My Unexpected Hope

by Tammy L. Gray

  “That sounds great. It will give me time to get my honey-do list together.”

  She spun, and he smacked her rear when she passed, getting an open-mouthed gasp from her in response.

  He put up his hands. “Hey, if you get to have some perks to this not-really-married-but-it-feels-like-we-are thing we have going, then so do I.”

  She shook her head, that gorgeous pink blossoming along her cheekbones, and continued to the buffet line. He followed, relief stretching through his tightened muscles.

  They were going to make it through this season. They had to.

  Chad stared across the group of men and women seated in the small room. Metal folding chairs were placed side by side in rows of seven, and surprisingly, the Saturday afternoon group was larger than at previous meetings he’d been to. He’d received his eleven-month chip only a few seconds ago, and now he’d been given the microphone to share his story.

  “I had my first drink at thirteen with my best friend, Katie. We’d snuck up to a tree house in the back of my neighborhood, and Katie surprised me with a six-pack of beer she’d swiped from her dad. Like most of you out there, my old man was an alcoholic, although I’m sure he’d tell you I’m full of crap.”

  The crowd chuckled, and Chad felt a surge of confidence. “Katie was a wild one. She didn’t like rules. And she wasn’t the type of person you argued with, so when she offered, I accepted. And even though I hated my father for being such a lousy human being, I still took that drink, because I knew I’d never turn out like him.”

  Chad paused as he pushed through the first sting of regret. That night had been the first time he’d lied to Laila. With addiction in both their families, she’d made him promise never to try any of it. Luckily, by the time Laila realized what he and Katie were doing, she loved him enough to stay.

  “Unfortunately, that night was the first of many, and soon I was drinking regularly and experimenting with drugs. Katie and I started with weed, then moved to Ecstasy when we had some extra money. Finally, our senior year, we switched to blow, and instantly, I knew I’d found my nirvana.” He shuffled his feet and squeezed his hands on the sides of the podium.

  “By the time I was twenty-one, I drank from the time I woke up ’til the time I went to bed. Despite being married, and my wife working fifty-plus hours a week, I’d still spend our money to buy coke on the weekends. Eventually, she left me, and I knew I had to get my life together. I quit the drinking and the drugs, and she came back. This pattern continued until finally, after my third failed attempt at rehab, she changed the locks on our house, and my fleeing to Atlanta felt like the only option. She divorced me a year later.

  “Two months ago, I came back to town—nine months sober—and won my wife back again. Promising myself I’d never, ever fall.”

  The room was so silent, he could hear the seconds tick from the clock on the far wall. He took two big breaths until his racing heart matched the steady rhythm.

  “Two nights ago, I drove by the liquor store for the first time. Last night, I pulled into the parking lot and stared at that brick building for half an hour, warring with myself the entire time. I finally found the strength to drive away, but I’m not so sure I will the next time it happens.”

  He clutched the chip that felt so undeserved. “I love my wife, but that ache is still there. A void I can’t seem to satisfy. I want to find it, end it, control it. I want all the temptation to disappear.” Chad eyed the faces in front of him. A few were crying, others nodding in solidarity. Most of them had fallen, like him, many, many times.

  “I want to know how it is that I can have my dream but still want the nightmare. I want to know if it will ever be easy.”

  He stepped off the stage, relieved to have shared his failings, yet still numb from the truth that Katie had been right.

  His fight was only just beginning.

  CHAPTER 34

  Another three days went by without relief from his struggle.

  Laila was moving this weekend, and despite his heart telling him all would be okay, Chad still had this irrational fear that the minute that house sat empty, his hope would die as well.

  She would now live in the same town as her ex-boyfriend. She’d run into him at the grocery store, see him at the coffee shop. They’d sit together, catch up on old times, and then she’d realize she’d made a terrible mistake.

  Chad pounded his forehead on the steering wheel, so physically and mentally exhausted that he didn’t have the strength to pull out of the factory parking lot. Raindrops sporadically fell against his windshield, barely harder than teardrops, almost as if the sky felt his pain and was crying above him. He should have left town when he was strong, when conviction numbed the pain. Now all he could feel was the hollow ache of his impending failure.

  He wasn’t the only one to see it either. Cooper had started hovering, asking him every day if he needed a run or wanted to take a fishing trip to the docks. This morning Chad had practically taken Cooper’s head off, threatening to move out if his friend continued to act like a pecking hen. Though which was worse, Chad didn’t know: Cooper’s overzealous mothering or Katie’s deafening silence.

  They hadn’t spoken since she’d given him Laila’s ring. It had been his choice at first, ignoring her voicemails, but then she’d stopped calling, and now even her texts had stopped. A sure indication that Katie had tossed him aside. And why not? Everyone else seemed about ready to as well.

  A loud rap on his window had him jerking straight up, the face of his worst enemy only a thin piece of glass away.

  Chad glanced in his rearview mirror, but that impervious black Jaguar blocked his retreat. Again, he eyed Slim through the water-streaked window, and the man motioned for him to get out with a quick chuck of his chin.

  Feeling a rush of anxiety, Chad popped open his door. He didn’t have the strength to fight Slim tonight. He was barely winning the battle against himself.

  “What do you want?” he asked, holding the edge of the door so it acted as a barrier between them. The light rain had ceased, but a breeze blew across his face, wet with humidity and chilled with the last cold front they’d probably get before summer.

  “I was wondering the same thing. Your shift ended thirty minutes ago.”

  Chad’s fingers curled as he waited for him to continue.

  Slim’s eyes met his, probing and intent. “Don’t you usually do your self-reflecting in Joe’s parking lot?”

  “Why are you following me?” he hissed, hating that Slim had seen him at his weakest. He normally drove to Joe’s because it kept him out of the liquor store parking lot. But lately, even that escape hadn’t eased the ache. Instead, it seemed to make the situation worse. He’d stare at the door, tormenting himself with the truth: that he was so messed up, his wife didn’t trust him to step past the threshold.

  “I told you, you’re one of my own.” Slim tilted his head as if he could read the torrent of emotions in Chad’s heart. As if he could sense that tonight was the perfect time to go in for the kill. “And if my guys are in trouble, I want to be there to help them. To offer solutions.”

  Chad slammed the driver’s door shut behind him, his heart all but galloping from his chest. Rage pulsed through his veins, crawling up his arms to his closed fists. “I paid my debt to you. I kept your secrets.” A flash of the last few weeks tore through his mind: the frozen metal claws waiting to do his job; the ring locked in the V at Laila’s throat; the front door at Joe’s, closed to him alone; the flashing neon sign at the Liquor Barn that throbbed as much as his need to drown his pain in the bottle. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Because, Chad . . . I know the depth of who you are.” With two long fingers, Slim pulled a pouch from his pocket.

  Chad fell immediately still, his eyes transfixed on what had to be at least a quarter ounce of cocaine in his old dealer’s hand. “No. Not anymore.”

  “Do you know why I never bothered Katie after she floated into town all snooty
and converted?”

  Chad swallowed. If he was expected to answer, he couldn’t. Everything from his throat to his stomach felt dry and cracked.

  Slim smiled, and there seemed to be a small hint of respect for her in it. “I watched her. Like I watch you.” He raised his hands to the sides. “But wouldn’t you know, that girl didn’t come home the same.”

  “Neither did I.” The words fell out as if he was begging for them to be true.

  “Oh yes, you did.” Slim’s voice was suddenly harmonious, purring with deep, soothing vibrations. “You’re not Katie. You never have been, and that’s why you clung to her for so many years. She’s strong and you’ve always been weak. Like your father. You fail, because that is what’s in your DNA.” Slim wrapped a hand around Chad’s neck affectionately. “But I care. I see this torture you’re living in, trying to be something you are not. And I’m here to help you.” Tears blurred Chad’s vision, Slim’s words sparking every insecurity he’d ever had. “Katie, she’s gone. Laila, you know it’s just a matter of time. She’s always been way too good for you. But not me. And I’ll never judge you or cast you aside.” With his free hand, Slim tucked the bag of powder into the front pocket of Chad’s uniform and snapped it shut. “I understand.” His dark eyes blazed into Chad’s. “And no one has to know.”

  Slim backed away, but Chad couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He heard the Jaguar’s engine roar to life and the bump of bass as the car exited the parking lot, and still he remained frozen to the asphalt.

  His fingers twitched and found their way to the snap at his left breast pocket. He just needed to get it out. Throw it away and then everything would be fine. But nothing ahead of him seemed better than the promise of escape.

  Maybe he could just do a little and no one would find out.

  But as the horrifying thought ran through his mind, his voice suddenly found its rebirth. Clutching his hair, Chad screamed into the night. Answered by nothing but the buzz and flicker of the halogen lights at the perimeter of the parking lot.

  He couldn’t fail. He wouldn’t fail. There would be too much to lose, and this time he’d never, ever get it all back, including himself.

  With staggered steps, Chad clutched the driver’s side door handle and pulled it open. He crawled into the seat, feeling every last drop of energy draining as if being sucked away by the bag at his chest.

  He couldn’t touch it. Not even to toss it away. Slim was right.

  He was weak.

  But Katie wasn’t.

  Chad put the key in the ignition, Betsy needing two turns before grumbling to a start. Katie would fix this for him. Somehow, she’d make it all go away.

  CHAPTER 35

  Katie’s house was dark when Chad pulled up to the drive. He should care, even a little, about bothering them, but he didn’t. She owed him this. She blew up his world the night she brought the drugs into his house, and he’d do the same if he had to.

  Slamming Betsy into park, he winced at the shriek of her transmission, a clear scolding for not fully stopping before engaging the gear. He felt a laughable need to apologize to the old truck. It bubbled in his throat, a mix of hysteria and shock.

  The pouch inside his pocket burned, and looking down, he half expected to see an outline of red crackling embers, as if the powder had caught fire.

  He had to get it out. Had to make the shaking stop, the twisting in his intestines disappear.

  The wind had picked up, a hiss through the trees, and thunder bellowed overhead, a promise of more rain to come. Half stumbling across the yard like a drunk, Chad gripped at the air. His eyes blurred and need clawed at his chest. So close. He was so close.

  The steps were his last hurdle, but he flew up them and pressed on the doorbell twice, his finger lingering enough to make a long stretch of sound. While he waited, he paced in front of her door, leaving a trail of wet boot prints across it.

  The porch light flicked on and he stopped, swinging around to the door in anticipation of Katie’s ticked-off stare.

  But it wasn’t her.

  Asher Powell filled the doorway. His hair was sticking up around his head, and it seemed his shirt was on backwards and inside out.

  He’d woken them up. The thought brought another round of hysterical laughter to his chest. Katie Stone, asleep before eleven. Would the world ever feel normal again?

  “Can I help you?” Asher said, his voice thick with sleep.

  Chad froze, breathing too fast, too hard. He was meeting Katie’s husband—in his boxers—on their perfectly decorated porch. This wasn’t how it was supposed go. He wasn’t supposed to be a train wreck when this moment took place.

  He needed to apologize for disturbing their pristine life, but he felt like he’d been punched hard in the stomach—no, punched everywhere. Achy and rattled, jacked up and wrong, and desperate for a target. Desperate to push against something, anything that would get this feeling out.

  “Yeah, um, I’m sorry to wake you. Is Katie here?” His voice was strangled, and he knew he had to look wild and terrifying under the dim yellow light.

  “I think it’s a little late for—”

  “Chad?” Katie appeared behind her husband, tying the sash of her robe around her middle.

  Relief stretched through him. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay.” She went to inch past Asher, and with a nearly imperceptible motion, he stopped her advance.

  Chad turned away from the couple and shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t need to get involved; no one told Katie what to do.

  He could hear their hushed whispers as they argued, Katie reassuring her husband that Chad wasn’t a serial killer. Asher arguing that he didn’t care; he wasn’t risking her safety.

  So Katie needed protection . . . against him? The irony was uncanny.

  With an exaggerated huff, Katie stormed across the porch until she stood in front of him, her eyes a brand into his.

  “Have you used tonight?” she demanded.

  “Not yet.” He let the words linger in the air, let her see how incredibly close he was to failing.

  Lips pressed together, Katie disappeared again, and more whispers occurred behind him. Finally, Asher conceded, but insisted the door stay open.

  Chad heard a kiss, and then silence long enough to ensure that Asher had indeed walked away. He whirled around. “It’s in my left breast pocket. You need to get rid of it. Right now.”

  Her eyes narrowed, shifting to blue steel. Unlike the Katie he’d grown up with, this version didn’t hide her feelings behind a stone exterior. He could see everything she was feeling. Surprise and anger but mostly severe, gut-wrenching disappointment.

  “No,” she finally said. “Get rid of it yourself.”

  “I can’t!” He took an aggressive step forward, but she didn’t even flinch. Desperation enveloped him. It was visceral, physical. It lived inside him, and he didn’t know where to put it anymore. “Do you think I would have driven here, banged on your door, and humiliated myself if I thought I could even touch it?”

  “And what happens the next time, Chad? When I’m not home, or when you’re too weak to get into a car? What happens then?”

  “Just get rid of it!” he hollered.

  “No!”

  Chad felt himself break. “I did it for you. I took the drugs from your hands when you weren’t strong enough,” he whispered, loyalty the only thing left for him to cling to. “I sacrificed everything for you.”

  “And where did that get any of us, huh? We all died that night.”

  He dropped to his knees, his legs too weak to hold him, his head cradled in his hands. “I thought I was free. I thought I was past all of this. Katie, it’s been almost a year. How am I still in captivity?”

  “Oh, Chad.” Her words floated like the wind past him, and she was there, kneeling too, her head pressed up against his. Her teardrops fell on his forearm and rolled down to his elbow. “You will never be free, not without help. You can try and fi
ght, and maybe even sometimes succeed, but without faith, you cannot call it freedom. It’s simply bondage on hold. Paused until it rears its ugly head when you least expect it. I know. I’ve been there, but I now know the difference between the truth and a lie.”

  “I’m losing everything. It’s slipping away piece by piece.”

  “You’re not.” Her hand stroked his hair with a mother’s tender touch.

  She spoke like someone much older, much wiser, not the spontaneous risk-taker who’d shared his childhood. Chad raised his head, desperately wanting to believe her.

  She didn’t say a word as she opened the flap of his pocket and pulled out the drugs. Her eyes widened at the amount. “There’s a lot of money in this bag. How did you afford—”

  “I didn’t buy it. Slim called it a gift.” Chad barely had the energy to shrug. “He said he was helping me.”

  “Yeah, helping you straight to hell,” Katie snarled. Tugging on his arm, she helped him to his feet, then pressed the pouch into his hand and held it with hers. “Go do what you should have done five years ago.”

  He gripped her fingers. “I can’t do it alone.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Hand in hand, they walked to the back of her house, to the spot where the yard ended and a line of trees began. The drizzle was back, wetting their heads and exposed arms. Katie released him, leaving the pouch of powder closed in his fist, and stepped away.

  He stared at the bag, yet no longer felt inferior to it. He pulled on its opening, creating a small circle to pour from.

  A gust of wind surged through the trees, as if demanding Chad’s compliance. Water beaded on the pouch, and Chad turned it over, watching the powder dissolve as it was whisked away. When the bag was empty, he let the plastic slip through his fingers.

  Cold stretched through his body, and suddenly he began to shake, everywhere.

  Katie wrapped her arms around him, but he couldn’t embrace her back. In minutes, he’d nearly unraveled every positive step he’d taken in his life. If Katie hadn’t been home, he truly didn’t know what he would have done.