Edge of Recovery (Love on the Edge)

by Molly Lee

  “Fuck!” I snapped, swinging and connecting with his shoulder as he avoided my head shot. “I don’t know!”

  “Who was in your life at the time? What were they doing? Was it your job? Think!” He jabbed right, cracking me square in the jaw.

  The ring spun me slightly, not enough to fog my vision but enough to make me reach for the rope to my left to steady myself. Had to give Mr. Rodgers credit where it was fucking due. Neighborly asshole was running a fight club in his basement right next to his train set.

  I leaned against the rope, breathing through my burning nose, and letting it out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and saw nothing but Blake. Her long brown hair wrapped tight in a ponytail, a sleek black tank covering her incredible breasts…but she wasn’t happy. She was crying. She thought I didn’t see. That I didn’t know why.

  “Blake,” I whispered her name, but Thomas heard me all the same.

  “Your ex-girlfriend?” He was right next to me, one hand on the rope, the other hanging heavy at his side.

  “How did you---“

  “Your aunt provided us with all the history she could.”

  My stomach dropped to the mat. I still didn’t have a clue how much Blake had told her when she’d been contacted while out chasing. I swallowed the acid in my throat, wishing it was a sharper, clearer liquid that would make the memory fucking die.

  “So, what about Blake? Was she there the day you realized you couldn’t be around mirrors anymore?”

  I cut my eyes to him.

  He raised a gloved hand, the muscle in the arms I never saw because of the fucking cardigans rippled like a silent threat. “Would you rather I hit you again?”

  “Yes,” I said and let out a dark laugh when he cocked his arm back. I shook my head. “Yes to your question, Doc.”

  He dropped his hand. “Had she said something to you? Degraded you because of your habit?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then what?”

  I took a deep breath. I’d never spoken to anyone about this, not even Blake.

  “I’d hurt her.”

  Thomas nodded like it wasn’t a big surprise. And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I didn’t suppress the monster I was as well as I thought I did.

  “Physically? Emotionally? Was it deliberate?”

  I closed my eyes again and sank to the mat, the fight leaving me. If I shut my eyes, I could be talking about someone else. It wouldn’t really be me.

  “Both. All three actually.”

  “And?”

  “And…”

  What had she asked me to do? I couldn’t even remember, only that I hadn’t wanted to do it. I’d been exhausted, as usual, from work and she’d wanted me to go out somewhere. Like that was so fucking bad.

  “She kept pushing for me to do something that day. I don’t know what it was. And I snapped. For so long she’d been perfectly happy just being with me. She didn’t need anything else. I was her only boyfriend ever, and she never chose to do anything but what I wanted, and that’s how I liked it. Wanted it. Then she fucking went to college and everything shifted. She kept pushing for change and new…and I couldn’t do it.” I sighed, the memory of standing in our potential future apartment in Tulsa, the lease in my hands, flashing behind my eyes. The threat I’d made if she chose the school over me. I could see it, but it wasn’t crystal clear…it was like watching someone else through a fogged set of glasses.

  “I knew that day,” I forced myself to continue, knowing the doc would never let me be if I didn’t. “I’d never be the man she wanted me to be—the one who jumped at the chance of new possibilities, adventures, the one who could keep pace with her, the one who could let her be free to become the amazing woman I knew she was.” I swallowed hard. “I didn’t want her to go anywhere, be anyone. She was mine, and I liked her where she was. And I assumed if she loved me like she had for so many years, she would eventually realize there was nothing more important than me, than us. So, it became second nature to shut her down the second she asked for anything I wasn’t up for.”

  Thomas sank down next to me. “Go on.”

  “That day, in particular, she’d pushed a little harder, trying everything to get me out of the house. I was fucking beat, just off a twelve-hour shift, and I wanted to relax, but she kept pushing. I snapped, blew up, and then fucked her until she was raw.”

  The Adams-apple bobbed underneath Thomas’ skin, and I dropped my eyes to the mat.

  “And afterward?” He urged.

  My breath hissed out of my lips, and I slammed the tips of the gloves into my eyes from where they stung. They smell of vinyl and sweat filled my nose.

  “She was crying. I tried to act like I didn’t notice. Didn’t realize what I’d done to her, what I’d been doing to her.” I pushed harder against my closed lids, trying to force the image of her limping to the bathroom out of my head. “When I went to clean myself up…that was when I looked up and didn’t know who the fuck I was anymore. I just…” I let my hands fall. “Don’t understand what’s wrong with me. It doesn’t matter that I loved her—she was the one I wanted to hurt the most because she was supposed to be mine. She was supposed to be the one who never pushed me, questioned me. She was…everything to me. My world. And I fucking destroyed her.” I shook my head.

  “There is something wrong with me, Doc. I know there is. But it’s too broken to fix.” I smacked a glove against my chest. “What I’ve done? There is no coming back from it. No forgiveness. So, yeah.” I shrugged. “I drink. I drink and drink until I can’t hear her cries, can’t hear her voice begging me to be tender, begging me to see her for who she was. I drink until every piece of my rotting soul is numb and I can’t even remember my name, let alone all the things I’ve done or why, for the life of me, I can’t understand why in the hell I did them in the first place.” There. That should be enough to get him off my back. Maybe if I was lucky it’d scare him off of ever asking me to open up again because no one needed to see what was going on in my mind, ever.

  Thomas punched my shoulder so hard it seared. “You’re not broken, Justin.”

  I scoffed and punched him back.

  “You’re not broken,” he repeated. “You couldn’t tell me this story, with the perspective you have on it now, if you were. The first step in recovering from anything—addiction or possessiveness or anger issues—is recognizing that you have them. And you’re absolutely aware, now that you’ve had distance, what you did was wrong.”

  “Yeah, I knew then, but I kept doing it, stuck to my ways under the delusion that that’s how the world worked. I had my place, and she had hers.” I ground my teeth together to stop the words coming out of my mouth. Fuck, once I opened up I couldn’t stop.

  “Well, I’m here to help you. You can come back from this, Justin. And without the drink.”

  “Fat fucking chance. Nothing else works. Unless you want to prescribe me some pills that turn me into a zombie?”

  “You don’t need medication. You need education.”

  “Fuck you,” I said, shooting to my feet. “I may have never completed high school, but I’ve learned enough to know education has nothing to do with what I am. It’s genetic, or God lost a bet when making me. I’ve got more of the devil in me than anyone I know, and the only thing that soothes the ache is his poison of choice.”

  Thomas shook his head, rising to my position. “You have to want my help, Justin. I won’t just give it to you. So if you’re going to meet my every attempt with a smart ass, you-know-better-than-me comment…you’re up shit creek. One that leads straight back to prison.” He shoved me this time, not bothering to swing.

  I pushed him back, sending his ass into the ropes behind him. He came back fast, cracking me across the cheek so hard my head snapped to the side. I retaliated instantly, a hard jab to the side followed by a blissfully landed hit to his jaw. Fucking finally.

  “You Gaslighted that girl!” He snapped, three jabs to my gut.

  I dropped my fists and took
a wide step back, sucking in sharp breaths. “What?”

  “Gaslighting. It’s a new term in the world of abuse, but it basically means you attempted to destroy her perception of reality. That’s what happened. You cut her down and made her believe there was nothing outside of the world you defined for her. And you did it as a form of control. To keep her.”

  I fell back onto the mat my head between my gloves.

  “Now you have a name for the demon, just like alcohol. Things with names are easier to conquer, overcome.” He slipped his gloves off and let them fall to the mat beside me. “The question is, was it really out of love or was it out of a malicious intent because you enjoyed seeing her in pain?” Thomas’ eyes locked with mine, never blinking as he waited for my answer.

  “I never wanted to hurt her.” I ripped off my gloves, curling my fists and stopping the tear that was about to roll down my cheek.

  “You just didn’t want her to leave.”

  I nodded.

  “But you thought she would because you didn’t feel good enough for her.”

  “I wasn’t. I’m not. Never will be. That was the problem. I wasn’t stupid. I just wanted her to be.”

  Thomas sighed and leaned back against the ropes.

  The sour sting in my gut both amplified and lessened at the same time—if that was fucking possible. I tried to catch my breath as my body seared in various places all over my body. My muscles ached, but they weren’t itching for a fight like normal.

  Thomas only had a sliver of my dirty laundry, but it felt like a tiny weight had lifted off my chest. I didn’t realize that was possible without a shot glass and a bottle, but it had to be a fluke. A survival instinct to keep me out of prison or a combination of the thrill of the fight and the need to give him what he wanted.

  “I’m going to ask you again, are you ready for my help?”

  I licked my lips really ready for a fucking drink, but I nodded. “Yes…”

  “But...”

  “There is no help for me, Doc. How can there be?”

  “First step is trusting me. I know that will be hard for you, given your background, but you’ve already made a huge stride today in telling me this.”

  “You had to beat it out of me. Next time won’t be so easy.”

  “You think that was easy?” He chuckled, still catching his breath as well. “We’ve found the root. Now we just need to dig around it.”

  I snorted. “You make it sound easy.”

  “It’s not. I won’t lie to you. You have to want this. You have to want to be the better man, the one I know is in there. I can’t do it alone. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You won’t have to either.”

  “Great.” Mr. Rodgers was going to fix me and make unicorns jump around and clean the house I no longer had all while making alcohol taste like shit to me. “I think you have your hands full,” I said, but I had over two months left here. Maybe he could help me and maybe he couldn’t. Either way, I couldn’t get kicked out of this place. I couldn’t go back to prison, back to where Devlin called every move of my life. I liked him where he was, behind bars. Sure, I still pedaled his shit, but that was for the money now, not protection.

  “That’s why I’ve called in help,” Thomas said, drawing my attention as he hopped out of the ring.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked as I followed him, hands shoved in my pockets to hide my trembling fingers. “Who’s that?”

  “Your sponsor is on vacation now but will be here in a couple weeks.” He held the gym door open for me. Conner waited at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall.

  “A sponsor? Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, returning my attention to Thomas.

  He shrugged, an easy smile on his lips. “Mine is the only reason I’ve remained sober for as long as I have.”

  I raised my chin to him, wondering what kind of drunk he’d been. With his neighborly attitude and sweaters, I constantly forgot he had once been in a similar situation as me. Well, not exactly, but close.

  I shook my head and made my way to Conner.

  “You need a smoke, man?” He asked instead of asking me why the fuck my lip was bleeding or why I held my side.

  “Bad.”

  He nodded, and we walked silently toward the back of the facility.

  I wanted the nicotine buzz to be enough to quell the urge pulsing in the back of my throat for the one thing that would help suppress all the buried shit I’d just dug up, but if I was being honest, it was the seed of hope I just felt planted with a punch in my gut that terrified me more.

  3

  Turn my will and life over

  The celebrity—if you could call him that, more like a glorified reality star who got paid to be an idiot on screen—was more than grateful to fund Devlin’s business endeavors. I’d just left my best customer’s room, a suite twice the size of mine that came complete with a welcomed entourage of his three closest “people”, and was on the hunt for Conner and his never ending supply of smokes.

  It wasn’t like I couldn’t get them—the facility was all about supporting the replacement of one evil for a lesser one—but it was simply easier to bum one off him. And, I liked hanging around the dude. He didn’t push for information too much, and he sure as hell didn’t try to write my problem off as lesser than his because it was liquor and not meth.

  Plus, there was the whole, not-ratting-me-out thing that worked in his favor. I’d spent more time than I’d like recently wondering what I’d do if he asked me for the drugs I’d offered to sell him weeks ago. Now that I’d known him longer, and understood his desire to do better, this time, I really didn’t want to sell to him. He may have been the only person in the whole place who I could say that about.

  There was Thomas, though, the good doctor. He’d moved our “sessions” to the ring after the first time had worked so well. My face and gut sported bruises that shone like badges of how well he was doing in his efforts to crack me open and tinker around. The talking sucked and did nothing but reawaken the nightmares that played in high definition without the alcohol-hazed sleep I’d become accustomed to over the last year, but, I loved the fight. The crunch of skin and bone, despite the gloves, released me in ways nothing else had. I could still feel it, enjoy it. There was nothing like a proper brawl to release the pent up anger that accompanied me everywhere just below my skin.

  “You have an anger management problem,” Thomas had said after our second fight where he’d beat out an instance where I’d taken pleasure in crushing one of Blake’s high school guy friends for saying something smart to me. Looking back, and through this new and extremely-stranger like set of eyes, I knew how senseless it was. But I couldn’t take it back any more than I could take back any other terrible thing I’d done.

  And, I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but I truly didn’t want to live like that anymore.

  The event that scripted my reoccurring nightmare—that last night with Blake—was when the switch flipped. When I realized just what I’d become. The doc had helped me figure that out, not that I’d let him know about it. I hadn’t uttered a word about that night to anyone—outside of that tool Dash, who had gotten a mouthful from me before we brawled when he’d showed up at my place unannounced the day after.

  The memory of taking his hits, letting him work out his rage and giving back just a fraction of my own, smacked me like a bag of hammers. I’d known he was well within his right to act out like he had. Hell, I would’ve done worse to myself—had done worse to myself since that night—and I still didn’t feel like I would ever rid myself of the dirt that clung to my soul from my actions.

  Thomas said he could help me—despite not knowing all the details—and I kind of believed him, neighborly as he was. Though, I was trying not to set my expectations too high—I was excellent at disappointing myself.

  “Fuck you!” The curse word sounded way too elegant coming out of the girl’s mouth as I came around the corner, heading toward Conne
r and my designated smoke spot. The scene I happened upon immediately set me on edge—a petite girl with short dark-blue hair cut at a sharp angle, looked up at Brad—a blond douche who talked too much in group, who also happened to be the size of a house. She pushed against his massive chest, but he didn’t budge. “You are the worst!”

  Before I blinked, I was between them, shoving at him with the force of a freight train. “Back the fuck up, man,” I said as I sent him slamming against the next wall.

  “What the hell, Justin?” he asked, catching his balance.

  “Think you’re bothering her, Brad.” I raised my chin at him.

  My arm jerked backward, tiny delicate fingers painted black yanking me to the side. “Pop the brakes there, hero. Brad’s a friend.”

  I tilted my head, my lips opening to speak but shutting from lack of words. It could be because she called me hero, that she’d said the guy she had just shoved was her friend, or it could be the fact that she had the most gorgeous green eyes I’d ever seen in my life. They were sharp, full, and the look she gave me? It was a no bull-shit glare that was both sexy and adorable at the same time. She had to arch her neck to hold my gaze, she couldn’t have been more than five-foot-four, but something about her—maybe the hair or the tight ripped leggings she wore that looked like shredded newspaper—screamed she wasn’t a girl to take shit lying down.

  “You sure about that?” I asked when I remembered how to speak.

  “Yeah, pretty sure.” She glanced at Brad over my shoulder. “I’ll stop by later. I want to see pictures of the girls.”

  “You got it, Charlie.” Brad shook his head at me and walked toward the gym.

  “Now, you,” she said, pointing that perfectly black-polished finger at me. “Where do you get off?”

  “Not much of that these days,” I said, glancing around the facility. Figured a good, dirty quip would send her in the opposite direction, which is exactly where she needed to go because my senses were aching with want—something that hadn’t happened since Blake.