CHAPTER FIVE – DON'T LEAVE ME 

BRIAN

The Gilt was the opposite of Venom. 

Low amber light, velvet booths, a hush that cost money. It sat under a jeweler's shop with no sign on the door, and you needed a card to get past the second stairwell.

"King!" Felix hugged me before I cleared the entrance. Whiskey on his breath, relief on his face. 

"We thought you'd be grounded forever."

"I escaped." I shrugged. "What else is new?"

Rico leaned in, grinning, already reaching into his jacket. "New batch tonight. Supposed to be the best yet."

"I'm in."

I didn't ask what it was. I knew already, and it didn't scare me the way it used to.

Jax draped an arm over my shoulder, heavy and familiar. "Saturday, the bridge route. Rico's got the cars. No rules."

"Perfect."

The word felt good in my mouth, like something I could still control on a night that had started to feel like it was controlling me. 

I didn't look back to see whether Ace had followed. I could feel him, the way you feel the weather before it breaks. 

He had been stopped at the members' desk by a very polite man with a clipboard, and I had slipped through the service corridor while the man was busy. It was the smallest victory I'd had in weeks, and I took it.

---

My private room was on the third floor, behind a door that opened only with the house card Rico's uncle had given me. Nobody else had one. I had made sure of that.

The powder hit fast. One white line, one quick breath, and the wave rolled through me. 

Everything went numb, warm and weightless. My shoulders dropped. My mind went quiet for the first time all day, with no father in it, and no Ace who should be searching the building for me.

"Told you," Rico said. "Best stuff."

"Yeah." My voice came out slow and syrupy. "It's good."

Felix's face pinched with the worry he always wore right before he pretended he hadn't noticed. 

"You gotta stop, King. This is dangerous."

"I don't care." I laughed, and it sounded hollow. "I don't care about anything."

Jax came back with a woman on his arm. Sharp-eyed. Beautiful in the specific way girls at places like this were, the kind who smelled a fortune before they smelled a person.

"King, this is Sasha. She's interested."

Sasha smiled slowly, like she already knew how this would end. 

"I've heard about you. The Alpha who charms like an Omega. Everyone says you're really an Omega hiding as an Alpha."

I stood and made my voice go flat. "What do you want, Sasha?"

Her hand landed on my chest, fingers spread, testing. "I want to know if the rumors are true. I've got a thing for Omegas."

I caught her wrist before she could go any further and set it back at her side, gentle but absolute.

"They're not. I'm not interested."

She shrugged, unbothered, and drifted out into the hall as if she'd expected exactly that. 

Girls like her always had a backup plan lined up.

Felix watched her go, then looked at me sideways. "You good?"

"Never better." A lie so smooth I almost believed it myself.

---

By the time I stumbled down to the ground floor, the high had turned sour. 

Cold sweat pooled on the back of my neck. My legs had stopped cooperating, and the marble floor kept tilting at angles it had no business tilting at. 

Somewhere above me, the hush of the Gilt went on, oblivious, as if nobody had noticed I was coming apart at the seams.

Ace was standing at the foot of the service stairs.

Of course he was.

I stopped so hard I nearly fell. 

That door had a card lock. The stairwell also wasn't on any floor plan. 

And I was sure it wasn't the security that let him in or less he had a way to make them.

"You're not driving," he said.

"Watch me." The words slurred worse than I meant them to.

He took my keys without asking twice. He plucked them straight out of my useless hand.

"Get in the car."

"No. I don't want..."

He picked me up. Just like that, like I weighed nothing, like I was something small and breakable he needed to get somewhere safe, fast.

"I'm done arguing."

He set me in the passenger seat and buckled me in himself, hands quick and sure across the strap. I was too weak to fight it, and some small, pathetic part of me didn't want to.

---

The city blurred at the edges the whole way home. 

Streetlights smeared past the window like wet paint. 

I was talking. I knew I was talking, and I couldn't stop the words from spilling out or find the wall I usually kept between what I felt and what I said.

It was so hot in the car. So uncomfortable. I kept slipping in and out.

"Don't leave me," I whispered. "Please don't leave me."

"I'm not leaving." His voice, low, steady, somewhere above me, somewhere I could hold onto.

"Everyone leaves." 

My eyes were burning now, hot and wet. 

"Everyone. My mother. My father. Everyone leaves eventually. It's just a matter of time."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Promise?" 

It came out so small. Nothing like me at all. Nothing like the person I spent every daylight hour pretending to be.

"I promise."

I don't remember anything much after that. 

Broken pieces instead. Then blank. Completely. 

---

I woke to a pounding skull and a shirt that wasn't mine.

My own bed, thank God, but I was wrapped in something soft and gray that smelled like woodsmoke and pine. My whole body knew whose it was before my brain caught up.

Ace stood in the doorway with a coffee in his hand, watching me like he'd been standing there a while. Like he'd been standing there all night.

"You passed out. I brought you home. Changed your clothes."

"You didn't have to." Bitter, even to my own ears.

He stepped closer. "You were crying. You begged me not to leave."

Heat crawled up my neck, fast and unwelcome. "I don't remember that."

"You don't have to remember." His eyes didn't waver. "I do. And I meant what I said."

I stared at him, coffee steam curling between us. For the first time in longer than I could name, I didn't have a single smart thing to say.

I nodded and pulled the shirt tighter around myself without meaning to, and let the silence sit between us longer than either of us needed it to.