The Publicist's Plight (Book I in The Harrison Inc. Series) | ✓

Chapter Thirty: The Demons We Hide

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I remember when I was nine years old I had walked in on my mother drunk, screaming angrily at the air while she laid on her bedroom floor.

She still had that ageless beauty, the "Italian Curse" as my father called it, but her eyes were cold and dark. Her eyes were always cold and dark, but that time, that moment, it was a coldness and darkness that didn't belong to her. It frightened me.

I'm brought back to that instance when I look at him—when I look at Sebastian. I see my mother all over again, and my hands shake uncontrollably. My heart beats against my chest with a rapid unrelenting rhythm I can feel through my ears.

Suck it up, Leslie, my mind chides. Someone needs your help.

"Sebastian," I say gently. I peel myself away from the door. "What...what did you do?"

He stares at the bottle in his hand like I'm not even in the room. I notice the shards of glass on the other side of the bathroom by the second door—the CRACK noise I heard.

"I've run out," he says. His voice is small and innocent. "I've run out."

I'm in front of him now, taking the bottle away from him and holding his head in my hands. He's looking at me, but it's like he doesn't recognize who I am.

"Sebastian," I say sternly. "What did you do? Why did you do this?"

I feel this sudden anger emerge inside of me. How could he do something like this to himself?

I grab the plastic bags from the ground when he doesn't answer me.

"Sebastian! What is this? I told you that you can't do this anymore!" I pat his face a few more times and hold up the drugs in front of his lifeless eyes. "Hey! Is this cocaine? What is this?"

"Relief," he replies with a smirk.

Upset, I take the bags to the toilet and empty them out into the water. I flush them, watching the pills clink against the glass and the powder bubble up and fizz before disappearing down into the pipe. I expect a hostile reaction from him, but all he does is stare sadly at his fingers and play with the material of his sweatpants, like the world around him doesn't exist. The bandage on his hand is dirty and torn. When was the last time he changed it?

"Sebastian, you're very drunk," I tell him. Is there a chance he doesn't know that already? "I'm going to go get Fiona."

"They're talking about me," he mumbles.

The weight of his aura is heavy; I feel his sadness like I'm sad, too. I figure there's a level of understanding that needs to be achieved with him. One that requires patience and selflessness.

"Who's talking about you, Sebastian?"

I play with my phone in my hand and clench the empty plastic bags in the other. He's staring at the computer screen with an intense vulnerability I've never seen before in him. It convinces me that it isn't even Sebastian walking this earth anymore. I don't know what to do.

So I walk over to him, move the beer bottles aside, and sit down next to him. He's sweating a lot, but his body is cold; I see him shivering. I try not to show him how afraid I am for his wellbeing.

My eyes follow his onto the screen of his laptop. It's an article about him on the website Hollywood Life.

I take the laptop and read over the words. His eyes don't even leave the spot they were on, even when the laptop isn't in front of him anymore. The article isn't something either of us haven't seen before, but that doesn't mean the words are all sugar and rainbows.