Maybe partly because she’d been pushing me away since the day wemet…
But what the fuck was I doing with the weed and the other women? I’d been pushing her away,too.
She wasn’t the only one who was hiding from our shit instead of dealing with it head-on.
“It’s a choice, brother,” Seth said, his tone softening. “Elle and I, we’ve got some magic shit between us. Can’t keep off of her, can’t keep her off of me. But it’s not an addiction. It’s not some unhealthy, fucked-up obsession that we have zero power over, that’ll drive us both into an early grave. It’s something we’re both strong enough to know we could walk away from and we’d both survive on our own, but we don’t. We don’t, because our lives are better when we’re together. It’s a choice, every moment, to be together.” He blew out a breath. “When you’re in a relationship, love isn’t a noun, man. It’s a fucking verb. Maybe you can’t always choose who you fall in love with, but it’s a choice to wake up every morning and love the one you’re with, to be there for them and do whatever it takes to put their needs right up there front and center with yourown.”
He went silent, and I really didn’t know what to sayanymore.
“For addicts like us,” he said after a moment, “it’s hard. We’re selfish fucks. Plus, we’reweak.”
I glanced at him. He spun his hat back around, tugging it down over his eyes, and lay backdown.
“I’m telling you, brother, if Elle left me tomorrow, I’d still love her, but killing myself over it, that would be a choice. Every moment of every day, I choose to live. I choose to stay clean. I choose my relationship. And I choose to love Elle enough to put her ahead of my addiction. If it came down to it, I’d leave her if I hadto.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m fucking serious. You think I’d let some sketched-out addict around that beautiful woman, and that beautiful kid she’s gonna have? I’d leave her before I’d let her live with a junkie, and she knows it. And I don’t want to leave her. She doesn’t want me to leave. She accepts me for the imperfect person that I am. We’ve sat up talking until dawn on many, many nights about all the fucked-up shit I’ve done, and it doesn’t scare her away or turn her off. It just makes us closer. That’slove.”
I stared at him, but that was it. Seth was done. He just lay there in thedark.
I turned and startedwalking.
“Where you going?” he called afterme.
“For awalk.”
“You gonnadrink?”
“Fuckyou.”
Chapter Thirteen
Zane
Iwalked for maybe an hour,maybe two, mostly pacing. I went as far as I could comfortably go without getting lost. It was black as shit, everything was flat and looked the same, and there was no cellservice.
The only light this far from the road was a half-moon and the stars; the car was a tiny little glint in the distance, and I stopped just before I lost sight of it. Some clouds were rolling around the sky and I didn’t even think I’d be able to map out any kind of pattern in the stars to find my wayback.
I was a city kid. If I was tossed out here by myself, sad truth was I’d probably get eaten by acoyote.
I paced, wearing a fucking path on the desert floor, and I thought about a lot of shit. I thought about my addiction, all the shit I’d tried to convince myself I’d put to rest, and how I’d almost broken right the fuck down tonight. How badly I’d wanted to take a drink—and maybe I would’ve if Seth didn’tintervene.
And how badly I needed to get my ass to an AAmeeting.
But mostly, I thought aboutMaggie.
I thought about how she’d told me she lovedme.
And I knew, I fucking knew in my bones that she probably loved me all along. Which meant love was never ourproblem.
Because I’d definitely loved her all along,too.
I’d loved Maggie Omura with everything I had in my broke-ass heart of holes, for a long, long time. Seth was right; there were a shit-ton of holes in me. Holes left by my parents a long time ago. Holes with deep black roots, that I’d never known how to fill. It was like Swiss fucking cheese inthere.
I used to think I could fill those holes with booze and pussy and the adulation of a few millionfans.
But that was allbullshit.
