CHAPTER FOUR
Bloodhound
The silence is the worst part.
It's been three days since I dropped Vanna off at the facility, and I haven't heard a word.
No phone calls. No updates.
Nothing but the endless, suffocating quiet of my room at the clubhouse and the thoughts I can't escape no matter how hard I try.
They told me this would happen.
The intake counselor explained it all—no outside contact during the first phase of detox.
It's supposed to help the residents focus on themselves, on their recovery, without the distraction of the outside world.
It makes sense.
I understand it.
That doesn't make it any easier.
I'm lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift as cars pass by on the road outside.
The sheets still smell like her—faintly, barely there, but enough to make my chest ache.
I haven't washed them.
I can't bring myself to wash away the last physical trace of her presence.
My phone sits on the nightstand, silent and dark.
I've checked it a hundred times today, even though I know she can't call.
Even though I know the screen won't light up with her name.
It's a compulsion I can't control, like picking at a wound that won't heal.
Is she okay? Is she suffering?
Is she lying in some sterile room, shaking and sweating and crying for a fix that won't come?
The questions circle in my head like vultures, and I have no answers for any of them.
I get up because I can't stand to lie there anymore.
The clock says it's a little after two in the morning, but sleep isn't coming anyway.
It hasn't come since I got back from Pennsylvania, and I've stopped expecting it to.
The clubhouse is quiet at this hour.
Most of the brothers are either home with their families or passed out in their rooms after a night of drinking.
I move through the hallways like a ghost, my footsteps echoing off the concrete floors, until I reach the one place that's ever been able to silence the noise in my head.
The garage.
