I know that.
I know it intellectually, the way I know the sky is blue and water is wet.
But my body doesn't know it.
My body is still trapped in that cabin, still feeling phantom hands on my skin, still hearing Virgil's voice whispering all the things he was going to do to me.
"I want to get high."
The words come out before I can stop them.
Garrett goes still.
"I want to get high so bad right now I can barely breathe." My voice is shaking, cracking, barely recognizable as my own. "I know it's wrong. I know it won't help. I know it'll just makeeverything worse. But God, Garrett, I want it. I want to not feel this. I want to disappear into that fog and never come back."
He doesn't pull away.
He doesn't lecture me about my sobriety, doesn't remind me of all the work I've done, doesn't tell me I'm being weak or selfish or any of the things the voice in my head is already screaming.
He just holds me tighter.
"What do you need?" he asks, his voice low and steady.
"I don't know." I'm crying again, tears soaking into his shirt. "I don't know. I just—I can't?—"
"What do you need right now, at this moment?"
I think about it.
Really think, the way Dr. Ganacha has been teaching me.
Not about what I want—because what I want is poison, death, and a one-way ticket back to that trap house where my mother died. But what I need.
"Just don't let go," I whisper. "Please. Just... don't let go."
"Never." He presses his lips to my forehead, and I feel the word vibrate through his chest. "I'm never letting go, Van. Not ever. You hear me?"
I nod against his shoulder.
The craving doesn't go away.
It sits in my chest like a living thing, a monster with teeth and claws, demanding to be fed.
But Garrett's arms are around me, and his heartbeat is steady against my ear, and slowly—so slowly—the monster starts to quiet.
I don't know how long we stay like that.
Long enough for my tears to dry.
Long enough for my breathing to steady.
Long enough for the gray light of dawn to start creeping through the blinds again.
"Thank you," I finally say.
"For what?"
"For not judging me."
