All eyes were on me when my turn came around.
I cleared my throat and tugged the peak of my cap lower. “I’m Joz. I was clean for eight years until last Saturday. Then I fucked up.” My voice was gravel, low and raw. The silence pressed in, the group waiting for more. I hitched a shoulder. “That’s it.”
Judy gave me that empathetic smile again and nodded. “Thank you for showing up, Joz. The first session is always the hardest.”
The woman next to me spoke, and the spotlight shifted to her as she shared that she’d just received news her kids had been taken into care. She broke down, putting her head in her hands. A guy directly opposite got up, knelt down, and wrapped his arms around her. I guessed, from the way she almost collapsed against him, that they’d made a friendship here.
I didn’t plan on making friendships. I hadn’t the last time I spent weeks in rehab. In my position, I couldn’t afford to trust anyone, although there was no hiding my attendance here from the press. Aspen would’ve had to cancel a long list of events to publicize the album, and reasons would have to be given. There was no access to internet or newspapers here, so I didn’t have a clue what was being said about me. Probably for the best. I had to focus on my recovery, not on what poison-pen journalists were saying. I’d only get pissed off, and that would detract from the work I needed to do to get my life back on track.
Aspen deserved the best version of me, and I was going to fucking make sure that was what she got.
It was funny how sometimes three weeks could feel like a lifetime, yet at others, it sped by at an alarming rate. Time measured the same. A second was a second, a minute a minute, yet the last twenty-one days since Aspen drove me to this facility felt more like twenty-one fucking years.
I cursed the weakness that landed me here, and it only added to the guilt, the shame, the sheer frustration I’d carried with me ever since I heard the news about Caroline. A few days ago, I’d plucked up the courage to call Kate, and we’d talked for an hour on the phone. She’d been so fucking understanding, offering me kind words and encouragement, and repeating over and over that what happened to Caroline still wasn’t my fault. She was a fucking diamond I didn’t deserve, although I was trying to believe there was good in me. There had to be for strong, amazing women like Aspen and Kate to want me in their lives.
The alarm on my watch buzzed. Time for my third one-on-one session with Doctor Houghton.
I trudged down the hallway toward his office. As usual, he greeted me with a tight smile and a wave at the chair in front of his desk. I purposely avoided the couch. Lying down didn’t make talking any easier. Every word stuck in my throat, shoved down by too many negative emotions.
“How are you feeling today, Joz?”
Same opener. You’d think he’d have come up with a little variety. “Trust the process,” he’d said when I’d told him how much I despised these sessions, even though I knew they worked. But for how long? Until the next shitty thing happened and I found comfort in the drug that’d haunted me eversince that first fix. All those years sober, yet the whisper, thetemptationnever truly went away. Music helped me quieten the voices, and since meeting Aspen a few months ago, those voices had all but disappeared—until they’d come roaring back with vengeance on their mind.
Even loving her hadn’t been enough to stop me. And if the love of a woman I didn’t deserve hadn’t kept me from shooting up, what would?
“Same as last time, Doc.”
“And what is that?”
I snorted. “It’s all right there in the notes.”
“I want you to tell me.”
I shook my head, nostrils flaring on an irritated breath. “I’m drowning in guilt, shame, and regrets.”
He pressed his fingertips together and steepled them under his chin, his elbows propped on his mahogany desk with its too-neat layout. “I mentioned last time that I wanted to talk about Caroline. Are you still okay to do that?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“There is always a choice, Joz.”
“So, I could walk out right now?”
“Of course. This isn’t a prison. You are free to leave at any time.”
If I did, that’d be it for Aspen and me. What did I want more? To get well, to beat this thing once and for all, and live my life with the woman I loved for the rest of eternity? Or pack my bags and be in drugged-up bliss within the hour?
There was no competition. I already knew the answer. I’d choose Aspen every time. But fuck, this was hard. Harder than last time, maybe, because I’d dared to believe I’d beaten it only to find out it owned me just the same.
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you want to share.”
Therapists were as annoying as fuck. Every question answered with another goddamn question. “She was… fragile. Needy. Sad.” My throat tightened. “Every time I tried to break up with her, she’d threaten to harm herself. I’d take her back, and we’d start the same toxic dance that’d defined our entire relationship.”
“And how did you feel when you took her back?”
“Trapped. Like every time we got back together, I lost a little more of myself. But what was I supposed to do?”
