Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
I miss him so much it hurts.
After, I pace my room and talk to him like he can hear me. “Don’t come,” I say to air. “Don’t you dare be the one to pull me out. If I don’t pick myself up, I will only ever be the girl in your arms, and I can’t be that girl forever. It’s not fair.” I am making grand speeches to dust mites. I am lying to make my selfishness sound like virtue. I know this even as I say it.
On day forty, the bag I buy is cut with something too harsh. The world spins wrong, and I end up on the bathroom floor with my cheek against tile, thinking about the first time I bled into Tommy’s shirt and how he said you’re mine like a promise and not a brand. The tears don’t come. I am too dry for them. I watch the water crawl down the side of the tub where the tap drips and try to remember a prayer I believed in.
I wake up to the knock I’ve been dodging. “Ma’am?” The manager this time, not the clerk. “You’ll need to arrange payment today.”
I’m out of cash. Out of tips. Out of grace.
I pick up the burner and text a number a woman in shoes too high gave me with a look that said you’ll be back; we all come back.
The reply is fast. The terms are clear. The price is higher when it’s arranged. The cut is deeper. The control is no longer my own. The shame is the only thing that remains the same.
I go.
The man in the room this time is gentler than the last two. That’s a sentence that should never be a comfort. He offers me water. He takes the edge off with compliments that mean nothing to the person he’s talking to. He hands me the envelope before I put it in my purse he gives me a soft kiss on the cheek that makes my stomach churn. We aren’t friends. He doesn’t care about me. This is another transaction.
After, he says, “You okay?” in a voice that would be kind in another context. I say, “Sure,” because all the other words in my mouth would burn us both. I leave before the smell of his cologne can climb into my hair.
In the elevator, I see a couple who look like we used to on Sundays. Her hand in his back pocket. His head bent to hear a joke no one else gets. I take the stairs. All six-flights worth of shame and air.
I pay the hotel. I buy enough to not think. I lock the door and push the chair under the handle because rituals help even when they don’t.
On the bed, I press the back of my wrist to my mouth and breathe like I’m going under and I know how to hold my breath for a very long time.
Somewhere in the days, I lose count. It’s dangerous, that blur. It means I could blink and lose a month. It means there’s no anchor left.
I write one sentence on the hotel notepad because I need to see the truth outside my head:
I am not trash. I am a person who relapsed and I can choose differently right now.
Eleven
Tommy Boy
The text comes through: sermon.
I don’t question it. I grab my cut off the chair, sling it over my shoulders, and head out. The bike growls under me, steady and familiar, but my gut screams something is off. Something in the air feels heavy.
Sermon on a whim on a weeknight usually means trouble. Somebody stepped out of line, somebody needs to be straightened out, or some business went sideways.
But when I walk in and see who standing at the head of the table, my world tilts.
It isn’t Tripp. Although Talon “Tripp” Crews is in his seat but off to the side just a bit from the dead center. It isn’t my dad. Frank “Tank” Oleander sits to the right of Tripp his eyes watching me and hiding something. It isn’t even my grandfather, Danza as one of the Hellions original’s.
It’s Crunch. Rhett “Crunch” Oleander, my best friend, my big brother, and the look on his face has me shaken to my core. What has he done.
My blood brother. My fuck-up, recovering addict, prospect who just got his full cut back, brother. He’s never once called sermon like this, not where I didn’t see it coming. Hell, half the time he’s still mentally taking notes instead of voting on something. Crunch is always calculating things, especially when he’s clean and sober.
The room is buzzing, the brothers murmuring low, curious as hell about why Crunch has the floor. He stands tall, though, shoulders squared, eyes harder than I’ve seen them in years. He is prepared for whatever is coming next.