No, you don’t, I thought guiltily. My wish consisted of a man with beauty as dark as his soul, and eyes as consuming as a starless night, busting into the sports bar and taking me away. We’d both be changed, and he’d give me something my being ached for. Only, at that point, I didn’t know what that was.
I lived in Vegas, in a one-bedroom dump with Axel. I could see the strip from my bedroom window if I overlooked the drug dealers in the alley below and the bright lights of money and tourists. I’d been dating Axel for the past year. One year with him. Twelve months. 525,600 minutes. I loved him for none of them.
But I did like him. A lot. He was safe. Normal. He was the boy I would be with if my petals hadn’t been plucked clean off.
We walked home from the bar that night after our shift, the hot humid air taking my breath away. It was midnight, but it was still eighty out.
“What do you want to do tonight?” he asked, holding my hand.
Axel knew everything. About my past. About Jaxon. About my breakdown. About my fall into the abyss. He knew I couldn’t love him, but I also knew he overlooked that in hopes that one day I would get over my first love.
There was no getting over Jaxon.
There was only dealing.
Plus, my leaving had nothing to do with getting over him. It was for me. To live and learn. To break on my own and put my pieces back together. I hadn’t tried once to get over him. I’d only tried to get to know myself.
“You?” I asked, my tone level.
He laughed. “You do know that sex isn’t the only part of a relationship, right, babe?”
Babe. He called me babe. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
I shrugged. I liked sex. Axel was the first and last man I’d been with post Jaxon. Sex wasn’t on my mind. Sex didn’t feel like mine after I took off. It still didn’t. But with Axel, I could fade away in my own head and pretend he was someone else.
Which did nothing for my heart.
My poor broken, empty, rotten heart.
“It feels good,” I muttered in defense.
In my purse, my cell phone chimed. I frowned, ignoring it.
“Is it him again?” Axel asked, his tone sobering.
I squeezed his hand and gave him a smile I didn’t feel. “Yes, but I’m not answering it.”
Samuel wouldn’t leave well enough alone. He’d called me four times today after his Happy Birthday text had gone unanswered. I liked to keep our conversations to a minimum. It wasn’t hard, ever since he’d met and fallen in love with a woman named Livie. He sent me a wedding invitation last month.
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Samuel Carter and Livie Romero on June 15th. RSVP by May fifteenth.
It was May tenth.
I hadn’t RSVP’d, and though I could pretend he was calling to wish me a happy birthday, I suspected he was calling to confirm my seat at the wedding.
He’d been hinting at it for months now in his texts.
It’s time to come home.
How long are you going to do this?
Eventually, you have to face everything you left behind.
Why have a phone if you never answer?
I am a new man, but I still have a heavy hand, My Sweet.
Texts like that last text always did strange things to me.
I still didn’t believe it. Samuel had fallen hard for this girl. He’d broken wide open in a way I had once found relatable. Only he’d had it easy. Livie became alive in his world, welcomed his lifestyle. They found a balance between kink and love notes.
I kept communication with him to a minimum because he always found a way to slip Jaxon into the conversation.
Every single time I let myself go down that path, I had to start over.
Which meant I had to break over and over again. I wasn’t the same girl who’d left Portland.
I was a woman who’d forced experiences down my throat in an effort to grow.
But those experiences were choking me, and I wasn’t sure leaving did me any good anymore.
2. – Jaxon
My eyes burned.
I rubbed at them, hoping if I rubbed hard enough the spots would help block out the sight before me.
Ten people who were just like me. Lost, wounded, and set to self-destruct.
I crossed my arms over my chest and forced myself to pay attention. It wasn’t that I didn’t care—I did, I had to—it was just that I really didn’t fucking care. At least not tonight. Normally, I was entirely present at these meetings and with my clients. I took this seriously. Their sobriety cemented my own.
But today my mind was elsewhere. I tried to block out the date. But Samuel, the fucker, had kindly reminded me what today was.
Two years.
That’s how long it had been since I’d spoken to her. Touched her. Had her…
“Mr. Damon?” a mousey voice spoke up.
I let my glower fall on one of the group members, and immediately gave her a smile when she blanched at the harsh look that was no doubt on my face.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry, Judy. You want to share?”
Judy looked down at her scuffed white Keds. “Never mind.”
Normally, I gave two shits if I hurt her feelings. But I was trying to be a better human being. I pulled as many shreds of humanity I had left and put them forward every morning. Sometimes, my masked slipped.
And the monster in my soul snapped his teeth. Sharpened his claws. Ached to cause a little pain. It had been two years since I’d had a hit of that painful emotion. Unless I was hurting myself emotionally.
Judy, like everyone in the room, were recovering addicts. Most of them suffered from alcohol and drug abuse. Becoming a substance abuse counselor fell into my lap the day after Miya left. I’d gone to see the only person I had left in the world. I spent ten hours straight stomping through garbage and snow in search of my mother. When I found her, she was OD’ing in the park, seizing in my hands.
She stopped breathing.
I gave her mouth to mouth and CPR for two-and-a-half minutes before her pulse returned. She didn’t open her eyes for a month. She overdosed on heroin. My mother was my creator. She was my damager. But she was mine, and I’d do anything in the world to keep her around. She hated me. Didn’t like to look me in the eye. Hated seeing the pain in my eyes that she had caused.
When she woke up, I laid into her. I poured every ounce of anger and hurt I felt into her for hours. One of the hospital staff overheard, said that was just what he was looking for, and when he found out I had a medical degree, he offered me a job at his personal practice.
I was eviscerated after losing Miya. I wasn’t making any sense. I moved through life like it was sludge weighing me down. My brain was muddled. My heart barely beat. I said yes to the job because I ached to say yes to something.
It helped, surprisingly, becoming an addiction counselor. I suffered from the disease myself and knew exactly what my patients were feeling.
Too well at times.
I softened my voice. “Come on, sweetie. Share.” I glanced down at my notebook in my lap surreptitiously, reading over my notes. “You had a CPS hearing today. Did you get the visitation you were hoping for?” I held my breath.
She gave me a small smile. Judy was a teen mom. Her life had been hard from the start, and she used pills to help. Unfortunately, she’d given birth that way, and her child had been taken from her the moment he was born. But she loved him. I saw it. She reminded me of my mother, and Miya. She had soft delicate features. Pain in her light brown eyes. She was doing her best, but her best wasn’t good enough. I wanted to help her.
If she’d stop biting her lip when she talked to me, I might talk to her outside of these meetings. But there was no way in hell I was going down that road. I’d fucked up and fallen for a younger woman already, and my heart wasn’t as easily resuscitated.
Not to mention I felt nothing for her but emotional concern. I felt nothing for no one all day long. Even Samuel bar
ely got a reaction out of me. My mother had disappeared back into the land of the addicts and homeless once released, and though we still met once a month, she promised me she was only drinking.
But I saw the tracks in her veins. I felt sick thinking of them.
“I got supervised visitations for now, every other weekend.”
She looked so happy; I was glad for her. She needed her kid. Fighting for him kept her sober, and she’d fight for him forever. “I’m so happy for you, Judy. You’re doing amazing. And one day, you’ll get him full-time. I know it.”
She nodded her head, her eyes filling with tears. Everyone patted her on her back and congratulated her. “It’s because of you, Mr. Damon,” she said, devotion glimmering in her eyes.
I shut that door immediately. “It’s got nothing to do with me. This is all you, sweetie. Your fight, your strength.”
Everyone hummed in agreement.
Inside, I drifted away a little more.
After the meeting was over, I was cleaning up the doughnuts and coffee I’d brought in earlier. I held group meetings once a week behind one of Samuel’s restaurants. The space was ten by ten, but it was finished, and it had its own entryway. I owed him, but my tab had been adding up lately.
He’d gotten even more generous ever since he fell in love. The fucking bastard. I dumped the doughnuts in the trash and braced myself against the table. Sobriety pamphlets rested near my palm and I could see myself reflected in the glass window in front of me. My eyes were so empty, I couldn’t stand looking into them.
“Er, Mr. Damon?”
I whirled around to find Judy standing just inside the door. The room was empty, but I could smell smoke from the drifters out front and heard their faint conversations.
“Yeah?” I called, straightening up and putting on my human mask.
She wrung her hands together. In all honesty, she was adorable. Huge brown eyes, straight as a board dark brown hair. She wasn’t innocent though. Not after what she’d been through. She was strong, but her intentions were clear in her eyes.
“Are you busy?”
“I have to head back to the office,” I lied.
She slouched, disappointed. “I wanted to pick your brain. You’re doing so well. I want to do that well someday.”
So, Judy wasn’t innocent. But she was hurting. She was empty. I could see it in her eyes as clear as I saw it in my own. She’d hooked up with two of my weekly clients. I knew because they’d been talking about it by the coffee and doughnuts a few weeks ago. Suffice it to say, they had to find new meetings to attend. Judy was replacing her addiction with sex and self-disgust. I knew. I’d been there. Hell, I was still there, minus the sex. I would never take advantage of her.
It was all part of my Return to Humanity pitch I often reminded myself.
“You’re doing well now. One step at a time. One day at a time. You don’t need to pick my brain. You’ve got a pretty good one up here already.” I tapped her temple gently.
She blushed and nodded. “You think so?”
“I do.” I reached over and grabbed my bag, indicating this disaster was over. “You need a ride or is your Mom coming to get you?”
She hung her head. It had been my point. She was only eighteen. She was damaged. But she didn’t sing to my broken soul and I was done breaking them myself.
“Mom’s coming.”
I put my arm around her shoulder. “I’ll wait with you.”
She talked about her son as we waited for her mom to get there. He was seven months old. I was positive that she’d make it out of this with him. She had that spark. A reason to fight. So did I.
Only my reason was all the way in fucking Nevada doing god knows what with god knows who. I imagined all sorts of horrible scenarios late at night. Alone in my bed. Her unwashed pillow beside my head. Everything was as she left it. Even two years later.
When I made it back home, the dark forest greeted me. I exhaled in relief, and my monster freed itself from his cage. I could be myself when I was alone. Which meant I hated being alone.
The day Miya left, she uprooted my soul and took it with her. I’d been trying to learn how to live without one, and that meant becoming a man I thought she wanted. A regular guy. A safe guy.
A boring dusty fraud of a guy.
I slammed my front door closed behind me and paced the length of my living room in the dark, running my hands through my hair. Tugging at the roots. My therapist would have a field day right now. But I did it anyway. I tugged until it hurt beyond reason, and the rush of pain sent a flood of clarity through me.
She’d come back.
She took my soul. I had her heart. She’d need it eventually.
The next morning, I slammed my hand down on my alarm clock and remained still. The sun bled into the room. Summer was approaching in Portland, and the light was gold and amber, lighting me up. I turned back to it and studied the shadows in the corner.
How fucking long did she need?
Grunting, I showered and got dressed for work. Tailored black suit paired with a crisp charcoal dress shirt. I fastened my cufflinks and then drug a handful of gel into my hair, brushing the black locks off my face. I needed a cut. I could hear someone singing, and knew my housekeeper, Kinny, Nina’s sister, was rustling about cleaning up after me. My house was safe to house another person. She lived in the basement.
And cleaned my attic.
Which was now a fucking yoga studio and workout room. My therapist suggested I get rid of my chambers and turn them into a place of peace instead. He knew everything about me. Right down to the parts of me I hadn’t ever shared with anyone. I suspected the only reasons he stuck around was because I paid him in cash.
Kinny was flipping pancakes when I came down.
“Morning, Mr. Damon,” she sang, giving me a flirty smile.
Kinny was younger than Nina. She was long legs, peach cheeks, and had a round ass I’d bet would look sensational pinkened from my hand if I still partook in that. She did nothing for me. Didn’t do anything but make me miss my sweet girl even more.
“Morning,” I mumbled, sitting at the bar. She placed coffee and breakfast in front of me and I ate in silence.
“Mr. Carter asked me to check in with you. He needs a yes or no,” she informed me.
I glared at my bacon. “He’s relentless. Yes, damn it.”
“You have an appointment then for a suit fitting at noon. Is that agreeable?” She put her hand on my arm and gazed at me from under her golden lashes.
I looked down at her hand until she moved it. Then I gave her a hard stare. You’re lucky I put my monster away this morning. “I have lunch at noon.”
“Lunch after,” she said, like duh. “You want the suit to fit. Although you shouldn’t have any trouble getting it to fit your body.” She bit her lip and winked.
Under different circumstances I’d find her confidence intriguing. As it was, she was getting on my damn nerves. “Text me the details.” I pushed away from the stool and grabbed my suit coat, slipping it on. “And change those. They’re drooping.” I nodded at the dozens of pink roses I kept on the mantle between the kitchen and the living room.
They were changed once a week. My entire house smelled thick of roses and each time I smelled them, I felt like my sweet Miya was close by. She wasn’t, but it was sometimes the reminders that counted.
“Yes, Mr. Damon.” She sounded deflated.
It was the same thing every single morning. I never took the bait. She always cast it right in my face.
When I got to my office suite downtown, I parked, fed the meter with enough coins to keep it sated for four hours, and then brushed past reception and their well wishes. When I got to my secretary, she gave me a huge grin I actually felt, and shoved a cup of coffee at me.
She was married, in love, and wanted nothing to do with me romantically. She was good at her job and picked up on my moods. Hence the coffee. She said it made my mood better. I thought that was bullshit.
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br /> “Morning, Callie.”
“Good morning, Mr. Damon. Full list today. First client’s in fifteen. Should I bring him back?”
“Who?” I asked, picking up my coffee and heading to my office door.
“Patrick Bender.”
I cringed and groaned. “Yeah, sure. Bring him in as soon as he gets here.”
Patrick Bender was a recovering addict who was still tapering off morphine. Our meetings were court appointed and unavoidable. Violating them would land him back in prison. The moment he got into my room, I could smell the cigarettes on him. The scent filled my office.
We spent an entire hour talking about how he’d sat and stared at a baggie of heroine last night for ten hours before he flushed it. And then he’d torn his toilet up in an effort to save it. And now owed his landlord 1,800 dollars in repair bills. I tried to get him to breathe, but he was hyped. I tried to get him to see that he’d done the right thing flushing it, and kept my mouth shut about the fact that he shouldn’t have bought the damn stuff to begin with.
“Have you considered moving? Maybe this is your chance? Get out of that neighborhood. Move someplace without drug dealers living beneath you.” I mean honestly. Put in the effort! Instead, I smiled serenely.
My monster rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m talking to my probation officer about it. He’s looking for some good places.”
When the hour struck, he bolted up and jutted his hand in my face. I gave it a shake.
“Thanks, man. See you next week?”
“Patrick,” I called.
“Yeah?” He turned back.
“Give me the fucking dope.” I held out my hand.
He sighed deeply, dug into his pocket, and dropped the baggie in my pocket. “I wasn’t going to use it.”
“Stop flirting with temptation. It always wins.”
He hung his head and left. I picked up my desk phone and dialed up front. Callie picked up on the first ring. “He did it again,” I whined.
She laughed sadly. “Coming right in.” She came in with her hands gloved, and a biohazard waste bag. I dropped it in the bag, and she handed me disinfectant wipes. “Next appointment’s in thirty.”
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