“If you don’t leave soon, you’re going to have more than a little blood to worry about,” Bryan told me as he leaned in the doorway.
“Why didn’t you stop me?” I yelled hysterically. “You should’ve stopped me.”
“Why? That fucker got everything he deserved.”
I shook my head. I didn’t think I agreed, but I didn’t even know anymore.
I fell into a deep depression after that night with O’Dell. I guess that’s what you could call it. Maybe it was extreme paranoia. But the guilt was eating me alive.
Ryder and Dane’s worry grew exponentially when I didn’t leave my apartment for days. They kept stopping by to check on me and calling throughout the day. I lied and told them I had the flu. It wasn’t a far stretch. I know my entire body ached, my head was foggy, and all I wanted to do was sleep.
I laid in my bed day after day and night after night with the images of O’Dell’s disfigured face haunting me. I couldn’t look at my hands without seeing blood. The sounds of his bones crunching filled my ears.
I couldn’t get it to stop. No matter how much I slept, it haunted my dreams. No matter how much I tried to stay awake, the memories wouldn’t ease up.
It hurt. So much. My head throbbed incessantly. My eyes felt like they’d been raked over with hot coals. I tried to pull myself from the bed, but the effort was exhausting. Even going to the bathroom was a struggle.
I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much. I just wanted it all to stop.
I went to the bathroom and pulled out my prescription of antidepressantsfrom rehab. I stopped taking them years ago because they made me feel—well, off. I could never explain it,but it just felt like I wasn’t quite me. The voices and noises got louder. I was forgetful, and for someone that remembered everything, it was discombobulating. Sometimes I felt disembodied, but not in a fun way.
But for some reason, I kept them.
I filled my mouth with water from the faucet and poured the bottle into my mouth,and swallowed without hesitation. I didn’t care if I lived or died as long as I stopped seeing and hearing everything.
I woke up three days later with Ryder next to my bed and tubes in my mouth. Though I could tell I was in the hospital, I still panicked. I pulled the IV out of my arm and began working on the tube in my throat when Ryder jumped from his chair.
“Whoa. What the fuck? Stop, mate, before your hurt yourself.” He ran to the door and began yelling for a nurse.
In seconds, several were in there holding me down. “Mr. Masters, we need you to calm down. I’m going to take this tube out,okay? On three, I need you to blow.”
I did as they instructed. When the tube was out, I began coughing and fighting them again. “Let go of me. I’m leaving.”
“You can’t leave, Mr. Masters.”
“Watch me,” I shouted loudly.
The next thing I remembered was a needle and falling to sleep about thirty seconds later.
I woke up later, mad as fucking hell, and strapped to the bed. Ryder was asleep in the chair next to me, and I wondered who he had to pay to be allowed to stay. “Wake up, asshole,” I barked with a scratchy, gruff voice.
“If it weren’t for me, you’d be fucking dead. Not the right one to call asshole, don’t you think?” He said it like a joke, but he was pissed. He was pissed at me. I couldn’t blame him,but at that moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to breathe,much less be there. I knew what was coming next. Days at minimum in the psych ward for suicide watch. Weeks were possible as well.
“Why didn’t you just leave me there? How did you even get to me?”
“I come over to check on you. Something told me the flu bullshit was just that. And why the fuck would I have left you? You really have lost your mind if youthought I would do that.”
“You should have. Usually, when someone tries to kill themself, it’s because they want to fucking die. Why won’t you just let me die? Are you really that selfish that you’d make me suffer too, so you don’t have to be alone?”
It was out of line. I knew it was. Ryder wasn’t the selfish one. I was. I knew that, butI didn’t give a fuck at that moment. I just wanted to stop seeing O’Dell’s face.
“Right. I’m the selfish one. Sorry, I didn’t want you to die, your highness. I forgot that Maddox Masters and what he wants is the most important thing in the universe.”
I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sting. It hurt like a bitch, but I deserved it foreverything I kept from him. For all the things I had no intention of ever telling him.
I didn’t acknowledge anything he said.When he walked out the door later that day, I figuredhe was done with me. I spent the next thirty days in the hospital. I only gave them generic answers. I was told I had a God complex. That was probably one of the most accurate things I’d ever been told.
Therapy didn’t help. Therapy doesn’t help if you’re not honest, but I didn’t trust therapists or doctors in general. But time seemed to help. The dreams seemed to lessen,and eventually, I became numb.
