Pretty Ugly (Addicted Hearts Book 2)

by Jane Anthony

  Wracked with sobs, my body slumps. All the pent-up shit bursts like a balloon without a knot, blowing around the room threatening to pop. “I’m so sorry,” I blubber. The phone dangles from the cord, yet I can’t stop screaming out my remorse regardless. The cold steel absorbs my cries. I’m a fool. A scared, sick piece of shit who almost threw away the only parts of me that still matter. Without Kat, I’m nothing. A worn out set of shoes wandering the street alone. Nothing special. Scuffed and used, put away on a shelf never to be looked at again. I almost died with Desiree, but I came back to life the first time my lips touched Kat’s. She wound up my heart, made it beat again. I’m at my best when she’s in my arms. She doesn’t need me—I need her. So much. I always have.

  The pleasant shine of an early autumn sun beats down on the sidewalk, giving off the sensation of warmth beneath my feet, but I’m shivering with clammy sweat sticking to my skin. A burning chill rattles my bones from deep within. I wipe my nose and duck into the back seat of a cab. From the naked eye, I probably just look sick. Like I’m fighting the flu or something. But less than twenty-four hours in, I already feel like my body is about to detonate from every orifice.

  Kat takes my quivering hand as I yawn again, tears leaking from my eyes. A small duffel bag sits on the floor at her feet. The backpack I came with is gone; its contents either sold or stolen. I even pawned my phone. The only things left in my possession are the clothes on my back and this fucking journal shoved in my pocket. I thought facing my demons would help me slay them, but all they did was drag me back down into the dirt.

  Back in LA, a spot at the Sunny Oaks Rehabilitation Center waits for my arrival. They’ll do what they can to make sure I get through this, but as of now, there's a blitzkrieg waging war inside my gut, and it only gets worse from here.

  Fuck.

  I clamp my lips together, fighting off a vicious wave of nausea that hits the second the car starts moving.

  Fuck. Fuck.

  “I can’t get on a plane like this.” A mumble is the only sound that leaves my lips.

  “Hmm?” she replies, leaning toward me.

  I turn my head sluggishly to look at her, keeping my voice low. “I need to score. Now.”

  She looks up at me with wild eyes. “Are you insane?”

  “No. I’m sick, and if you put me on a plane right now, I’m going to lose it. I just need something to keep me together until I get back to LA.”

  “Chase . . .”

  A pink hue colors the whites of her eyes. Asking for a junkie’s trust is like asking a hungry lion not to eat you, but I need her to understand. “You don’t know how this feels, Kat. Please.”

  She stares wistfully out her side of the window and nods. I shout a cross-street at the cabbie and double over, resting my head on the butt of my hand. It’s not long before the decrepit old building comes into view. A brick row house with broken windows and cracked concrete, half of it covered in police tape. “Wait for me,” I tell her, reaching for the handle.

  Petite fingers curl around my wrist. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes. I am,” she insists, her face set in defiance.

  “It’s not safe for you in there. I’m not strong enough to protect you.”

  “I almost lost you once. I’m not risking it again. This time, I’ll protect you.”

  When she sets her mind to something, there’s no talking her out of it. Threading our fingers, I push open the door and step out. She follows close behind. The stink of death and rot fills my nostrils. She squeezes my hand, grasping my bicep with the other. “You chose this over me.” The words fall out in a low whisper as if she’s speaking them to herself. I don’t look at her. I hear the disgust seeping off her tongue, smell it emanating from her pores and mixing with the scent of decay hanging in the air, but I can’t bring myself to see it on her face.

  A rickety staircase stands directly in front of the door. To the right, an ancient couch sits among piles of garbage that litter the floors. I trudge over, tapping the body sprawled out on the moldy cushions. “Yo. You holding?”

  “Nah,” the guy mumbles, his eyes rolling back into his skull.

  Jealousy sits like a rock. I yawn and wince when my stomach clenches, moving about the rancid floors in search of what I need. We turn a corner into another room. A young guy sits on a dirty mattress next to a sleeping girl curled on her side. Blond hair curls out from under a red bandana tied over his head, his eyes fixated on the spiral of smoke pirouetting from the cigarette clutched between his fingers. “Dude.” He looks up. Pinpoint pupils sit inside wild blue irises. “You got a bag, man?”

  “Depends. You got money?” A greasy smile creeps across his face. The girl on the mattress stirs and falls to her back. Her arm drapes across her forehead, the crook of her other elbow bleeding with fresh marks. “Less, of course, you wanna trade,” he slurs, his gaze falling on Kat. When he smacks dopette on her inner thigh, she barely registers it. The whole thing makes me ill. Kat is better than this. She doesn’t belong in this wasteland of death being leered at by a toothless dope fiend.

  “Don’t look at her.” I step between him and my girl as I fish a twenty from my pocket. It’s not nearly enough to reach the orgasmic state I’m jonesing for, but it will get me through. I can’t risk nodding out, leaving Kat here to fend for herself.

  The guy lets out a wheezing chuckle, plucking the crumpled bill from my hand and dropping the single hit in my palm. “You got works?”

  “This look like Duane Reade to you?”

  “C’mon, man. I’m hurtin’.” Heat prickles up my neck, both from the anticipation of the fix and the shame of knowing I brought my pregnant fiancée here to witness it. How could she love me? I’m an animal wallowing in its own filth. A disgusting creature feeding off its base urges.

  Pathetic.

  Repulsive.

  Loathsome.

  I can’t fucking stand myself.

  “Turn around and face the wall,” I say to Kat, unable to look her in the face. I feel her energy shift. The pity. The grief. It turns my bitter stomach inside out. I can’t bear the thought of her seeing me like this.

  With weepy eyes, she complies. Her shoulders heave, the small sounds of sniffling drowned out by the need suffocating my will to care. I’m drowning in the waves, feeling everything all at once, but when my thumb slowly pushes down the plunger, it isn’t long before I feel nothing at all.

  Comfortable.

  Blissful.

  Numb.

  I hate the look in her eyes right now. That warped shard of contempt cutting through her razor-sharp gaze wading in a saltwater sea. Her silent cry is a knife twisting in my heart. It guts me open, but I can’t think clearly enough to tell her how I feel. The words bounce around my brain and get lodged in my throat.

  Yet as the car rolls into the lot at Sunny Oaks Rehabilitation Center later that day, terror clouds my judgment. My stomach twists; my brain bleeds. The first time, I went in blind having no idea what to expect. Knowing the hell that awaits is more than I can bear. Kicking the habit isn’t something I ever planned on doing twice. “I can’t do it.”

  She sucks in a deep breath and lets it out calmly. “What does heroin feel like?”

  “It’s different for everyone. For me, it feels like God rushing through every inch of your being.”

  “Wanna know what it feels like to me?” She turns her head just enough to glance at me from the corner of her eye before flicking her gaze forward again. “It feels like seeing your boyfriend in jail after ten days of no communication. Thinking he’s dead, yet still racing for the phone every time it rings because the smallest shred of hope still remains.

  “It feels like the hot, wet, salty tears coming down your face are never going to end, but they do, only because you don't have any more tears left.

  “It feels like somebody you love is looking you in the eyes and lying to you without a flinch.

  “It feels lonely,
desolate, confusing, and angry.

  “You feel like God? Well, I feel like shit.” She digs the sonogram from her pocket and looks down at it in her lap. “I can’t make you go in there. You need to want to get better. The choice is yours to make.”

  She sets the grainy image down on the dash. A tiny white bean in a sea of blackness. The new life growing inside her. The stakes are so high I feel like I’m suffocating. It’s not only Kat anymore. Now, it’s two people depending on me to step up to the plate and be a man. Two whose lives stand to be a whole lot worse with me in it. “Can I keep this?”

  “Yeah.”

  We sit in the car for what feels like hours, music seeping softly through the speakers. Sick and sad and shattered, yet still tangled up in the love we share. Reaching over, I pull her against me as best I can with the console between us, then press my lips to the top of her head, inhaling her apple fragrance into my lungs as if I can take it with me. She pulls away and turns her face toward the window. I miss her warmth. Her touch. Her sweet, sweet smell. I’m not ready to say goodbye, but I open the door and step out anyway. It’s time.

  “I love you,” I tell her, but she only nods, still looking away. Her grief is heavy, her pain a weight caving my chest in. With the picture of my baby gripped in my hand, I slam the door closed and start to walk. No thought in my head, my eyes looking down, I casually move one foot in front of the other until I’m safely inside the place I’ll call home for the next thirty days.

  Chapter 18

  Chase

  Day 12, I think . . . losing track of the days in here. Feeling good today. The concrete on my feet seems to have fallen off. Energy is high, and I’m mentally feeling good for the first time. The depression, feelings of hopelessness, and constant cravings are somewhat subsiding. Somewhat . . .

  I got a new roommate. The last guy didn’t make it past day two and checked himself out. It’s hard, ya know? The first few days feel like drowning in despair. It’s not even about the physical withdrawals—which totally suck, don’t get me wrong—but the mental anxiety is impossible to deal with. The only addict that escapes paying the piper does so through death.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, dropping my pencil into the binding of my marbled notebook. My counselor thinks I have trouble connecting with my feelings and wants me to journal. When she first gave me the notebook, I sat staring at the blank page wondering what to write. “Connecting with my feelings” is what got me in trouble in the first place. It was too much all at once, a cannon shot of emotion blasting me in the gut. I didn’t know how to deal with it, so I ran right back to the needle to stab them all out. A crazy theory, but I have a month to kill, and I’ll try anything if it means never having to see that fractured look in Kat’s eyes again. So I did. Before I even realized, I’d penned a two-page entry. Everything inside my head, as disorganized as it was, fell onto the paper, and I felt lighter, unburdened by the shit swimming in my brain. That feeling of freedom was a drug in and of itself.

  Logan trudges into our room and plops onto his bed without a word. I try not to notice as he curls into the corner and opens his book as if I’m not even here. We’ve been living together for a handful of days, and he’s yet to say a single word. To anyone.

  Dark eyes are all I see rising from beyond the open book obscuring his face, a creepy-looking bobblehead doll wearing a tiara and sash gracing the tattered cover. “Freak Show, huh? I know the feeling,” I grumble, rising from my bed with a stretch.

  My clothes were already here when I arrived. Mostly sweats and a few of my favorite tees. Ones Kat hates but knows give me comfort. She shines like a diamond, and it shocks me that of all the men she’s been with, I’m the only one who noticed how amazing she actually is. I might be the only one who truly acknowledges the amount of heart she puts into everything she does, and how much she gives to those she cares about. Most people miss that about her. They walk into that salon thinking she’s nothing more than a vapid pretty face, yet all the while they’re getting waxed by the most incredible woman on Earth.

  My gaze slides to the clock on the wall. The time here feels endless even though they keep us busy. It's a full schedule of various therapies—group, single, physical—and they even have acupuncture. The only thing they don’t have is phone privileges. Since I don't have a cell phone, I'm isolated from everyone. I haven’t talked to Kat in days, our last conversation being when she ripped into me about how much my addiction was destroying her. The memory of her sad face haunts me still, so seeing her smile again is what pushes me through. Being with her and starting the life I promised two years ago.

  My relationships are becoming stronger, deeper, and more stable each day.

  Securing my notebook under my arm, I wander to the door and reach for my smokes. From the corner of my eye, I see Logan’s book holding arm fall to his lap, his gaze staring blankly ahead. When we first met, Kat told me I was a quirky dude, but this kid’s looking at quirky in the rearview. Something is odd about him, and it’s not just the silence. I relate to the quiet. No, it’s more than that. There’s a way about him. Almost like mourning. Like the way I carried myself after Desiree died, after I cleaned up and looked at the pages of my life through clear eyes for the first time in years.

  I shake off the sorrow emanating from the corner of the room. This is rehab. We’re all a little broken; otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. He doesn’t look older than seventeen, probably shoved in here by his parents against his will. For all I know, he’s grieving the loss of the dope.

  The Daily Affirmation greets me out in the hall. I am the architect of my life; I build its foundation and choose its contents. Yesterday’s bulletin board read, My body is healthy; my mind is brilliant; my soul is tranquil. Hokey as they are, they make me smile. The last rehab I was in was a state-funded shithole with cinderblock walls painted the color of puke. This is definitely a step up. I realize that’s dumb. I mean, detoxing in a nicer facility is hardly an achievement, but on some level, it’s a sign of growth. It shows my life on the outside is better than it was before. Relapse aside, I’ve accomplished something. I flip open my journal to the very last page and jot down today’s quote to reflect upon later. They seem to be putting a positive spin on shit, and I like that.

  I am superior to negative thoughts.

  Out in the quad, the sun shines so brightly it burns my eyes. I squint, lighting the tip of my cigarette. Sweet smoke fills my lungs. I breathe deep, savoring it before blowing it out into the turquoise sky. It really is beautiful here. Stone pathways snake through beds of wildflowers to a circular patio in the center. Curved benches hug the perimeter. Everything in this place is designed around communication. Even the chairs in the common room face each other. Every morning, they collect the cell phones and don't return them until after dinner. A hippy-dippy commune of rejects forced to interact.

  With smoke twirling about my lips, I watch a honeybee zip across the sunflowers. It crawls across the dark orange center, taking all the pollen from one and spreading it to another. Few people know this, but the success of sunflowers depends solely on bees. Without them, crops would die out and eventually grow extinct.

  It makes me think of Kat.

  Everything here reminds me of her. No matter how much I try to think of something else, to concentrate on myself, my mind wanders to her. I hate feeling like this. I don’t want to sleep unless she’s next to me. My dreams provide little comfort because I know when I wake, she won’t be here. I don’t know if things will ever be the same between us. That thought slowly tears me apart until I feel as though I’m going mad.

  Though these times are difficult, they are only a short phase of life.

  “Who is she?” The deep baritone pulls me back from the edge. When I turn toward the sound, I’m greeted by a middle-aged man in light blue scrubs. His gray hair is shaved close to the scalp, his deep brown eyes a perfect match with his smooth skin. A lanyard hangs around his neck. The name Rodney Thompson written in bold letters next to
his image.

  “Who’s who?”

  The corner of his wide mouth curves. “The girl. There’s always a girl. She as pretty as the flower you’re staring so hard at?”

  I return his grin. “Katarina. Prettier,” I say, bringing my cigarette to my lips.

  “You got another one of those?” he asks. With the filter dangling from my lips, I dig out the hard pack and use my thumb to flip it open. He takes one, then leans into the sparked lighter cupped by my palm next. “Thanks.” He steps back, smoke curling from his nose like a dragon. “Rodney,” he states, extending his hand.

  “Chase,” I reply with a firm shake.

  I assume this conversation is over. Counselors and patients are usually kept separate. They have their own lounge and their own designated smoking area. Yet he doesn’t move from his spot on the patio. “So, Chase, what’s your story?”

  I shrug. “Same as anyone else’s, I guess.”

  “Nah. They may all start the same, but everyone’s story is unique.” He sucks on his smoke and lets it dribble out. “I’m goin’ on twenty-two years sober myself. Took me seven tries.”

  “Twelve days. Take two.” I strip the head off my cigarette and kick at the tiny ball of ashes on the ground. Saying the number should be empowering, but for me, it’s another reminder of my failure. “What made it stick?”

  “A girl.” His smile widens. “Annabelle.” The deep bass of his voice softens when he says her name. “I made her my wife, and I never looked back.”

  “Simple as that, huh?”

  A laugh rumbles in his chest like thunder. “There was nothing simple about it! I miss it every damn day of my life.”

  “But what made that seventh try different than the rest?”