Edge of Recovery (Love on the Edge) (8 page)

“No,” she shook her head, her hair tussling back and forth. “You’ll see. And I’ll make you a bet.”

“Gambling is absolutely my thing.”

“Figures.”

“What? I’m not addicted to it.”

She laughed. “Well, I’d wager almost anything against this.”

“What’s that?”

“Tomorrow, you’re going to talk to me. Really talk to me.”

My chest tightened like she was making some kind of prophetic reading. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

“How?”

“It’s step five.”

I drew my eyebrows together, retracing the steps in my head. Step five blared red in my mind.
Confession.

“How do you know I’m on that one?”

“Have you not seen how much we’re alike? How I can read you like a book? Come on, Justin. I’ve lived this. I was where you’re standing, and I made it out alive. You can too.”

“Jury is still out on that one,” I said. “What are you wagering?”

“What do you want.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her, and she smacked my chest.

“You’d bet me like I was a chip in a poker game?” She teased but her words stung every inch of my skin.

I checked the hallway to make sure we were alone before I cupped her cheek in my hand. I shook my head, trying to convey my sincerity, praying she would see the truth in my eyes. “I would never bet with something that precious.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, all joking leaving her eyes. “Good answer.”

“It’s not a line, I swear.”

“I know.”

“Because you’re psychic.” I tried to bring us back to humorville because we were teetering too close to an edge I didn’t know I could go over and come back from whole.

“Right. So let’s stick to something safer. Lunch?”

“Loser buys lunch,” I said, grabbing her hand and shaking it. “Deal.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said and tried to pull away.

I held onto her hand, drawing her closer. “You’re going to lose.”

She sighed. “It’s so sad that you believe that.”

Something dark flashed behind her eyes and in the look, I saw a piece of myself. It scared the hell out of me because I knew if there was anyone in the world who could get me to talk…it was Charlie.

Fuck, I’d already lost.

And I hadn’t even opened my mouth yet.

“
Y
ou want
to come with us?” I asked Conner, who sat on the bench of the wooden deck that connected to the massive lake on the grounds.

“Nah, man,” he said, gazing out at the water. He motioned toward it with his lit cigarette. “That’s more my brother’s thing. I prefer to stay on land. Keeps me grounded.”

I nodded, glancing over at Charlie where she walked toward us with a couple of life vests.

“Seriously?” I asked her when she’d made it to us.

“Facility policy.” She shrugged, handing me a damp vest that smelled like mud and lake water. “They won’t let us take the jet skis out unless we wear these.”

“Ugh.” I slipped one arm after the other inside the wet vest.

Charlie grinned and snapped the two stained latches together. “Act like you aren’t pumped this is what I chose for today.”

I tried not to smile down at her, but it was useless. “It’s better than knitting.”

“My life’s ambition. To be better than knitting.” She shook her head and glanced at Conner. “How are you doing?”

He blew smoke out of his mouth before answering, his knee bouncing up and down repeatedly without him really noticing. “All right. Think it’s going to stick this time, Charlie.”

She gripped his shoulder and he patted her hand before standing up. “That’s real good, Conner. You heard from Connell lately?”

Something dark flashed across his eyes. “Not for a few months.”

“He’ll come around. He’s more stubborn than you are.”

“Truth.” He crushed his cigarette on the metal ashtray next to the table. “All right, you two. Have a good time.” He focused his eyes on me, his hands over the center of his chest. “Make sure to share all your feelings, Justin.” He smirked as I flipped him off.

“You ready?” I asked Charlie after she’d gone quiet, watching Conner’s back as he walked away with his hands shoved in his pockets.

She blinked a few times before looking at me. “He’s not doing good.”

“What?” I puckered my eyebrows. “Sure he is. He just said he was.”

“Can you really not see it? His struggle?”

I thought about his twitching movements in group recently, his need to speak faster than usual, and his general irritability at any given time of the day. “I thought that was just part of the process?”

“You should talk to him.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Whatever he needs. There is something bothering him. He may tell you. You two are close.”

“He’s my neighbor and has an endless supply of smokes.”

“He’s more than that, and you know it.” She situated the vest around her small frame, the massive thing nearly swallowing her.

“What are you suggesting?”

“That he’s the first real friend you’ve had in a very long time.” She never hesitated, never stopped to formulate a response. She simply spouted out whatever was there and usually, I’d come to find, she was right.

My old friends from when Blake and I were together, Mark and Andy, had bolted the second I started drinking more than playing video games. They never bothered to check on me either. Looking back, I couldn’t really understand the draw they’d held. We didn’t have much in common other than Call of Duty, which lost its luster the second I’d had my awakening. How I had ever spent days absorbed in the game was beyond me. Just another way to disconnect from myself, I guess.

Doc would be proud, sorting shit out all on my own.

“I’ll talk to him tonight,” I finally said.

“Thank you.” She motioned her head toward the jet skis floating on the other side of the dock. “You ever done this before?” She shook a set of keys attached to a foam bobber at me.

I snatched them from her outstretched hand. “I used to all the time,” I said, visions of summers before I’d been kicked out of my aunt’s house flashing in my head. My uncle had a lake house an hour outside of town, and we’d spend weeks at a time there. Blake had been with me twice.

“Oh, God, do you hate it?” She asked, stepping toward me and placing her hand on my tight forearm.

“No, why?”

“You looked—never mind. Let’s roll!” She shot off toward the skis and threw a perfectly bare leg over the center. Heat pulsed in my blood at the sight of her skin. I was so used to seeing her fully covered in a variety tight leggings—not that I was complaining—but now that she was bare, I couldn’t help but notice thin white scars that lined her upper thighs.

Following her, I turned the key in my ski and revved the engine. She took off a few seconds before me, a mess of lake water spraying me from behind. I relished the feel of the machine beneath me, the roar of the water from the speed, the height of the jump when I caught a break from the waves she created in front of me.

I chased her, circled her, and rode by her side. She laughed, her hair flying in all different directions as she pushed her ski faster, harder. The challenge was there, and I met it speed for speed, jump for jump, loving every second of it.

On the water, with no sound but the splash and groan of the engine, or her laugh, I didn’t think about the past or the future. Didn’t think about where I was or why. I simply was
me
. Who currently was just a guy, trying to impress a girl, by catching air and taking the machine to full capacity. Every smile, every gasp, every laugh, fueled me in a way nothing had in such a long time. I drank it in like I would have a bottle or two of vodka a few months ago. The craving was still there, the desire to return to the numb, disconnected feeling the drink offered me, but it wasn’t as powerful. I knew I’d never truly be free of the want but right now, in the moment with Charlie so near, I was okay. And I knew it was due to a combination of things—the doc, this place, being sober—but mostly it was her.

After an hour we returned the skis and vests, and sat on the dock overlooking the water, our chests heaving from the exhilaration of the ride.

“Yeah?” She asked, nudging me with her elbow.

“So much better than knitting,” I said, nudging her back.

She chuckled, tossing her blue hair out of her face. “I love anything with speed. Motorcycles, boats, jets. It’s a free rush. No consequences.”

“Not unless you eat the pavement or something.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, if you want to be a pessimist about it. At least it’s legal.”

I huffed. “True,” I said, stretching out my legs and leaning back against the wooden railing with my elbows propped on it. The angle gave me a perfect view of her legs, and she sat so close to me I could easily reach out and touch the thin scars that were almost iridescent against her skin.

“Cutter,” she said, catching my gaze.

Heat flooded my face. “I wasn’t going to ask.”

“If I was ashamed of it I’d never wear shorts.” She shrugged. “It was my first affliction. First sign to my parents that I wasn’t the emotionally stable teenager they thought I was.”

And no fucking wonder. With the stories she’d told me about the family member taking advantage of her, I wouldn’t blame her for any action she took to numb the pain, erase the memories that suffocated her.

“What was yours?” She asked casually but had those green eyes pinned on mine.

I arched my head back, inhaling the scent of lake and dirt and pine. “I was sixteen. Just got into partying, wrong crowd. My guardians—my aunt and uncle—they kicked me out that year. Said I’d abused their generosity when they took me in after my mother abandoned me when I little…for a drug addiction, no less.” I chuckled darkly. “Go figure, right?”

“Assholes,” she snapped, and it made me laugh harder.

I tilted my head back and forth. “Maybe. Maybe I got what I deserved. She’s trying to make amends, though. Bought my ticket out of prison and into this place.”

“Okay, now I feel bad about the asshole thing.”

“Don’t. They were simply preemptive. I would’ve ruined their lives. It’s what I do.”

“Why do you say that?” she sighed.

I crossed my arms over my chest and shrugged.

“Justin,” she urged. Her eyes were full of acceptance and openness and no hint of judgment anywhere. If there was anyone I could ever spill my blood to and let it wash clean, it would be her.

“Do you ever look back on your life and find sections of nothing but…
haze
? Like someone came in and blurred the edges of your memories with an eraser?” I asked.

“Only every other memory.”

I nodded. “I can’t pinpoint the spot in time—between being kicked out and up to a year and a half ago—where I went
wrong.
And believe me, I’ve tried every night to find it. Like if I could latch on to the moment in time where I became something darker, something twisted, then I could somehow fix it. Internally, I could blot that part of my life out and start fresh.”

“What are you trying to find?” She asked, shifting her legs toward me.

I shrugged. “The second in time I became a monster.”

A crease formed between her eyes. “You’re not a”

“Yes, I am,” I cut her off.

My chest tightened, begging me to hold on to the past. To not let Charlie see me for who I really was. Problem was, I didn’t know how to
not
tell her. She’d shared so much of her life with me, given me pieces of her darkness with nothing but the promise of light at the end of recovery.

“I fell in love with Blake when I was sixteen. She was my world. Every. Single. Day. For eight years, I lived and breathed her. When we were kids, it was just first love. It was new and exciting, and she was just so
good.
And she…she was the one who never left me when everyone else did. Then, as we grew up, we grew apart. We were different, but I didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to acknowledge just how drastically separate our futures were headed.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, the slick, oily guilt filling my insides like gasoline. “Somewhere along the way, I realized she’d leave. It was inevitable because she was going places. Chasing her dreams regardless if I wanted to keep standing still. And I hated her for it. Hated her for having a passion outside of me, outside of the life I saw for us—which was her at home with a few kids. I thought she’d get college out of her system, and we’d get married, and that would be the end of it…but I was kidding myself. I
knew
. I’d never be good enough for her, no matter how hard I tried, I would never be the man she needed. Someone who wanted to run as fast as she did, soar as high as she liked to, live as close to the edge as she did. And so I hated myself too. I always felt…inadequate before I even opened my mouth.” I rubbed my palms over my face, resting my elbows on my knees.

“Oh, Justin,” Charlie sighed, placing her hand on my back.

“I punished her for it,” I blurted out before I lost my nerve.

Images flashed behind my clenched eyes—Blake’s tears, her screams, all the times she’d told me sex had hurt and I couldn’t understand why. I’d always thought something was wrong with her…that was before I’d finally snapped out of it.

“I hurt her, over and over again, for something she hadn’t even done yet. I threatened her into staying with me, even though I knew her leaving was a certainty, and I didn’t realize how fucking toxic I was until…”
Toxic.
Blake’s own words filtered through my mind before my living nightmare played out behind my eyes. “All the things I’d done over the last few years of our relationship, the fights, and the traps, it wasn’t anything compared to what I did to her after she’d finally ended it.” I sucked in a sharp breath, acid rolling my stomach as if the dock bobbed up and down from a tidal wave. “I…forced myself on her. Not entirely, but I would’ve…I was so wasted that night I barely remember anything other than her scream, her fighting me off…” Hail’s yelp burst through my brain, and my skin tightened as it did every time the memory was this clear. “I wanted to make her
see
, make her realize who she belonged to. Somehow, I’d thought that was the way to do it.” Hot tears rolled down my cheeks, and I couldn’t stop them regardless of how hard I tried. “I took the only person who ever really loved me, and fucking shredded her.”

Charlie pulled my hands away from my face, every inch of my skin responding to her touch, waking up underneath the gentle graze of her fingers as she wrapped her arms around my neck, clutching me to her.

“So, yeah,” I said, clinging to her even though I wondered why the fuck she wasn’t running in the opposite direction. “I’m a fucking monster, and I always will be.”

“You’re wrong,” she said, pressing her head against mine. She pushed me back slightly, wiping the tears off my face. “A monster wouldn’t be able to look back and see his wrongs, acknowledge his sins. A monster would celebrate getting away with it so long, and he most certainly wouldn’t
ache
over the events. He wouldn’t try to kill himself slowly with liquor, torture himself day in and day out over what he’d done.” She cupped my cheek, her green eyes showing me nothing but sincerity.

I shook my head, not allowing myself to believe her though my heart begged me to. “You should be afraid of me.”

“I’m not. I can see you, Justin. Remember? And now I know the source of your torture.” She touched the center of my chest. “You’ve taken your inventory, gathered all the wrongs you’ve done, but you aren’t letting them go. You’re giving them control over your present life, and that will only take you straight back to the bottle. You have to let them go, understand what you did was wrong, horrible even, but acknowledge that you are no longer that man.”

“I am still that man!” I snapped, jerking away from her gentle touch, her accepting, open arms. I paced the length of the dock, adrenaline making my arms shake. “I’m angry. All the time. At myself, at
her.
At what I turned into. I used to be decent—I know I was. I just can’t fucking remember where it all went wrong. I have no clue how to get back there. I don’t think I can.” I stomped against the wood harder with each step, my soul twisting inside, wringing out all my shit for Charlie to see. “Drinking is the only thing that evened me out. The only thing that made me
forget
. And honestly, the second I’m free of this place, I’ll go back to it. I’ll have to, or I’ll be stuck living with the monster that I am.”