But he didn't know if he'd ever be free.
Penny pulled back and gazed up at him with eyes that looked like melted chocolate. She dragged her hands over his waist and trailed her fingers over his wrists, then up his arms until she reached the edge of his shirt sleeves.
Brett’s heart hammered against his ribs. It was late. Penny was vulnerable, and she didn’t know the truth about him. He needed to tell her the truth, but the feel of her hands on his skin shorted the connection between his brain and his mouth.
“What is it?” she asked, and Brett followed her gaze to the underside of his bicep. She pulled up the fabric of his shirt to expose more of his ink. Brett lifted a hand from her waist and scrunched up his shirt sleeve so she could get a full view.
“It’s a great day for hockey.” Penny read the text, then traced her fingers over the sentence. Brett held his breath. “Why do you have a bird around it? Is that your favourite team or something?”
His skin buzzed under her touch. “It’s a phoenix.”
Penny rotated his arm like a spit so she could see the whole thing. “It’s beautiful. Why a phoenix?”
Why a phoenix?Because it signified his rebirth when he got sober. It represented building a new life out of ashes, which was more than a generous description of what Brett’s existence had felt like for those years.
“Penny, Tyler’s not the one in recovery,” he murmured. Penny’s brow furrowed. “He’s going to that AA meeting for me.”
ChapterTwelve
Penny 11:42pm
Brett’s in recovery
Andrea 11:47pm
Your roommate?
Penny 11:47pm
Housemate
Andrea 11:47pm
Whatever. Is it bad?
Penny 11:48pm
I don’t think so? I only found out because he was going to an AA meeting
Andrea 11:51pm
Did Lucas ever go to those?
Penny 11:52pm
Only when he was forced to
Penny wokeSaturday morning feeling like she’d spent the night at fight club. Had she slept at all? She’d looked at the time on her phone at least four times that she could remember, and the rest of the night was a fever dream.
After Brett told her he was in recovery, Penny hadn’t known what to say. Especially since she’d already spewed her internal thoughts when she thought he was supporting Tyler.Such an idiot.She replayed her words a thousand times, rewriting them endlessly in her head as regret ate at her insides.
The last thing in the world she’d meant to do was hurt Brett. There he was comforting her while she talked about Lucas when she’d just told him she would never consider being with someone in recovery. Not that she assumed Brett was considering her as an option, but she knew what kinds of thoughts were probably running through his head if he was anything like Lucas.
In his darkest moments, when he was a few weeks sober, Lucas would call her late at night and ask if she thought he’d ever be able to have a normal life. He was desperate for her to tell him that he could heal. That someone could love him. That it was possible to change and be happy.
She’d said it. Every time. She’d told Lucas that of course he could change. Of course he could find a partner who would love everything about him and accept him for who he was.She was such a hypocrite.Was it possible to believe something was true but only for somebody else?
Last night, she hadn’t asked Brett for details. She’d left him standing there in the kitchen and escaped to her room, and that was what she regretted most. Her words had to have stung, and Brett had already alluded to how difficult things were with his life being out of sorts.
