Chapter 62: The Morning After the Fix
The light came through the gap in the curtains like a blade, cutting across Veronica's face and dragging her out of sleep.
She woke with a gasp, her heart hammering against her ribs. Her mouth tasted like copper and regret. Her head throbbed with a deep, rhythmic ache, as if someone had been using her skull for a drum.
She tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The room tilted. The velvet drapes swung like pendulums. She pressed her hand to her forehead and felt the cool slick of sweat.
Then she looked at her arm.
The tiny puncture mark was still there, a dark speck against the pale skin of her inner elbow. A bruise was forming around it—purple and yellow, spreading like a stain.
"What the fuck," she whispered.
She turned her head. Emily was beside her, sprawled across the rumpled sheets like a cat in a sunbeam. Her dark hair fanned out across the pillow. Her lips were slightly parted. She looked peaceful. Innocent, almost. Like she hadn't spent the night doing what they'd done.
Veronica shook her. Hard.
"Wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up—"
Emily stirred. Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then sharpening with a lazy kind of amusement.
"Morning, sunshine."
"What the fuck did you do to me?" Veronica's voice cracked. She was shaking—the whole bed was shaking with her. "What did you put in my arm?"
Emily stretched. She didn't seem concerned by the panic in Veronica's voice. She propped herself up on one elbow and looked at the actress with the same calm expression she'd worn all night.
"You know what I put in your arm."
"No." Veronica shook her head. Her vision blurred with tears she refused to let fall. "No, I don't. I don't remember. I was—I was drunk, and you—"
"You were drunk," Emily agreed. "And you were scared. And you were tired. And then you asked me to help you."
"I didn't ask for that."
"You said you wanted to feel something real." Emily's voice was soft, unhurried. "You said you wanted to put down what you've been carrying. I gave you that."
Veronica looked at the syringe on the nightstand. It was empty now, the needle still attached, the plastic barrel cloudy with residue. Beside it was a small glassine bag with enough white powder left to do it all over again.
"I'm a fucking junkie now," she whispered.
"You're not a junkie." Emily sat up and reached for the glass of water on the nightstand. She took a long drink, then handed it to Veronica. "You're a woman who needed a break. There's a difference."
Veronica took the glass. Her hands were trembling so badly she nearly dropped it. She drank. The water tasted like nothing and everything all at once.
"It's heroin," she said. "You gave me heroin."
"Pure heroin. No fentanyl. No rat poison. Nothing but the cleanest shit you'll ever put in your body." Emily swung her legs over the side of the bed. She was naked, her skin golden in the morning light. "You're welcome, by the way."
Veronica wanted to be angry. She wanted to scream at Emily, to grab her purse and run out of the room and never look back. But her body had other ideas.
Her arm was starting to ache. Not the bruise—something deeper. A hollow feeling. A craving that had already begun to bloom in her chest, spreading through her veins like a vine.
She looked at the bag on the nightstand. Then she looked away.
"I have to go," she said. "I have a fiancé. I have—"
"You have a fiancé who doesn't know where you are," Emily said. "You have a life that's been suffocating you for years. You have a soul that's been bleeding so long you forgot what it felt like to be whole."
She stood and walked to the window. The city was waking up outside—the distant wail of sirens, the honk of horns, the hum of life moving forward without them.
"I can give you more," Emily said quietly. "Not just the drugs. Not just the sex. I can give you peace. I can give you someone who sees you for who you really are, not who you pretend to be."
Veronica laughed—a broken, hollow sound. "You don't even know me."
"I know you better than anyone." Emily turned. Her eyes were dark and steady. "I know you're terrified. I know you're exhausted. I know you've been performing your entire life—for your parents, for your fans, for your fiancé—and you don't even know who you are underneath."
She crossed the room and knelt beside the bed. She took Veronica's hand in hers.
"Let me help you find out."
Veronica's eyes were wet. She wiped at them with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her cheek.
"What do you want from me?"
"Everything," Emily said. "But I'll take whatever you give."
Veronica looked at the syringe on the nightstand. Then at Emily. Then at her own arm, where the bruise was spreading like a map of a place she couldn't return from.
"One more hit," she whispered. "For the pain. That's all."
Emily smiled. It was a warm smile—the kind that promised safety and destruction in equal measure.
"Of course," she said. "Just for the pain."
She rose and walked to the dresser. The ritual was the same as before—the spoon, the lighter, the needle. The white powder dissolving into a clear, shimmering liquid. Veronica watched with a kind of greedy horror, her heart racing.
Emily came back and sat beside her. She turned Veronica's arm over, exposing the inner elbow. The bruise was dark now—purple and blue and beautiful in its violence.
"Make a fist."
Veronica obeyed. Her veins stood out again, ready and waiting. Emily slid the needle in with the same delicate precision as before.
Veronica barely even felt the prick this time. She was too focused on the sudden, glorious flood of warmth spreading through her body.
The pain in her head dissolved. The ache in her chest evaporated. Her muscles relaxed—all at once, like a sigh of relief that went from her scalp to her toes.
"Oh my God," she breathed.
"Yes," Emily said. "That's it. That's the feeling."
She pulled the needle out and pressed a kiss to the tiny wound. Then she kissed her way up Veronica's arm—to her shoulder, her neck, her jaw. She stopped at her mouth.
"Now," Emily said, "I'm going to make you feel even better."
She pushed Veronica back onto the bed. The actress went willingly, sinking into the silk sheets like a stone into water. The morning light painted her body in shades of gold and shadow.
Emily kissed her slowly. Deeply. Their tongues slid together with a lazy, drugged rhythm, tasting of stale champagne and morning breath and the sweet bitterness of the heroin.
"I want to taste you again," Emily said against Veronica's lips. "I want to taste you when you're like this—warm and soft and floating."
She slid down Veronica's body. The actress was already wet—slick with arousal and the drug's warm embrace. Her thighs fell open of their own accord.
Emily pressed her mouth to Veronica's cunt and moaned.
She was sweeter like this. The heroin had opened something in her—released a flood of pleasure that made her taste rich and dark and overwhelming. Emily licked into her, her tongue moving in long, slow strokes, her hands gripping Veronica's hips to hold her still.
Veronica's fingers dug into the sheets. She tried to arch her back, but her muscles were too relaxed. She could only lie there and take it, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps.
"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"
Emily sucked her clit. Hard. Then soft. Then hard again, varying the pressure in a rhythm that was almost cruel in its intensity.
She could rise to it now. She could feel the pleasure building in her belly like a wave—slow and steady and inevitable. The heroin made it feel impossibly good, impossibly bright, as if every nerve in her body had been turned up to maximum.
"Please don't stop," she begged. "Please, I'm so close—"
Emily didn't stop. She slid two fingers inside Veronica and curled them up, finding the spot that made her gasp. She fucked her with them—slow and deep—while her tongue worked her clit in relentless circles.
Veronica came with a cry that caught in her throat. Her body shuddered—a long, rippling wave of pleasure that seemed to go on and on, her orgasm bleeding into another one before the first had even fully faded.
Emily kept licking until Veronica pushed her head away. Then she crawled up and kissed her, letting her taste herself on Emily's lips.
"You're delicious," Emily whispered. "You're perfect. You're mine."
Veronica didn't argue.
She didn't have the strength.
She didn't want to.