Tired and sad and so fucking hopeful it makes my chest ache with a pain no drug can touch.
"Hey." His voice is gravel and sandpaper, rough from disuse.
Or maybe from all the words he's been choking back.
All the things he wants to say but won't.
"Hey." Mine is worse. Cracked and brittle, like old bones left out in the cold too long.
He doesn't ask how I'm feeling.
Doesn't ask what happened.
He already knows.
He always knows.
This dance we do—me destroying myself, him picking up the pieces—has become so routine that we don't need words anymore.
Just weighted silences and careful touches and the kind of grief that lives in the spaces between heartbeats.
"Water?" He reaches for the plastic pitcher on the bedside table, and I watch his hands—those steady mechanic's hands that have held me through a thousand nightmares, that have stroked my hair while I screamed through withdrawal, that have never once struck me no matter how much I deserve it—pour liquid into a cup like it's the most important task in the world.
I try to sit up and immediately regret it.
My whole body screams, muscles seizing, stomach rolling with a nausea that has nothing to do with the drugs leaving my system and everything to do with the damage I've done.
The room spins like a carnival ride gone wrong, and I squeeze my eyes shut until the worst of it passes.
"Easy." Garrett's hand is on my shoulder, warm and solid and real. "Take it slow."
He helps me sit up, adjusting the pillows behind me with a gentleness that makes me want to cry.
This man.
This goddamn man who should have given up on me years ago.
Who should have signed those divorce papers I threw at him during our last screaming match and found someone worthy of his devotion.
Someone who doesn't stick needles in her arm every time the world gets too loud.
Someone who can give him the family he deserves instead of an endless cycle of hospital visits and broken promises.
I take the water from him and sip, the cool liquid soothing my raw throat.
Even that small action exhausts me.
My hand trembles as I pass the cup back, and I see him notice.
He always notices everything.
"How bad?" I ask.
A muscle ticks in his jaw. "Bad."
"How bad, Garrett?"
He's quiet for a long moment, staring at his hands.
