by K. L. Savage
I sound miserable, and they say misery loves company.
Lie.
I fucking hate company.
Unless it’s Captain Morgan.
My fingers scratch against the table. I miss alcohol so much. It fixes everything. It makes everything better. I’m a train wreck without it.
“Patrick?” Gale calls out from the front desk, and I set a puzzle piece in its spot. That’s what I’m doing with my day, fucking puzzles. It’s my ‘alone’ time. I used to get my dick sucked in the clubhouse while getting blitzed; now I’m—I glance toward the picture on the box—putting together a damn puzzle of puppies running in a field.
They’re cute, but I’m a fucking biker.
We don’t do cute.
“Yeah, Gale?”
“You have a visitor,” she informs me.
I stand so fast the table tilts, and the progress I made on my puzzle disappears as it slides off and hits the floor, breaking apart into a hundred pieces. “Damn it!” I slam my fist on the table.
“Patience, Patrick,” Gale says in warning.
“Patience Patrick,” I mouth as she turns her back. “Fuck, patience.” I plop down in my seat and pout. I spent an hour on that puzzle, and I was just about to see the golden retriever. Jesus, what have I become?
My brows pinch together when I remember I told Gale I didn’t want any visitors. Ever. Including guys wearing leather cuts. I’m not ready to see them. Right when I’m about to ask who is coming to see me, Doc walks through the door.
His pretty boy looks are impossible to miss. All the women turn their heads as he pauses and tugs at the hem of his polo shirt. He isn’t wearing his cut, which is probably why Gale let him through. Well, he is a big, bad biker, Gale. Joke’s on you.
When his eyes fall on mine, his shoulders sag with relief, and he hurries to me, pushing an orderly out of the way. I don’t have time to tell him to fuck off before he throws himself at me, wrapping me in a bear hug.
He’s strong. Shit, I can’t breathe.
“Man, it’s good to see you, Pirate.” Doc’s palm hits the middle of my back in greeting, but I don’t hug back. I’m too pissed off, at him, at myself, at the club. It makes no sense to be mad at them when I know they are trying to help me.
The alcoholic inside me is clawing against the inside of my skin, begging to be released, but it’s impossible in a place like this. It’s that part of me that is mad at them. It’s because of them I’m here without a bottle to drink from, and I’m being forced to deal with my issues.
Issues I want to drown.
Doc leans away and slides his arm between his legs to pull a chair up to the table. He sits with a big smile on his face, and all I can do is muster a small, closed-mouth grin. “You look good, Pirate. Real good.”
“Really? Cause I feel like shit,” I sneer. I glance around the room for some type of life support to keep me rooted in place when Sunnie is creeping behind the counter, no doubt probably trying to steal Patricia’s book again.
She must feel someone staring at her because she lifts her head as soon as her hand snakes into Patricia’s purse. Sunnie takes in her surroundings, and when her eyes land on me, she grins, waving, and then pulls the book free. She points to it, nodding, which tells me she wants to read it to me again.
God, anything but that book.
I swear, if Samuel doesn’t come to a horrible death, I’ll burn the book myself, and Patricia will have to buy a new one.
“Pirate?” Doc says my name with concern, touching my arm with his hand.
I jerk away and lay my hands in my lap. “What are you doing here, Doc? I don’t want visitors.”
“I know. A lot of the guys have come to visit you, but Gale is protective, tougher than a lot of bikers. She said she had strict orders not to allow anyone from the club in, but I’m a doctor, so that’s how I got in to see you. I’m just doing my duty as your physician and checking in on my patient.”
“I’m not your patient anymore. Do you know the shit I’ve been through? It’s been hell, Doc. Why couldn’t you just let me be? I was content with dying. That’s all I wanted.” I’m defeated. All the anger and resentment I felt just disappears, and now I’m tired. I want him to leave, to go tell the guys I’m fine and when I’m ready to see them, I’ll call. My energy levels are depleted now that I’m on the mend of being a normal man, someone I’ve never been. I’m seeing things I want clearly for the first time. I want Sunnie. She gives me hope. She understands me. She knows I’m not perfect. She eases the ache inside me. She subdues the drunken monster lurking in my veins, and what scares me even more is she brings me the kind of peace alcohol never could.
I want peace, but I can’t give in when I want the taste of rum on my tongue just as much. Until I know I can beat my addiction, something I don’t know I want to do yet, she’s better off without me.
Doc rears back, and the pulse on the side of his throat jumps. It’s clear he isn’t happy, but I don’t care. “You think we were just going to let you keep drinking your life away? We were stupid, me included, and I’m a damn doctor. For so long we thought you liked alcohol, but as the years passed, we saw it for what it was. We weren’t going to feed into your addiction. We weren’t going to let you kill yourself,” he spews angrily.
I press the palms of hands against my eyes and shake my head back and forth. My legs tremble, and I start to rock. I want a drink, right now. I need a drink. It’s the only thing that can ease the ache inside me. Why won’t Doc leave me alone?
“I knew what I had to do when you were licking broken glass off the ground, eating fucking dirt so you could get every last drop of rum.”
“I still want rum,” I whisper and stop rocking when I imagine sapphire islands staring back at me.
“You’ll always want it, Pirate. That’s the worst thing about addiction. It’s a constant fight. We care about you. We want to see you better. We want you to come home. I know you think we turned our backs on you, bringing you here, but we didn’t. We are fucking worried sick, and I’ve been chomping at the bit to see you. I know what happens in severe detox, Pirate, and I can bet you experienced pure hell. It’s a decision I came to terms with, bringing you here.”
“You didn’t have a right to make that choice.”
“Yes, I did. As your doctor, your friend, and your brother. You were in no shape to take care of yourself.”
“You have no idea—”
“I don’t because you won’t talk about it. We don’t really know you, Pirate. We want to, but you have to heal yourself in order to let us in. I’m hoping this rehab center helps you because they’ll call me when they think you might be ready to come home, and it will be up to me to give them the final word. I need you to try, or you’re going to be here for a long time. We want you home. Don’t make me the bad guy for trying to keep my friend alive.”
He’s doing more than I ever could for Macy.
“I don’t know how to be alive, Doc. You don’t know… I need you to go. Okay? Please, go.”
“Pirate—”
“I said to fucking go!” I roar and push the table toward him as I stand. Doc’s chair tilts back, and he staggers upright, catching himself from falling to the floor just like the puzzle pieces earlier. The only way this can work is if I’m put together again, a jigsaw, only I’m an impossible feat. None of the edges match. Pieces of me are jagged, and none of me aligns how it needs to in order to succeed.
My soul is lost, and I have a feeling a few pieces of it are at the bottom of a bottle somewhere, never to be found.
Doc backs away, slow and steady, nodding when he sees the desperation on my face. I’m not ready to face my future yet. He needs to get the fuck out of here. “Okay, just know you have us, okay? No matter. We’re family.”
Family.
“Please…” I choke, closing my eyes as a wave of disgust hits me with what I’m feeling. “You know what I want more than the family you’re offering? A bottle of fucking rum.”
“I shouldn’t have come. It’s too early in your recovery. I wasn’t thinking.”
Gale comes to the rescue and has a frustrated expression on her face, hands on her hips as she glares at Doc. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Now.” Two orderlies flank her sides, and since she is so small, they look like the muscle.
I’m glad neither of them is Lundon.
“I’m going,” Doc says, his eyes cast downward before glancing up at me one last time, and then he makes his exit, leaving me to stare at his back.
I flop down in my chair and bury my face in my hands. Why is this so damn hard? I’m tired of feeling so weak, so insecure, so fucking sad. I’m a sorry excuse for a man. How do I beat this need, this hunger and thirst inside me before it consumes me? Right now, I’d rather die if it means going another day without alcohol.
The only progress I’m making is realizing the conclusion of my story is me, giving into temptation all over again.
A hand lands on the back of my neck, cold fingers graze along my hairline, and by the tentative touch and how relaxed I feel now, I know it’s Sunnie.
“Are you okay?” she asks, her hand running along my shoulder as she takes the seat Doc vacated. When the comfort of her hand drops from me, the gut-wrenching ache for my sin returns.
“Yes,” I say and then scoff at the lie. “No, no, I’m not.”
“You will be.” Her hand journeys across the tabletop, the remaining puzzle pieces on the table askew since she’s pushing them out of the way. Sunnie lifts her hand and lays it on top of mine, rubbing her thumb across my knuckles.
Solace finds me.
This isn’t good.
I don’t want to depend on her like this. She’s as good, if not better, than Captain Morgan in the morning. There’s nothing like the first drop to start the day, and that’s exactly what her touch feels like. Instead of sluggish, she gives me something else, something I haven’t experienced before because I’ve been too drunk and numb to know what serenity is.
“Patrick, you need to get going to your group meeting,” Gale shouts from the front desk. The corded phone is laying against her shoulder, and she has her body turned in such a way that she doesn’t stretch the cord so far. Gale points her blue pen at me and then slices it through the air, pointing it toward the door where my meeting is held.
No doubt Flower is waiting for me.
“I don’t want to go,” I whisper.
“Wanna skip? We can ditch this shindig and go hit the town, paint it yellow—”
I tilt my lips in a pleasant smirk and flip her hand over, awed by how much bigger I am than her. “I believe the term is paint it red.”
She waves my correction away and twirls a piece of hair around her finger. “Yellow, blue, green; does it matter? Paint is paint.”
“Now, Patrick!”
Sunnie snickers, covering her mouth so no one can hear her. “Gale is getting testy. You better go.”
Shit.
I don’t want to leave her.
I lace my fingers through hers, and I know I’m making a face that’s probably off-putting, but what I feel toward her confuses the hell out of me.
“I’ll be in my room when you’re done. We have our reading session.”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I say and do something I’ve never done before. I bring her knuckles to my lips and kiss them. I release her fragile fingers regretfully, and pause next to her. I stare down where she still sits, and her blonde hair shines brighter than the sun and more like a constellation. I want to bend down and kiss the top of her head, inhale her scent, and let it be the one last thing that cloaks me in safety before I have to come to terms with something I’m not sure I can.
But I don’t.
I put one foot in front of the other and try to figure out what the fuck fate has in store for me because apparently it isn’t the path I wanted to go down. As I open the door to the room, I see Lundon leaning against the counter, staring at Sunnie.
My teeth grind. I know I’m not a good enough man to love someone like her. I’m not even sure if I’m capable of love, but I do know one thing.
As long as I’m here, Lundon won’t touch her. He has the upper hand now, but once I’m at full strength, he won’t stand a fucking chance. The only reason why I step into the meeting and close the door is I have comfort in knowing Sunnie can take care of herself. If she can handle a temperamental grizzly like me, she can handle Lundon.
“So glad you can join us, Pirate. Today is the day we tackle the first step in overcoming your addiction.” Flower’s hair is big and poufy, reminding me of Poodle in a way, but Poodle takes better care of his hair than she does. “Does anyone know what the first step is?”
Amber raises her eager hand and is nearly out of her chair with excitement.
Overachiever.
“Yes, Amber?”
“The first step is admitting we are powerless over alcohol, and we are not able to manage life without it.”
I grip the edge of the desk I’m sitting at and gulp. Fuck me, how can I admit that out loud when I can’t even admit it to myself?
“Is anyone willing to admit that?” Flower looks around for any volunteers. I want to raise my hand. I want to shout that I’ve become a damn nobody, worthless, and a waste of space because of my addiction, but I sit, frozen.
Everyone around me raises their hand, and I’m stuck glaring at the plain desk. It looks like it’s been donated by the school. It has the shelf beneath the top where students can put their books, and the chair is connected to it by silver metal.
In a way, I suppose I am in school. This time, it’s to help me get my life together. I think about what Doc said when he visited me. I was found on my knees, licking broken glass, cutting myself until I bled, and I tried to eat dirt. All to have another taste of rum.
Yeah, I guess my life has become unmanageable if I’m eating fucking dirt.
My arm shakes as I lift it in the air, adding my hand to the sky. Flower’s eyes smile, and they somehow tilt up as she looks at me.
“My goal here is to help all of you. I’m thirty years sober, and I’m telling you, if I can do it, you can do it. I know everything you’re thinking because I’ve been right where you are. The doubt, the agony, the craving for another drink. And it’s always another drink; not just one more. Us alcoholics know that ‘one more’ means many more. You have to really want this, guys. You have to want to fight it, or when you are done and out there again, tempted with bars, tempted with going in the grocery store and going down the wine aisle, you’ll relapse.”
“Have you ever relapsed?” I ask.
“Three times before I finally earned my first chip. It’s a thirty-token. It might not be special to anyone else, but it’s a milestone for us, a proud one. Don’t be ashamed to be here because a lot of others would rather drink themselves to death than to ever admit they need help.”
That’s me. I never wanted to be here. I wanted the alcohol to kill me. Doc forced me here. I didn’t come by choice, but now that I’m listening to what Flower is saying, maybe I owe Doc more than an apology.
I owe him my life.
CHAPTER TEN
SUNNIE
“Hey, sweetheart.”
My body freezes when I hear his voice. My hackles rise, and I want nothing more than to tell him to get the fuck out of my room.
I’ll always be at the ready when I hear a snake. “Dad,” I greet with no emotion in my voice. I close my journal, something my therapist recommends. I find that I enjoy writing my thoughts down, whether good or bad. It’s easier than speaking, admitting, and hearing the weakness in my voice. There isn’t a voice in this journal, only haunted words and pain masked with happiness.
Feeling like a teenager, I lock my journal closed and keep the book pressed against my chest. My dad is the last man I trust. I know he’s curious about what I write down. I see how he eyes the book as if it’s his bible, and all the answers he seeks are in it.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to greet your father?” he asks, kissing my cheek.
His presence has evil seeping into the room, nearly choking me with his bad intentions. He’s biting at the bit for the doctor to say I’m ready to get out of here because when I do, my dad has to watch over me for the first sixty days. He can’t wait to control me. I’ll be switching one prison for another, and I’d rather be here or on the streets than in the hands of a monster like him.
“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be my father.”
He wraps his hand around my throat and slams me against the wall. His lacky shuts the door behind him and locks it. Tom, the biological man to blame for my existence, has his thumb pressed against my jugular, and his cigar-ridden breath has me holding my breath instead of trying to gasp for air. “Listen here, you fucking bitch, you aren’t going to talk to me like that, okay? Just because you’re my kid doesn’t mean I actually give a fuck about you. You’re here to get well; not for me, not for you—for them.” He points to the wall, telling me he means the people of Vegas.
I don’t care about the people. He can go fuck himself for all I care.
“You are nothing but a waste of goddamn space. A leech. People like you are good for nothing to this world, but I’m stuck with you.”
His words don’t hurt because I’ve heard them one too many times to give a shit.
Tom leans in closer, and the hot acid of his breath dries my mouth, and for a second I think he’s about to kiss me. “You’re a parasite. You understand? You like to suck the blood from your host, but I can always find a way to use you.”
I finally gasp for air and claw at his hands, but he doesn’t let me go. He eases the pressure around my throat, and his lacky stands beside him, chuckling when he sees the fear on my face.