Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC 5)

It wasn’t enough, though.

So my plan was to somehow work up the nerve to work again, get enough money, and then disappear.

When I was strong enough to walk out the fucking door, that was.

“Want to talk about it?” Rosie asked, speaking for the first time since she’d yanked me into her arms an hour before. She glanced up at the rehab building, shuddering. “Let’s break you out before Nurse Ratched comes out and drags us both in.”

I kept staring at the rain trailing down my window. Mother Nature matched my mood. How adorable. “Really, really don’t,” I replied. My words were clipped, and I probably should’ve cared about not being a bitch to the person who had dropped everything to pick me up from rehab when I’d called on the edge of breakdown two hours back. Actually, I should’ve been groveling at her feet considering she hadn’t asked whether I really should be leaving or requested some certificate of sobriety before bundling me into her car. I just didn’t have the energy. I was using everything I had to inhale and exhale, and to brace for the pain that came with that motion.

I saw Rosie’s curls bob in my peripheral vision. “Fair enough,” she replied, her voice light. “How about a cheeseburger?”

I glanced at her. I didn’t smile, but I tried. “I’d kill for a cheeseburger.”

Rosie grinned back. “Well, let’s get you one before you get into a state penitentiary just hours after I sprung you from rehab.”

If the prospect of holy matrimony didn’t turn my blood, I would seriously consider marrying that woman.

Comfortable silence descended. Rosie could talk better than any politician I’d ever met, but she also knew when to shut up. I’d learned that living with her in the months… before. I’d also learned she had a different date every weekend, and a different persona to take with her on each one. Her easy sense of humor and filthy mouth had her quickly becoming one of my closest friends. Plus the rest of the women who came along with the family Lily had adopted. Despite all my reservations and hatred for groups of girlfriends who had perfect lives and eyebrows like the ones in said family, I’d liked them all. I’d tried to keep my distance but it didn’t exactly work, especially with Rosie.

I chewed over all of this on the drive. I hadn’t seen any of them considering I’d been delirious the first few days of my freedom, and then when I was lucid enough to understand how I’d be suffocated by kindness, I’d convinced Lily I needed the confines of rehab. I was pretty sure I’d broken her heart by demanding to be taken to a facility full of shrinks and addicts instead of letting her ‘take care’ of me. She’d insisted she could do it, but I couldn’t let her. She was married, went school, had a life. Lily was finally coming back to life. I wasn’t sucking that vibrancy from her.

I could see it happening, even through the film of my despair. The way her eyes sparkled with agony every time she was around me. It was fucking horrific. Not just for her—I wasn’t that much of a martyr—but for me too. I’d probably be heading for a long stay in the loony bin if I had to see the effect of my shit on my best friend. See the reality of it.

It was hard enough when she came to visit as soon as she was allowed, which was thankfully only once a week.

Another reason I’d escaped pretty much as soon as I’d stopped shaking from withdrawals was him. I knew he wouldn’t stay away.

That was ingrained in these men. To save the flailing. To fix the broken.

So he’d come. To fix me.

I didn’t trust myself not to seek him out in my damaged, shattered state. He’d put me together once before, and I craved to be whole so bad I knew my resolve would shatter. But I knew I’d never be whole. Sometimes people were broken in such a way that there was no repair to be had. Just finding a way to live a life as jagged edges of a person who once used to be whole.

Rosie was driving closer and closer to all that I’d tried to escape. I hadn’t truly realized that until now, too busy trying to get away from the place that I thought would be some kind of retreat. It may have hid me from the people who would make me think too hard about reality, but it unveiled what I was trying so hard to hide from—myself.

Catch-22, really. The only reason I’d called Rosie and not a cab to the airport was because I had no other choice. I’d used up pretty much all of my meager savings to fund my stay at the Silver Farm. Lily had, of course, tried to insist she pay for it. Or, more aptly, her husband pay. Which he’d been happy to do. That residual hardness that he used to have around his eyes when looking at me was gone. He’d treated me like some little broken dove ever since I’d woken up and realized that consciousness wasn’t an escape from my nightmare. No way I was letting them pay for what I’d gotten myself into.