raising my fist, I rapped my knuckles on the door. Again. Again. And Again. “Gage?” Finding the door unlocked, I twisted and pushed. “Gage?”

The music was clearer inside the room. The beat hammered from the speakers docking his phone on the chrome towel caddy. Water cascading was the only other sound. The room was dim—atmospheric—but the lighting within the large, glassed in shower stall drew my eyes.

Through the steamy glass, I viewed a shadowy lump. Was he sitting on the floor?

“Gage?” And when he didn’t answer, I felt myself tripping into terror. Had he slipped? “Gage!”

Regardless, I felt invasive when I tugged on the shower door. And there he was in all the nude muscular magnificent glory of my earlier day-night dreams. Yet this was a living nightmare.

He could be asleep. Exhausted and asleep in a shower. It could happen. Probably had happened to someone now and then. But it was a desperate thought as I knelt beside his prone body and mashed two fingers to his corded neck.

Feeling a faint pulse, I called out to him again as I did a quick check through his thick wet hair for any sign of a head injury. Finding no evidence of anything that could be wrong, I grabbed his wrist, checking again for the beat of a pulse to reassure myself.

The water? Had he breathed in some? It swirled down the drain with no backup, and I discounted that thought. Surging to my feet, I swiveled the fixture off and the flow ceased. Shoving at Rascal, I dripped through the bathroom toward his phone.

And that’s when I saw. Stopping short before the polished granite or marble vanity, I eyed a decorative wooden box in horror. It was open and the inside of one side was a flat mirror. The other side was storage for crystal or coke paraphernalia: A straightedge razor. An empty bag. Smudges on the reflective surface. Yet, suddenly that seemed as insignificant as he had once declared when I’d witnessed him firsthand indulging his habit.

Because it was lying alongside evidence of a worse vice. One I was right now seeing for the first time.

A black zip up case also sat atop the vanity with items scattered in and around it: A small aluminum cooker with a filter lining the bottom. A tea light candle. Tourniquet. A syringe with the pump depressed. Extra needles. A lighter. A vial of what I knew to be bacteriostatic water. I was familiar with the setup although it had been a while since it had been in my mother’s bedroom.

My feet flew across the bathroom, and I forgot I was wet until I slipped and caught myself on the pads of my hands before my face hit the tile floor. The warm tile floor… This anomaly caused me to pause as I soaked in the heat to my suddenly freezing body before pushing to my feet.

I grabbed the phone, toppling the dock, and it clattered to the floor. My toes curled nervously into a fluffy rug as I swiped at the screen but found it locked. The emergency call icon beckoned, and I almost pushed it before my finger froze, hovering above the screen.

My phone. I needed my own phone. Colt had texted me several times before and after our date. With getting his number my priority, I sprinted—more carefully—from the bathroom. Pausing in the bedroom, I flung Gage’s phone next to the guitar on his bed and did a double take when I saw a pill bottle. It lay in a miscellaneous pile in a tray with his billfold, a pocketknife, loose change and other items likely pulled from his pockets before he’d undressed. A whiskey bottle and empty glass were near.

I was truly falling down a rabbit hole. I’d known he had his vices but had never dreamed there were so many of such a degree.

“W
hat do I do? What do I do in the meantime?”
Scaarleette…

“Are you right there with him?”
Coollttt…

“Yeah. I just got back in here. In the bathroom.”
Scaarleette…

“Okay. Hold tight. Keep me on the line. And keep checking his pulse. I’m dialing the doc right now. And I’m on my way.”
Coollttt
…

“How long will it take his doctor? I don’t? I don’t call nine-one-one?”
Scaarleette…

“Don’t! You were right not to. Just tell me if his pulse changes and if it does—Hi, Mac! It’s Colt Powers. I’m calling about Gage. I think he OD’d. At his house.”

Diid I? Fucking serriouslly?

“I’ll be right there. Who else have you called?”
Dr. McKennly, thank God…

“No one. He has a pulse, but barely. I’ll have someone at the gate and the door. Please hurry—”
Coollttt…

Put Rascal uuup. He hates Mac. Acts all vicious with himmmm
…

“Twenty minutes max. I’ll be there. Is he breathing?”
Dr. Mac…

Am I? Breathing? Or am I dead, hovering in spirit form…

“Scarla?”
Coollttt…

“Um, I can’t feel or see him breathe. But he has a pulse. It’s slow. So slow…”
Scaarleette…

“When did you last check his pulse?”
Dr. Mac…

“Now. I’m checking it now.”
Scaarleette…

“And he has one?”
Dr. Mac…

“Yes. Still a pulse, but I can barely feel it.”
Scaarleette…

“Count the beats until I tell you to stop.”
Dr. Mac…
“Stop.”

“Four…”
Scaarleette…

“You got his emergency kit?”
Dr. Mac…

“What? What kit?”
Scaarleette…

“It’s there, Scarla. Somewhere. Find it, okay? It may have a red zipper. Or it may be just a brand new unopened box, thin enough for a pen type injector.”
Coollttt…

“I saw that box. I know where it is!”
Scaarleette…

“What does it say?”
Dr. Mac…

“I’m getting it. Wait. It says Naloxone Hydro—”

“That’s it!”
Coollttt.

“Open it up. Is your name Scarla?”
Dr. Mac…

“Yes.”
Scaarleette…

“Open the box and open the plastic, but don’t remove the syringe. Just keep it by you. Take his pulse again until I say stop. Ready?”
Dr. Mac…

“Yes.”
Scaarleette…

“Now… and stop.”
Dr. Mac…

“I couldn’t feel anything! His lips are really blue! Oh there! I felt a beat—kind of.”
Scaarleette, my beautiful Scar
.

“I’m less than five minutes away.”
Coollttt…

“Gage! Fuck this shit! Fuck you!”
Scaarleette

Her slap felt like he was safe inside a punching bag, taking the hit but not feeling it

“Scarla. I need you to calm down. Tear open the plastic the syringe pen is in and tell me when you’re done.”
Dr. Mac…

“Done.”
Scaarleette …

“Remove the red cap.”
Dr. Mac…

“Done.”
Scaarleette …

“You’re going to inject into muscle. Either his upper outer arm or upper outer leg—whichever has more bulk. Iit caann gooo throouugh clooothiiing. Dooon’t wooorry. Juuussst… “

I know I never said it, but I love you, Scarlette
…

M
ac, as Colt addressed the physician, stayed long enough to set up an IV and monitor Gage’s vitals for almost two hours.