Lazarus (The Henchmen MC 7)

Because, for me, it was the only way to ensure that I wouldn't go back. When you go through hell, you don't ever want to sign up for another fucking tour of it.

I cut off ties with Ransom who was gunned down three months later anyway. They never found the shooter, but any idiot knew it was the same man who made a gutted pig out of me. Rodrigo.

Once I was done puking and raging and pacing my floors trying not to claw my skin off, I finally left my apartment.

And walked right into my first official NA meeting.

I found a sponsor.

I listened to stories.

I told my own.

I claimed I was getting better while every single night I went home and put a gun in my mouth and tried to find the strength to pull the trigger. Or to not pull the trigger. Whichever one.

You need to come to terms with what sent you into a bottle in the first place, my sponsor had told me at a diner drinking decaf coffee because he was one of those types of recovered addicts. He didn't even use sugar because it was addictive.

But how did one come to terms with death? Was there really even a way? Was there some magic cure to take away the reality of watching the only person you gave a single fuck about and gave a fuck about you laying in a bed wasting away, veins full of drugs the doctors swore would fix her. Were there some words someone could spoon feed me that would make it make sense how a woman who had been nothing but good and giving and hardworking would end up dying slowly and painfully when rapists and murderers went and died in peaceful old age?

There was no way to come to terms with that.

She was all I had in the world.

And she was gone.

And there was nothing that could make that better.

But, that being said, I had been kicking dirt on her memory, insulting everything she raised me to strive for by throwing my feelings into bottles and powder and needles.

So I did something I would have scoffed at before- I attended a couple grief counseling meetings. After that, I finally went through my mother's things that I had stashed in storage. I kept what I wanted, I donated or tossed the rest. I kept going to meetings. I worked through the long-term withdrawal symptoms. The most prominent for me was the inability to sit still or sleep. So I walked.

It didn't get easier.

I got better, stronger.

Or at least that was what I thought until I pulled that trigger that night.

I remembered as I packed how I had sat in NA meetings and listened to people say how they had been two, five, ten, fifteen years clean when they relapsed and thinking: not me.

But I realized that night that it very well could be me if I didn't do something, if I didn't change something.

I needed to get away from my old streets, my old contacts, my old ghosts.

I needed to stop thinking about and trying to kill myself.

I needed to come back from the dead.--Lazarus- presentWhen I finished speaking, her delicate hand lowered the toast to the plate as she brushed the crumbs from her fingers and slowly stood. Her eyes were oddly unreadable for someone who seemed thus far to show every little emotion through her very open face.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when she rounded the table, walked up to stand right in front of me, and wrapped her arms around my center.

Completely thrown off, it took a long minute before I thought to put my coffee cup down and wrap my arms around her as well, squeezing perhaps a bit too tight, but I had just given her every painful, bloody, awful, ugly part of me and I was feeling a bit exposed.

"I'm sorry about your mom," she said into my chest, her tone heavy with emotion, making my hand start to stroke down her spine. "I lost my mom too," she added, making my heart do a contracting thing. "ALS," she added, making me close my eyes and let out a slow exhale. "She was fifty-two," she concluded, shaking her head, not seeming to be able to explain any further.

And she didn't need to.

That was bad enough.

I wanted to know if that was the trigger for her addiction, how fresh the wound was. But I couldn't ask her that. That was something she would need to share in her own time.

It took me years to be able to talk about my mom at all and even then, almost no one knew the details about her death.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," I said, meaning it as I leaned down and kissed the side of her head.