A twinge shocked my lower back where the bulging disk had never quite healed from the car accident almost five years ago. The idiot was texting while driving, didn’t see me stopped at a red light. Slammed into me going at least forty-five miles an hour.

Three months of disability.

Nine months of physical therapy.

One lost job.

Five years of pain-pill popping.

And here I was, permanently injured by one asshole’s recklessness.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the drugs to send me far away to where my thoughts couldn’t reach me. Although my body sunk into the mattress, relaxing to the lull of opioid bliss, my senses remained alert. Every sound remained sharp and in focus. The drip, drip, drip of the faucet that I’d requested the landlord fix half a dozen times. The whir of air blowing through the vent overhead. The scrape of furniture across the floor in the apartment above me.

Who moved furniture at three in the morning? Inconsiderate assholes, that’s who.

More than the sounds were the sensations. A tickle of ant-like feet crawled up my arm. My lips tingled with the poison of Grant’s kiss. I tensed as I imagined his hands cupping my butt cheeks, his tongue probing me eagerly.

My eyelids fluttered open. Banish the thoughts. Erase them, please. I sat up and stared out the window at the city lights peppering the horizon. Lit-up glass and metal peaks jutted into the Pittsburgh skyline, dots of light against an inky void. Streaks of red taillights added a dash of color, along with the neon reflection against the calm river water. Any other night I would have appreciated the mesmerizing view. But not tonight.

The demons were haunting me, and I was too weak to fight back.

Why did I have to go and ruin everything? Why couldn’t I bottle up my feelings and shove them way down deep, in the depths of my black soul where they belonged? I felt like I’d shredded a part of myself, torn it open to the point where it could never be salvaged.

Robin and I had been friends since college. She was my soul sister, a woman I would die for. But out of all the men on the planet, I had to pick her husband, the father of her children, to mess around with. What the hell was I thinking? That’s just it; I wasn’t thinking. Not about the devastation I would cause, or the betrayal, or the ruins I would exile us all to.

And yet why did his kiss still burn my lips? Why did I relive it over and over and over again, as if my life depended on it?