Lazarus (The Henchmen MC Book 7)

by Jessica Gadziala

  But I had to talk about it, right?

  That was part of the recovery process.

  Step one, admitting you had a problem.

  "Six months."

  "Oh, psh," he said and I could feel him shrug beneath me. "This won't be that bad then," he announced, making me wonder how the hell it could be any worse. "These first couple of days will suck regardless, but you shouldn't have the weeks and months or the emotional shit to handle."

  "The emotional shit," I repeated.

  "The mood swings- hopelessness and rage mostly. Then the feeling of nothing feeling right or being completely detached. Then there are panic attacks and muscle stiffness and issues with concentration and sleep. You might still have some of those, but likely not to a huge degree and it won't last the months that it usually does for long-term users." He paused then, giving my hand another squeeze which seemed to cause the same sensation to happen to my heart, a reassurance, a pleasant feeling for a change. "Is it just the pills? Or is there street drugs or booze mixed in?"

  I took a deep breath and held it for a minute. "Just the pills. I barely ever drink and only did last night because I was, I don't know. I felt like crap and I just... went to the bar. I've never touched any street drugs," I added, knowing that wasn't some badge of honor, knowing I would have eventually gone to them.

  "That was your name on the bottle," he observed.

  I snorted at that, shaking my head. "I pinched a nerve in my back a couple months back," I supplied.

  "That's usually how it fucking starts," he agreed.

  "I can't do this for two more days," I said, hating how whiny my voice sounded, but knowing there was nothing I could do to change it.

  "Yeah, you can."

  "You make it sound easy," I snapped, yanking my hand from his. I didn't want his empty platitudes. I didn't want "you can do its!"

  "It's not easy. It sucks. You're going to be writhing in pain and emotional misery every minute of every day for the next two days. It is going to be the absolute worst fucking thing you have ever had to endure and you will seriously give thought to killing yourself at least half a dozen times over the course of it. But you won't and you'll get through it and you will be able to get back on track once it's over."

  "I guess," I admitted, finally relaxing fully back into him, my muscles not able to hold me stiff any longer.

  Feeling it, the arm that wasn't across my belly went across the upper part of my chest, just above my ribs, completely wrapping me up. It should have been scary from a man who was holding me against my will, who locked the door from the outside, who nailed the windows shut, who thought my name and his name was some sort of sign.

  But all I could feel in the embrace was genuineness- a want to help, a desire to ease some of my burden, a way to make me feel not so incredibly alone in the world.

  At that thought, I felt the tears well up- unwelcome but equally unstoppable. I knew a part of it was due to the withdrawal, the way it made your emotions jump from one extreme to the other, completely on their own and not usually an appropriate reaction to whatever had caused them. At the same time, though, there was also the fact that it had been over a year since someone just... hugged me. It was amazing how long a person could go without human contact, without a touch that meant to bring comfort. I hadn't even realized how much I truly needed it until I had it again.

  So when my hands went up of their own mind and curled around each of his forearms, holding him to me, I didn't fight it. I didn't overthink it. I just did it because it felt right, because it was a small gesture of gratitude.

  "Do you have a job you need to call?" he asked a long minute later, shocking me out of my weird little dreamworld where I wasn't an actively detoxing addict and he was just a nice guy in a bath with me. Nice things like that, I couldn't have that and I knew it. "I have your cell."

  I did have a job.

  But that being said, if I called, it would only make things worse for me.

  "The office is closed," I lied instead, hoping it came across as believable. "Long weekend," I added for good measure. By the time I was done with the actual withdrawal, it would be Monday and I could just fake a call to my own machine at home and say I was sick.

  Someone told me once that there was no better a liar in the world than an addict trying to keep the world from finding out what they were truly up to. It had never been true of me before since I never really had anyone I needed to lie to.

  But I found that the lie came off as confident and easy, maybe proving that person right after all. It wasn't a fact I was happy to learn about myself.

  And I really, really didn't want to think about having to face the person who told me that phrase that would eventually become true of me.

  It wouldn't be a pleasant meeting, that was for sure.

  My stomach twisted painfully, all but guaranteeing that there was going to be another date with my head and the toilet in the near future, making me pull against Lazarus' hold.

  "What's the matter?" he asked, sitting up straight as I slowly stood, trying to wring some of the water out of my clothes- a useless task.

  "I feel sick," I admitted, leaving out the fact that it was mostly my uncertain future that was causing it, not the withdrawal itself. It wouldn't help to complicate the situation.

  "Alright," he said, standing as well, but reaching for his shirt and hauling it off, tossing it with a slapping sound back into the tub.

  I knew I wasn't supposed to look.

  He was my captor and, sort of, savior.

  The situation called for gravity and level-headedness.

  But my eyes didn't get the message and drifted from his stupidly good-looking face downward. He had a lot of scars. I had noticed them on his hands when he was touching me in the tub, but maybe wrote it off as something he got working on his bike or something. That was promptly discounted as the cause when my eyes drifted over his wide chest and sculpted abs and found more scars there- several carved across his chest, one huge long gash down his side. I didn't have to know to know that the big one was from a knife.

  My eyes drifted over the outline of his abs, seeing the small trail of dark hair that disappeared below his jeans. But even as my eyes noticed it, his hands were there at the waistband, pushing the button through and pulling the zipper down. I should have looked away then too, but I didn't.

  I was a total perv watching as the soaked jean material slipped off his hips and thighs to reveal a pair of black boxer briefs. And, being they were both tight and wet, I could make out the outline of his cock through the material, making an unexpected surge of desire break through the other numerous sensations flooding my system.

  But only for a moment because then he was out of them completely and stepping out of the tub, reaching for a towel and quickly drying himself.

  I watched that too.

  Then I watched as he wrapped the towel around his waist and reached under to discard the soaked boxer briefs as well.

  What the hell was wrong with me?

  On that thought, my eyes flew up guiltily to find him watching me. And because he was watching me, I knew there was no way he missed my completely inappropriate eye-raping of him.

  Jesus.

  A flush worked its way up over my chest, my neck, then finally, my cheeks, making me, no doubt, red with embarrassment as his head cocked to the side slightly and a ghost of a smile toyed at his lips.

  But, thankfully, he said nothing as he reached for another towel and walked toward me, putting it down on the edge of the tub.

  "When you're done, we're gonna get more Advil and Pedialyte in you," he said, eyes dipping slightly and my own followed, realizing for the first time that I was in his tee. His white tee. And I was soaked through. You couldn't 'just barely make out' the outline of my breasts; they were on full freaking display.

  But before I could freak out and wrap my arms around myself, his eyes went up. "We'll try cherry this time," he added.

  "Cherry what?" I asked,
completely lost.

  To that, his smile went warm, making his dark eyes dance in amusement. "Pedialyte, sweetheart."

  "Oh, right," I agreed, nodding a bit frantically as he moved and turned to walk out of the room.

  Alone, I stripped, dried, and drained the tub. I changed into one of the outfits he had brought for me- black yoga pants and a heavy oversized red sweatshirt, thankful for the warmth now that the bath was over.

  Then my stomach cramped again ominously and it was on my knees and purging the nothing that was in my system again.

  A good ten minutes later, washed and rinsed and hair finger-combed, I walked back into the main area of the house to find Lazarus there in lightweight black flannel pajama pants and a tight white tee that clung to his strong shoulders and draped over his fit center. He was pulling slices of toast out of the toaster and plating them as he turned halfway to face me.

  At my head shake, my hand going to my belly that was finally empty, he shrugged at me. "You need to put something in or you're going to be choking on bile all night. Which is worse. Besides, if you have something in there, it gives the Advil a chance to get absorbed before you start throwing up again," he said, putting the plate down on the table next to another bottle of Pedialyte, cherry as promised, sweating slightly and I wondered if it being cold would make it any less disgusting.

  After I threw back the Advil with a healthy swig of the cherry which was only mildly less gross than the orange and reached to tear off a corner of my toast, I found myself asking something that had been niggling at me for the better part of the day.

  "How do you know so much about what it is like to detox?"

  He turned fully to me, cradling a cup of coffee between his hands, expanding his chest with a deep breath that he held for a second before letting it go and giving me a small shrug.

  I thought he was leaving it at that.

  But oh, no.

  Then he told me.

  He told me it all.

  Every sordid little detail.

  FIVE

  Lazarus- 5 years ago

  "Dealing on my fucking turf, mother fucker?" Rodrigo, the leader of the Discípulos del Infierno gang demanded. It was rhetorical though because before I could give him an answer, his fist was slamming into my left jaw. It was hard enough that it would have sent my body flying several feet, Rodrigo being a good six foot with seventy-five pounds of muscle beneath his fat, but he had been holding the front of my shirt so my body just jerked against the fabric and the sound of material tearing met the sound of my groan as I leaned forward and spat out one of my back teeth.

  Getting on the radar of the Discípulos del Infierno was, in one word- deadly.

  No one dealt in their neighborhood since Rodrigo took over for his more lenient brother three years before and started handing out ass-kickings and death sentences depending on his mood to those who would even try to cross him.

  Me? I had been dealing on his streets right under his nose for almost six months. Bad enough that I was stealing his business, but Rodrigo would never tolerate being made a fool of.

  That was exactly what I had done to him too.

  In my defense, I had my orders. Had I maybe had a choice, I was pretty sure I would have gone two neighborhoods over and saved myself the hassle.

  But it wasn't my call.

  My boss, some slimy shit by the name of Ransom, had a long line of bad blood with Rodrigo. And I was a nothing, a nobody junkie dealer who traded his time in exchange for my own supply. I was dispensable.

  And, I realized as Rodrigo threw me to the ground and reached into his shoe for something and came back with a pocketknife that caught the glow of the streetlight on the blade when he snapped it open, that I was always meant to meet this end.

  I was just sent as a message that while Rodrigo had claimed the turf and had kept Ransom off, that Ransom wasn't cowed by the show of power. He wanted to make Rodrigo paranoid after he found out about me and what I had been doing and for how long. He wanted Rodrigo to look twice at every single face he saw on his streets every day. If he got him paranoid, he would get him stupid. If he got him stupid, he could take him out.

  Drug wars.

  They would never fucking end.

  "See this, hombre?" Rodrigo asked, holding up the blade for a second before pressing the flat side against my cheek.

  I should have been shitting myself.

  Should have.

  But wasn't.

  Because I took four 30s right before I hit the street. I was a comfortable kind of numb. I was fucking invincible.

  And I knew that once my drugs were all sold, I could go home to Ransom and get another hit- enough to get me through until the next morning. I would supplement with a fifth of Johnnie to hold me over until my next round of dealing the next afternoon.

  So my brain wasn't thinking of the knife and the danger involved; it was thinking about the next score- one that was hard enough to send me flying back against my bed, staring at the ceiling as the elated feeling coursed through my system, took all the goddamn memories away.

  That's all I wanted.

  I just wanted to be mother fucking blank.

  Because if the high wore off, even for a minute, all there was was the misery and memories I had been fighting off for years. Buried by time, when they came back, they were fucking crippling.

  So my mission in life was to never let them come back.

  I didn't feel it when he sliced my shirt of, cutting my chest in the process. I didn't even feel it when he took that one slice and turned it into a D.

  I didn't even feel it when he threw me back onto the ground, leaving me staring up at the sky, the stars nothing but a wish for clearer skies so I could actually fucking see them as he came over me, took the knife, dug it in and pulled upward.

  The scream was what made me snap almost instantly sober. My head swiveled to see a young girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen standing there with giant blue eyes, horrified at the sight of Rodrigo over me.

  Thankfully, she wasn't alone and her father grabbed her and dragged her along with him.

  But it was enough to spook Rodrigo, realizing perhaps that he shouldn't air his dirty laundry in public which was exactly where we were- in a small alley between two apartment buildings, but close enough to the mouth that anyone passing by could see.

  That was what saved my life that night.

  Rodrigo got up with a threat to my boss and I crawled my ass out of that alley and into a cab, wanting to go home, but I blacked out from the blood loss and woke up later in a hospital room, stitched down my side and hooked up to drips.

  It was the first time I was offered detox.

  It was also the first time I accepted, figuring as the high wore off that if I was getting so stoned that I hadn't even thought to fucking fight back, that things needed to change.

  With that, I was shipped to the local detox. I was signed in, had my cell and wallet taken from me. Then I was pulled into a room and strip searched, one of the most humiliating things I had ever experienced. I was then stuck in a room with a meth user who was twitchy as all fuck twenty-four hours a goddamn day. I was given endless Subs, more than I needed, more than anyone needed. I was high on fucking maintenance drugs. They gave me set eating and sleeping hours and private and group therapy.

  It was decent.

  The Subs blocked the withdrawal symptoms.

  The therapy made me face up some of the things I had been ignoring.

  But then two weeks were up; I was given all my shit back; I was signed out; I was deemed "detoxed" and then sent home.

  And, well, the Subs wore off in a day and I was fucking withdrawing again.

  Back to Ransom I went, met with open arms because his favorite fucking lost cause was back to dangle around wherever he wanted.

  It was another nine months before I detoxed again.

  That time it forced because I got locked up on a possession charge. After six months awaiting trial in the county jail, I was l
et off on time served because of having no previous record.

  Back to the streets I went, this time with a record and unable to get any job because of it. And who was waiting for me? Good ole' trustworthy fucking Ransom.

  The next year was mostly blank spots in my memory.

  I had flashes here and there of switching from pills to snorting.

  Then snorting to shooting.

  I had been an addict for several long years before I realized that the revolving door of detox centers weren't the answer.

  I didn't need to be coddled.

  I didn't need to be handed drugs to ease the transition.

  I needed to fucking suffer.

  Maybe it wasn't for everyone; maybe it was unique to my case.

  But I needed to throw a blanket over my head and sweat it the fuck out. I needed to have my skin crawl. I needed to feel pain in every inch of my body. I needed to rage hard enough to punch holes in my wall and then fall into the pits of despair. I needed to puke and dehydrate and be absolutely fucking miserable.

  Because, for me, it was the only way to ensure that I wouldn't go back. When you go through hell, you don't ever want to sign up for another fucking tour of it.

  I cut off ties with Ransom who was gunned down three months later anyway. They never found the shooter, but any idiot knew it was the same man who made a gutted pig out of me. Rodrigo.

  Once I was done puking and raging and pacing my floors trying not to claw my skin off, I finally left my apartment.

  And walked right into my first official NA meeting.

  I found a sponsor.

  I listened to stories.

  I told my own.

  I claimed I was getting better while every single night I went home and put a gun in my mouth and tried to find the strength to pull the trigger. Or to not pull the trigger. Whichever one.

  You need to come to terms with what sent you into a bottle in the first place, my sponsor had told me at a diner drinking decaf coffee because he was one of those types of recovered addicts. He didn't even use sugar because it was addictive.