I hadn’t walked away. Instead I had stuck around at the wedding. Secretly hoping that he would pick me over her and come back. Idiot. Like that would ever happen. Pathetic idiot.

Hanging around had only gotten me sucked into other dramas.

Liam was an addict. I had known it when I was dating Axton—if that was what you could even call what the two of us were doing back then. I hadn’t even been a nurse at that point but I could see the signs of drug use. The sores around his mouth that looked slightly like acne but were blisters from the meth. The erratic behavior. The mood swings. The lack of appetite and almost insatiable sex drive—something that I had only guessed at after seeing him bang not one but four girls in the same night at the same party at Axton’s New York apartment.

When Liam had started mouthing off about Gabriella—or Brie as most of OtherWorld tended to call her—and Axton fucking around again it had cut me in two. Of course I hadn’t stopped to wonder why he would care so much. That had flown right over my head as I had tried to hold myself together. No way was I going to let anyone at the reception know just how torn up I was over a guy, especially a guy I had let mess me up already in the past.

While I was inwardly dealing with my own emotions, I hadn’t seen Liam coming. He had pulled me aside and started whispering all kinds of nasty things in my ear. That was when I knew he was high as a kite. I had let him know the first time I had met him that I wouldn’t touch him even if the human race depended on it before popping him in the balls with the flat of my hand. Liam had steered clear of me any time we were in the same room after that first impression.

But instead of damaging his boys this time, I only pushed him away. I hated drug users, but I felt sorry for them too. I only knew a little of Liam’s background and none of it really explained to me why he had needed to get high. At first I had thought he was the kind of person that did it just for the hell of it. Getting high to get high because his life was so boring. But later I had realized that something horrible must have happened for him to want to constantly hide in a drug-induced fog of false emotions.

As I looked into his eyes last night, seeing past the glassy sea green eyes to the man behind them, my heart had ached a little for him. Everyone had told me that he had tried to get help repeatedly, but he just couldn’t keep from going back to the drugs over and over again. The nurse in me wanted to help him, to get him through this sickness.

So I talked him into leaving with me. It hadn’t taken much persuading. “Wanna get out of here?” had just about been the only thing I’d had to say.

His bandmates hadn’t liked it though. Zander and Devlin had tried to stop us and Wroth had even attempted to step in and talk to me. I rolled my eyes at how he had seemed so anxious for me. “He’s dangerous like this, Dallas. Let us deal with him.”

“I’ve got this,” I had assured the big ex-marine as I had tugged Liam out the door. His car had been in the parking lot and I pulled the keys from his pants’ pocket before pushing him into the passenger side.

Sliding behind into the driver’s seat I was about to start the crazy powerful piece of machinery when he grabbed me and pulled me toward him. “Let’s start the party now, Dee.”

“Not gonna happen, buddy.” I grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, hard. “We’re playin’ this by my rules. Understand?”

“I don’t like rules. Rules suck.”

Grinning at his little boy pout I pushed away from him, easily maneuvering back into my seat. “Rebel.”

“Where are we going?” he had asked once we reached the airport.

“You’re the one who asked me to go back to New York with you, Liam,” I had reminded him, because it had been the first thing out of his mouth when he was trying to get me to have a quickie in the bathroom back at the wedding reception.

“New York sucks balls. Let’s go to Vegas. Or Miami. Or Japan.” He put his hand in his pocket, the one that hadn’t housed his keys, and stuck something in his mouth, chewing it.

“What the fuck, Liam!” I had yelled at him, pulling into an empty parking spot.

“Gotta get rid of the evidence, babe.” He swallowed then reached for the half empty bottle of water in the cup holder. “I’ll be good in a few.”

“You’re an idiot. Don’t you care that you’re wasting your life? What about Marissa? I know that you using like this is breaking her heart.” I hated the thought of him hurting his sister. Marissa was an amazing girl. Sweet, kind, and too loving by half.

“Leave my sister out of it, Dee,” he had suddenly snarled at me. “You know nothing about my sister or me so shut the fuck up.”

My eyes narrowed. “Don’t talk to me like that, Liam.”

“Then stop talking about my sister,” he had yelled, stabbing his fingers through his brown hair.

“Fine.” I didn’t speak to him again as we had moved through security. I had left my things back at Harper’s place, planning on picking everything up in the morning before my flight home. But I had my wallet so I wasn’t worried about the clothes or anything else that had been in my luggage.

Somehow Liam had gotten us on the next flight out to New York. First class, of course. We had a layover in Chicago that lasted three hours and by that time Liam was coming down off his high—mostly. He was starting to shake and he had nothing to fight his need for more of whatever the hell he had been popping tonight.

“Fuck, I hurt,” he slurred, looking green. Two minutes later he was running for the closest bathroom. I stood outside the door, ignoring the men who came and went as I listened to him throwing up for nearly twenty minutes.

When he came out, looking pale and drenched in sweat but shivering, I cleaned him up and pushed him gently but firmly into a chair near our gate. I forced him to sip some Sprite. “You need help, Liam. And not just a few weeks of it. I’m talking long term.”

He raked shaking fingers through his hair. “I know.”

“So why haven’t you done it by now?” I asked quietly.

“Because the drugs were always the easy way out. They kept the good shit good and the bad shit away.” He grimaced as he wrapped his arms around his stomach. “If someone gets sick or dies I don’t feel the pain. I don’t feel the loss.”

“Is that when you started usin’?” I murmured so that the few people sitting near us wouldn’t overhear our conversation. “When Marissa got sick and nearly died?”