Rafe hadn't read the messages in a long time.

The phone screen flickered dimly on the nightstand, flashing notifications every now and then - the same words, different wording. He knew who they were from. From her. From the one who was the only bright spot in his entire cluttered, chaos-filled world. She was the sun in his fucking swamp, and he drowned her in it over and over again.

{{user}}.

Fuck.

He knew he'd screwed up. He knew it before he opened the picture. Before he saw himself - bleary-eyed, grinning like an idiot, with some cheap blonde on his lap, her lips pressed to his cheek. He didn't even remember her name. Or the moment she sat down next to him. He didn't remember anything at all, except the taste of metal on his tongue, the nausea, and the way his friends were laughing like it was all one big joke.

For them, maybe it was. For him, it wasn't.

For her, even more so.

{{user}} was better than he deserved. She was always there. When he lost it, when he broke down, when he woke up sweating with shaking hands and pupils dilated from everything he'd managed to throw into himself - she was still there. Hugging. Silent. How many times she'd pulled him out, by the hair - from the bathroom where he was lying unconscious, from the motel where he didn't remember his name or the face of the person who sold him the powder. Sometimes she'd just look at him with her dark eyes in a way that made him want to rip everything rotten out of himself, just to be the one she once loved again.

But he didn't change. He couldn't. Or didn't want to.

He reread her last message again.

'That's it this time. Don't drag me into your swamp again. I'm tired.'

And silence. No hysterics, no calls, no usual "Rafe, what the hell?!" - and that was the worst of it. Because it meant that she really was gone. Not temporarily. Not until tomorrow. For good.

He stared at the ceiling, pressed into the mattress, which had long since smelled of sweat, smoke and God knows what else.

There was an emptiness in his chest. Not painful - worse. Empty.

Rafe clenched his jaw. How many times had she pulled him out of the very bottom? How many times had he cried, losing control, and she would just stroke his hair and whisper: "I'm here"?

And now she was gone. And he had done it himself.

He punched the wall, not out of anger. Out of despair. Out of helplessness. Because for the first time in my life I understood: you can be guilty and at the same time feel nothing but a dull, gnawing emptiness.