Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC 5)

“Safe space?” I repeated. “There’s no such thing. You think ’cause we’re here spillin’ our guts, making the world a much grayer place with our addiction horror stories, that we’re safe? The very fact we’re here is a testament to the fact we’re not safe. Never will be. No matter where we are. That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it? The monkey will always be on our back, always a shadow no matter how bright our life may seem. We’re never safe from that.”

A pregnant pause descended after I spoke. The counselor leaned forward onto her elbows. “Despite the experiences that have led to this belief, which I’m sure were traumatic, it’s not as dreary as that. Your future can indeed be bright and you can overcome your addiction. I can promise you that.”

I laughed again. “Can you promise that?” I asked, my voice flat. “Can you promise sunshine and rainbows for everyone in this room?” I held my arms out. “To the guy who almost killed his daughter? Can you say that’s not gonna haunt him every fucking day for the rest of his life? Or how about the girl who tried to slit her wrists? You think those scars are gonna fade away to nothing overnight?” I paused. “Or what about the girl who grew up in the system, had her virginity stolen by a sweaty drunk when she was twelve years old, and had to fight every day since just to survive. And that fight got her a drug addiction.” I sucked in a breath. “That fucking fight got her chained to a stained mattress, strung out but not enough to forget the men who raped her in that cold fucking room to the point she can still feel their hands on her skin right fucking now?” My voice was a shrill shout, scratching against the silent air. I pushed up, my chair rattling to the floor with the force. “I don’t think any amount of kumba-fucking-ya is going to make that shit go away. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to live my cloud-filled life. Good luck with your sunshine and rainbows,” I said to the silent room. “Say hey to the Easter Bunny for me.”

On that note, I stormed out of the room as fast as my combat boots would take me, praying that the ocean of tears brimming at the corners of my eyes wouldn’t escape. ’Cause if they did, if I gave in to that sorrow, I knew for a fact I’d drown. And no one, not even the hazel-eyed biker I’d done everything to forget, could save me.

I knew I was expected to stay longer to be ‘cured.’ The concept was laughable. I would never be cured.

Clean.

It did its job. I was ‘clean’ in the sense I no longer had drugs coursing through my veins. The need for them would always course through. It was about managing that need.

I guessed my relapse hadn’t been precisely that, considering I had been forced to take the drugs I had previously kicked. My body didn’t know that, though. The only thing it knew was that it had been robbed of the thing it needed.

So my body needed to be stuck somewhere it couldn’t get the better of my mind and suck me into a hole of addiction.

Because I knew if I touched any drug again, it was the end. Those three weeks broke me, and I knew drugs would shatter me.

I was in pieces, but I wanted to carry them around a little while longer.

Which was why I was there.

And why I was leaving.

I could barely stand being stuck in my own crazy, barely managed to fight my own demons. I didn’t need to be surrounded by other people’s. I didn’t need to know that some guy had been so high that he left his two-year-old daughter in a hot car for two hours. Didn’t need to think about how a woman had nearly killed a whole busload of people while driving drunk.

Luckily it wasn’t some sort of prison where they locked the doors and stopped you from leaving.

I knew I wanted to leave but didn’t know where I could go. I wanted to go nowhere. Be nowhere. Feel nothing. Problem was nowhere wasn’t a place. As much as I wanted to disappear into the sunset and make everyone’s life better for it, I couldn’t.

So I went back.

Rosie, insane as she was, not only let me move back in to where I had been living before but had insisted on it.

Like I said, I didn’t like it, spreading my dirt around good people, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

I had money saved, thanks to not spending every cent of it on drugs, and earning a crap-ton more than I had stripping at the Sons’ club than I did with Carlos.