“No, it’s not…Cedric is amazing. It’s just so overwhelming, you know?” The lie comes easily to my lips, making me hate myself a little more each time I deny the real problem. “He helped me escape from this guy, Lowell; and now Cedric’s working tonight, and I guess I just don’t know what to do with myself…”
“I don’t know if Cedric told you, but I have a history with an abusive ex,” Cynthia confides in me.
“Ah, yeah. I think he mentioned that,” I tell her. I want her to keep talking to me, to distract me from the awful anxiety that is now threating to claw its way out of my throat or explode out of my eyes. They’re throbbing in their sockets now, making it hard to concentrate on our conversation. I feel as if I’ll claw my eyeballs out if I don’t take something soon. Anything would do, even some Nyquil. But Cedric completely cleared out the medicine cabinet in his bathroom.
Maybe Cynthia has something in hers…
“I almost died because of him,” she tells me. “And I still have trouble sleeping sometimes thanks to the nightmares where I think he’s dead, but then he comes after me again.”
“I haven’t slept normally in days,” I admit to her.
“Things will get better,” she promises. “You’re safe here.”
“I know.” Too safe, because Cedric watches me almost as closely as Lowell did. I know he does it out of love while Lowell just liked to control me, but the feeling of being a prisoner is still the same. As we’ve been talking, Cynthia has guided me further down the hall, until we’re standing outside of the apartment she shares with Reece.
“Do you mind if I use your restroom?” I ask.
“Ah, sure,” Cynthia replies with her brow furrowed, probably wondering why I would want to use hers when I could go to Cedric’s right down the hall.
“Thanks!” I say before hurrying into the room and shutting the door like it’s an urgent need.
Slowly and quietly, I open up her cabinet over the sink and hit the jackpot. As soon as I see the word “Oxy”, I know I’m in business. The date on the prescription was like a year ago, so if she hasn’t used them by now, she probably won’t need them. Instead of taking the entire bottle which would rattle and be harder to hide, I dump the contents into my palm, pop two into my mouth and then shove the other pills into the pocket on my shorts.
Quickly, I put the bottle away, flush the toilet to make it sound like I used it and then wash my hands.
Deep down I feel awful for the theft, but the addict inside of me doesn’t feel even a shred of remorse. There’s nothing but relief.
Chapter Seventeen
Cedric
“Cedric, you got a second?” Reece asks when he comes into the apartment that we’ve converted into our surveillance room about an hour into my shift. The main room is dark other than the glow of the row of monitors.
“Sure. What’s up?” I ask. “I thought you would’ve crashed by now.”
“Soon,” he replies. “First, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Okay?”
He scratches his head with his eyes lowered, and then paces around the small space a few times.
“Reece, man, what’s up?” I ask since I’ve never seen the normally blunt man hesitate over saying anything before.
“You know Cynthia got hurt bad last year,” he begins. “Her ex,” he growls.
“Right, yeah, I remember.”
“Well, she got banged up pretty bad and was in a ton of pain.”
“Uh-huh,” I mutter since I know that too. Where’s he going with this?
“She had some pain meds the doctor prescribed, but she was stubborn and didn’t take many once she got home.”
He pauses, and I keep looking at him waiting for him to get to the point. “Okay?”
“They’ve disappeared recently,” he says. “And, um, Evelyn came to our room yesterday…”
“Oh shit,” I huff as I scrub my palms over my face. “You think she took them?”
“I don’t like to point fingers about shit when I don’t have any proof, but, uh, if I had to guess, yeah, she did.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I had no idea.” Now that I think about it, Ev’s been better, less depressed today than the days before when I could barely get her out of bed or convince her to eat.
“I’m not telling you because I’m pissed or because Cynthia gives a shit about the pills. I’m telling you because I thought you would want to know that your girl may have a serious problem if she’s going around taking shit from other people’s medicine cabinets.”
“Right. Thanks,” I say as I swallow around the knot in my throat. “I hate she put you in this position, but I’ll talk to her.”
“If you need anything, let us know,” he says. “You’re not alone in this and neither is she, all right?”
“Yeah, thanks. I will,” I tell him before he walks out the door, leaving me sitting there wondering how the hell I’m supposed to help the women I love if she doesn’t want to be helped.
I struggle with that question for the rest of the night through the end of my shift.
And when I get back to my apartment, while Ev’s sound asleep, I grab her purse and take it into the bathroom where I can turn on the lights to go through it.
I don’t like doing it. In fact, I hate invading her privacy, but I care about her too much to let her keep hurting herself.
It takes digging through every single one of the pockets until I finally open up her change purse and find the stash of round, yellow pills.
“Fuck,” I mutter aloud as I stare at them, trying to figure out if I should flush them or let her keep them. I have no goddamn clue what I’m supposed to do in this situation.
I stupidly thought that Lowell would be the biggest obstacle that I would have to overcome before I could be with Evelyn and spend the rest of my life trying to make her happy.
Boy, was I wrong.
She’s going to hate me if I put her on the same lockdown Lowell had her on and search her shit on a daily basis. But what other choice do I have?
I would rather she hate me than keep hurting herself. That’s why I make the decision to flush them.
Back in the bedroom, I put her purse away, then get undressed before climbing into bed in my boxer briefs. I lie there on my back with my hands behind my head, staring at the dark ceiling, waiting for Ev to wake up so that we can talk.
“Mmm, good morning,” Evelyn says when she rolls over and cuddles up to my side where I’m still lying on my back.
“Morning,” I reply.
“I missed you last night.”
“I missed you too,” I tell her.
“Everything okay?” she asks, pushing herself up to see my face when I don’t move my hands from behind my head to touch her.
“Reece came and talked to me last night while I was working.”
“I thought you worked at night so he could sleep,” she says.
“I do. He wanted to talk to me about you.”