Slide (30 page)

“Yes, apparently there was some sort of standoff. The press are linking him to some other violent crimes in the city, a nasty piece of work, by all accounts.”

I shrugged David’s hand away. “Good riddance, then.”

There was another pregnant pause before David finally spoke again. “I’m going to spare you the lecture, but if Ash doesn’t start to improve in the next few days, you
have
to take him to the hospital.” He pressed his card into my hand, then turned to leave. “Call if you need anything, even if it’s something you don’t think is relevant. I’ll be around.”

I shut the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment. The cool wood felt good against my back, but it was canceled out by a strange, prickling feeling on my skin. Something didn’t add up. David knew something about Ash he wasn’t telling me, or I was missing something really obvious. It could have been nothing, or even something he’d imagined, but it still bugged the hell out of me.

David was right about one thing, though: if the antibiotics didn’t really kick over the next twenty-four hours, chances were they wouldn’t. If I couldn’t convince Ash to come to the hospital, I’d probably have to call David back to write him a script. As I stared at the card he’d shoved in my hand, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less. Ash was right—the guy was weird.

Movement in the apartment caught my attention. I shoved David’s card in my pocket and promptly forgot about it as I hurried back to the bedroom. Ash wasn’t there, but I could hear him in the bathroom. I crawled onto the bed and lay down. Hours of insomnia caught up with me and I let my eyes fall closed. I was drifting somewhere between a doze and a daydream when I felt the bed dip.

“What did David talk to you about?”

I opened my eyes to find Ash staring intently at me. His face was closer than I’d expected it to be. If I’d had the energy, I probably would have jumped. “He thinks you should be in the hospital.”

Slowly, Ash reached out a shaky hand and traced a light sweep under my raw and scratchy eyes. The distress in his face was heartbreaking.

“Hey,” I said quietly. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re so tired. I know it’s my fau….”

He coughed violently as his voice fell away. I sat up and held his shoulders. “None of this is your fault. You’ve just got to get well. You’ll feel better then.”

Ash shook his head, and I felt all the fight go out of him as he slumped under my hands. “No, it’s not. I can’t make it stop, Pete. I can’t.”

He mumbled something else, covering his face with his hands, but I couldn’t make it out. “Make what stop? What is it?”

He wouldn’t look at me for a long time, but when he did finally drop his hands, his eyes seemed to belong to someone else. They were stormy and glittering with an accusation I didn’t understand. “Him,” he spat. “Make
him
stop. You know who he is.”

I swallowed heavily. He was only aggressive when he was defensive or scared, and I’d never seen such venom in his eyes. “I don’t understand.”

Ash glowered at me for a long moment. The silence was so oppressive, it seemed to suck all the air out of the room, and I felt suffocated by the weight of his stare until he suddenly wrenched himself from under my hands and lurched to his feet. Alarmed, I watched him stumble away from the bed. “Ash, sit down. Come on.”

He shook his head, ignoring my outstretched hand. “No, no, no. You’re just gonna tell me I’m crazy, aren’t you? That it’s all in my fucking head. Fuck that shit.”

Horrified, I watched helplessly as he brought both hands to his head and shook it violently from side to side. He pulled roughly on his hair, repeating himself over and over, like he was talking to someone I couldn’t see. “Fuck that shit, fuck that shit.”

I moved slowly to the edge of the bed, my heart pounding in my ears. It was so loud, it threatened to drown out the rational part of my brain, but I knew the only hope I had was to stay calm. If I freaked out too, it would all be over. Ash would either lash out, or bolt… or both. I couldn’t risk that. “What’s in your head, Ash? What can you hear?”

He stilled, blinking rapidly. “Nothing. I can’t hear him if you’re here.”

Alarm bells screamed in my head. I leaned closer. “What does he say when you
can
hear him?”

Ash blinked again and I lost him. He didn’t respond at all, even when I shook him and shouted his name. Cold fear gripped my chest as every boring hour of mental-health training I’d ever sat through took over. I’d seen Ash freak out before, but the blank look in his eyes was horrifying, like nothing I’d ever seen. I knew for sure I was watching him descend into a catatonic episode, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

It took everything I had not to panic. Gradually, I managed to get my arms around him and coax him back onto the bed. I sat beside him and rambled nonsense at him until my voice went hoarse. Nothing I said made any sense, and it seemed like hours passed before anything changed, but eventually, he began to come round. Whether it was my touch, my voice, or something else, I couldn’t tell, but it was like a switch flipped when his face suddenly cleared.

Ash stood up from the edge of the bed. He took a wobbly step back and covered his mouth with his hands. In the small room, his back hit the wall and he slid to the floor. I knelt in front of him as his horrified eyes found mine.

“What’s happening to me?”

I took hold of his hands and gripped them tightly. “I don’t know, Ash. I don’t know.”

“Did I hurt you?”

I squeezed his hands again. “Of course you didn’t. Talk to me. Jane said you were clean, but I saw it, Ash. I
saw
you high on junk.”

He banged the back of his head on the wall, hard. “Damn it, Pete. I never took any fucking heroin.”

“So what was it?” I said desperately. “You were on something. I know you were.”

“It was Valium. Your mom gave it to me.”

What the fuck? Maggie had been popping a benzo every night for more than a decade, but she knew I hated it. It didn’t make any sense that she would give some to Ash. “Why did she do that?”

He closed his eyes, his voice tired and devoid of any emotion. “I couldn’t sleep. Every time I tried, I kept seeing all this shit that scared me. It wasn’t so bad when you were around, but then you went back on nights and it wouldn’t stop. Pete, I couldn’t make it stop.”

“How long were you using for?”

“What?”

“How long were you using the Valium for?”

It took him a moment to understand the question. It was painful to watch, but he shook his head. “I wasn’t using. I carried them around for weeks before I took them. I couldn’t sleep, Pete. I needed to sleep, so I took them all.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “How many?”

He shrugged, his eyes beginning to droop shut. “Four, five, not many.”

Depending on the dosage, four or five diazepam was enough to kill a man, enough to make him choke on his own vomit while the drugs kept him comatose. The thought of what could have happened if I hadn’t come home made my blood run cold. “Ash, I need you to tell me the truth, okay? Were you trying to hurt yourself?”

His vacant eyes held mine. For a moment, I thought I saw just a hint of incredulity before he shook his head. “When I first came to Chicago, I had to force myself to stand behind the pillars when a train came by. You know, so I wouldn’t jump. I didn’t feel like that when I took the pills. I just needed to sleep.”

The two simple sentences were huge, but I felt no relief at his words. The apathy in his voice was chilling. He wasn’t trying to kill himself, but the sense that he didn’t care either way consumed me. What about me? What the hell would I have done if I’d come home to find him dead? It hurt beyond belief to see him so unhappy, but the thought of life without him was unbearable.

His head dropped. He was exhausted and struggling to stay awake. I shook him gently. I needed him to stay with me while he was still willing to talk. “The voice you could hear,” I pressed cautiously. “You said I knew him. Who is he?”

Ash thought for a moment. “Do you remember that night you topped me a few months ago?” I nodded—of course I remembered
that
night. “I was in the store getting that weird black candy you like.”

“Black Jacks?”

He swallowed a cough. “Yeah, that’s it.”

There was a pause. I nudged him gently. “Ash, stay with me. I need you to tell me what happened.”

“I heard him behind me,” he said slowly. “But when I turned around, no one was there. I dropped all my shit on the floor and ran home, but I couldn’t work out why I was so freaked out. It was like it used to be, you know? I couldn’t focus.”

He’d always tried to hide the awful panic attacks he suffered, but I remembered all too well how miserable they made him. “Keep going,” I said. “What happened next?”

“I went to bed. I thought if I could sleep it would all go away, but it didn’t… not until you came home. It stopped when I heard your key in the lock. It didn’t come back for a while.”

I’d always known there was something behind that damn fucking night. He just hadn’t been himself since then. His denial and avoidance had left me doubting my instincts, but he’d just confirmed everything I’d ever suspected. There was no relief in being right, though. In that moment, all I could feel was a crippling fear for him. “When did it come back?”

“I don’t know,” he said dully. “When you got hurt, maybe? I had a really messed-up dream. I can’t even remember it. I just remember falling off the bed. When I woke up, I was in the living room and you were all fucked up on the couch. Pete, I thought
I
did that to you.”

His respiratory rate picked up. I rubbed his arm to soothe him. “Easy, it’s okay. It was just a dream, Ash. You didn’t hurt me.”

Ash closed his eyes for a brief moment. “I know that. I knew it then after a few seconds, but then Mick called and I just… shit.”

He wasn’t making any sense. I gave him a minute to calm down, but he didn’t want to stop. He banged his head against the wall again, once, twice, before he started speaking again.

“I drank too much that night,” he said. “It fucked my head up. I thought I saw him at Ellie’s place, but you punched him and it went away.”

“I punched Sean,” I corrected. “You didn’t know him before that night. Have you seen him since?”

Ash shook his head. “No, it’s not him. I know who it is, Pete.”

“You do?”

“I found his picture in the trash.”

Without a word, I stood and walked out of the room to Ash’s studio. It was a fucking mess, but I knew what I was looking for. I pulled the stack of newspapers out from under the bed and flipped through them until I found the right page. I went back to Ash and knelt beside him with my heart in my throat. “Is this him?”

Ash opened his eyes and glanced at the paper. The blood ran from his face, and I knew without a doubt that the answer was yes.

Bile rose in my throat and the paper fluttered uselessly to the floor. I’d tried for months to hide from Daryl Hunter. His face had followed me everywhere, but it had never, ever, occurred to me that he might be haunting Ash too.

“Tell me everything you can.”

S
OMEHOW
, I held it together until Ash fell asleep. He was completely wiped out, and it was all he could do to let me help him to the living room. I put him on the couch, turned off the lights, and put on that damn aquatic show he liked. Then, when I was sure he wouldn’t wake up, I took his phone, crept away from him, and called the only person I could think of.

Joe arrived twenty minutes later. There was no logic to explain why I’d called him. Perhaps it was because I’d seen how comfortable Ash had been with him in the past, or maybe it was just because I knew he wouldn’t ask any questions. Either way, it didn’t matter. I needed him to watch Ash, just for a minute. I had to get out before I completely lost my shit.

I ran down the stairs and out onto the street. The urge to double over and puke was strong. I dealt with messed up people all the time—even my mother was her own brand of crazy—but it was something else to watch Ash lose it like that. It was terrifying, and without him immediately in front of me, needing protection, the gravity of the situation felt overwhelming.

Nothing he told me made any sense. He said “it” had started months ago…. The strangely familiar voice in the store had triggered a reaction in him he couldn’t shake. He did everything he could to distract himself, but after weeks of uneasiness and fucked-up dreams, he found that damn paper in the trash. Somehow, he’d looked at the face of Daryl Hunter and recognized him, or thought he did. From that moment on, he was gone. The spiral of paranoia and despair became too crazy for him to control. By the time I found him passed out in a benzo-induced stupor, he hadn’t slept in a week. I couldn’t believe I’d missed it. I’d missed it all because I was always working with my head up my ass. Ash had broken down so completely he couldn’t see a way out, and I hadn’t even noticed.

The tightness in my chest finally eased as Lake Michigan appeared in front of me. I gazed at it, slightly stunned, trailing to a stop as I realized I was unwittingly walking farther and farther away from Ash. I didn’t want that. He’d always believed he was too messed up to deserve me, that I’d walk away as soon as I figured it out for myself. He was wrong. I’d turned my back on him once, but I wasn’t about to do it again.

But I stopped and stared at the lake for a long time, and the longer I stood by the water, the clearer it became that I couldn’t help Ash on my own, that whatever was happening to him was too huge even for both of us to handle. The card David had given me burned a hole in my pocket. Doctors, nurses, and social workers were a big part of my life. I could’ve asked any number of them for advice, but somewhere underneath all the bullshit, I knew it had to be David. He’d seen something in Ash—something that worried him, and now more than ever, I needed to know what it was.

A
N
HOUR
later, I sat back in the leather chair and let out a long breath. My mouth was dry, and my throat was sore and scratchy from talking for so long. Across the desk, David was silent as he absorbed my words. I’d told him everything this time, even shit he probably didn’t need to know. It was my nature to be cagey about my personal life, especially with people I didn’t really like, but I couldn’t stop the words. They poured out of me without any kind of filter.