I did not want to remember.
I did not want to recall the itch in my veins. The flood of relief. The fleeting euphoria before self-loathing and more pain had overcome me.
“Vik.” Ranger reached me and dropped his hands onto my shoulders. “It’s just a jab in your leg. Folk showed me how, but I can get Locke to come and do it if you don’t want it to be me. Fuck, you can do it yourself?—”
“No.”
Ranger waited for me to elaborate.
I didn’t.
I couldn’t, any more than I could drive a needle into my own flesh. “You can do it—I want you to do it.”
“You sure?”
Was I?
I did not know, but the clawing agony in my hip, my back, my groin—today, tonight, it was too much. “I want you to do it.”
Ranger nodded and got to work with whatever instructions he’d been given by better men than me. Antiseptic filtered into my senses. I closed my eyes, blocking it out, blocking everything out—the sound of the needle cap, the scent of burned foil, frigid concrete at my back…
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Breathe, Vik. Everything’s okay.”
“I am?—”
The needle pierced my skin, sharp and slight. A cold flash hit my veins, my blood, and then…nothing.
It was over.
I opened my eyes.
Ranger had already gone, disposing of the needle, hiding the drugs maybe. But he returned before I could think much about it.
He lay me on my back, his hand on my chest as my breath sawed in and out of my lungs too fast and too hard. “There’s no high from this, not even a little one. Folk said you’ll feel sick for a bit then sleep.”
I had been nauseous before the shot. Now my head span with alarming force and only Ranger’s hand on my chest kept me on the bed and not lurching for the bathroom.
Like junk.
But…no. Ranger was right. There was no high with this. No barbed euphoria. Just a shockwave of yuck until the dismantling pain in my nerves began to fade and I felt myself slipping away, as if I was dying.
Ranger.
My eyes flew open.
He stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. “I’m here, Vik. You can sleep.”
I did not want to sleep. I already missed him—I had missed him all day while I had been so caught up in myself.
But it happened anyway.
I slept, and I could not tell how much time had passed when I opened my eyes again. Just that Ranger was still with me, and the pain in my hip…it was gone. The muscles around it loose and content. I was groggy from the shot, but Ranger’s smile made everything better.
“Better?”