Edge of Recovery (Love on the Edge) (4 page)

He slapped me on the back. “Just wait.”

“
Y
ou do understand
that I fill out progress forms, don’t you, Justin?” Thomas steepled his fingers over his immaculate mahogany desk. He’d set his pen down a half-hour ago after I’d refused to speak to him.

“I did not know that,” I said, shifting against the plush leather couch I was currently sunk into.

He slipped his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. Carefully cleaning the lens with the sleeve of his cardigan, he shook his head. “I want to help you. I really do. But if you don’t talk to me, I’ll be forced to tell the judge that you aren’t cooperating in the program, which would be like saying you’d rather be in jail than here.”

Fuck. I didn’t want that, but I didn’t want to talk to him either. Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. How much could I say without really saying anything? My mind calculated the possibilities while he stared me down, waiting for me to make the choice between a full-sized pillow top mattress and a twin-sized board pinned inside three concrete walls and a set of bars.

“Fine, Justin. Your choice.” Thomas pushed back from his desk, his hand gripping the knob of his door. Clearly, he’d taken my hesitation as my preference for the latter.

He jerked the door open, and I stood up, fully prepared to take my dismissal.

“Come with me,” he said, stepping into the hallway.

“Where?”

“Just follow me.” He walked through the clinic, which I had easily learned the massive layout of in the past two weeks I’d been here. It was amazing the useless shit I could accomplish when the day didn’t revolve around locating my next drink.

Thomas took a sharp left, his sneakers not making a noise against the polished marble floor. “Give me the room, please,” he said as we entered the facility’s gym which consisted of a weight room, an array of treadmills and ellipticals, and a full-sized boxing ring.

There were several other guys in there, plus a few chicks I had yet to meet officially. Conner set down the twenty-pound dumbbells he’d been curling and sauntered over to us. He flashed me a silent side-eye, and I shrugged as he led the way outside. After the room had cleared, Thomas walked to the right of the ring where they kept the gloves. He scooped up a pair and tossed them at me.

“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, stripping off his cardigan, leaving him in just a t-shirt and jeans.

“Holy shit,” I interrupted him. “You almost look normal.”

He slid his hands into a pair of gloves. “Funny. Now, if I land a hit, you have to answer a question, and it has to be the truth.” He hopped up on the side of the ring, lifting one leg over the side and stepping in its center. “If I can’t touch you, I’ll give you a good report for the entire month.”

I scoffed, immediately slipping on the pair he’d tossed me. “You’re on.”

No way Mr. Rodgers could land a hit. I’d been fighting all my life, and it wasn’t with kid gloves either. I met him in the ring, shaking out my limbs, getting a feel for the weight of the gloves that covered my usually bare knuckles.

“You have to be honest, though, Justin. I need your word.”

I shook my head. “I’m an asshole, not a douche.”

“I figured this wouldn’t be a hard sell.” He bounced around, cracking his neck with one big rotation.

“Yeah, is that why you cleared the room? Didn’t want any of your other “patients” to see you get your ass handed to you?”

He pointed a gloved hand at me. “That,” he chuckled. “And just in case I get lucky. You have to tell the truth and sessions are strictly confidential.”

“You always play by the rules?” I taunted, adrenaline surging in my gut. I hadn’t had a decent fight since the bedazzled boy who started this whole mess, and I could really use a good scrap.

“You think this would fly under the facility’s code for conducting therapy sessions?”

I circled him and shrugged. “Figured it would. The whole place runs more like a celebrity-nap-house. With activities.”

“Better than prison, right?” He cocked an eyebrow at me, and I couldn’t wait to punch it off his face. I hated that he had any sort of power over me but the fact that he could give me a bad report and make it look like I wasn’t participating in my deal, effectively sending my ass back to prison, made it kind of hard to ignore him.

“Take your best shot,” I said, raising my hands in a block position.

He took a deep breath like he was about to meditate, not fight, and I laughed.

Then he struck out with the speed of a blink, and I barely dodge his jab.

“Shit, Doc. You the Flash’s dad?”

“Maybe,” he danced around me, and I countered, darting a right jab toward his vulnerable jaw.

He dodged it, only to bolt a left jab to my kidney. I doubled over, the weight of the hit like a truck, pushing the air out of my lungs. I glared up at him.

“When did you start drinking?” He asked, though he never stopped moving.

“Seriously?” I straightened myself, the air returning to my lungs.

“I take this very seriously, Justin.”

That much was evident. “No,” I shook my head. “Seriously, or the actual point in life I took my first drink?”

“Both.” He blocked my second attempt at that jaw of his.

“First drink at fourteen.” I advanced, jabbing left twice and then hooking right. The dude was quick as if he could anticipate my moves, and it made my blood boil.

“Did I not tell you what my sponsor made me do to forget about how bad I wanted a bottle of whiskey and no interruptions?” He faked left and swung right, his thick glove socking my cheek so hard my head snapped back. “Boxing. Hours and hours of boxing.”

“You hustling, asshole.” I spit pink on the white mat.

He shrugged. “So, the first time you realized you couldn’t go a day without drinking?”

I sighed through clenched teeth and danced around him while searching my mind. He didn’t attempt to toss a punch while waiting for an answer. At least he didn’t fight dirty.

The road to the memory was fractured—from when I’d blacked out, or when I’d blocked out certain chunks of time. Hunting for a specific time in my past was like jumping hurdles, only not the standard track kind, but instead large, gaping holes filled with sticky black tar. One wrong move, one slip, and the memories would suck me downward, drown me, and spit out my shell.

“Around the same time I started avoiding mirrors,” I said after a few moments. It sounded girly as fuck, but it was the truth.

My heart pounded against my chest, the adrenaline surging through my veins, a defense mechanism every time someone tried to dig beneath the surface, and it was doubled up due to dodging hits.

I swung a hard right hook, lashing out when he seemed contemplative of my answer and made connection with his left side. He hissed, and satisfaction rippled through me at the feel of flesh giving underneath my strength. It only amped up my rage, and I went after him in a fury, which is exactly what he’d expected.

He countered my attack and landed a gnarly jab of his own.

“Fuck.” I bounced up and down on the balls of my feet to shake off the sting in my rib.

“Tell me more about the mirrors.” He asked when I hadn’t answered him. “Was it an appearance issue?”

“No,” I shook my head and threw my gloved hands in the air, not really knowing how to explain. “It just…happened. I woke up, saw myself, and didn’t recognize who looked back at me. It wasn’t that I’d changed physically, but…” I sighed. “I had no clue who that was. I just knew I didn’t like him.” I swung left, then right, over and over, trying frantically to land a hit. The more he dodged my attempts, the hotter my skin grew, the heavier my arms became.

“Just like that?” Thomas snapped and lashed out, his movements quicker than I could catch my breath. Fuck I needed to quit smoking. “No change in your life forced this to happen?”

“I don’t know.” I swung out and missed.
Fuck.

“You
have
to know. Think harder. What changed that day? That week? Month?”

“I. Don’t. Know.” I annunciated every word for the Ph.D asshole and jabbed three times with no success.
Shit.

“I don’t buy it.” He held off, bouncing backward toward the thick red ropes.

I glared at him, hating him even more in that instant. The itch to break his face seared from the fingertips under the gloves but he was as fast as he was annoying. I advanced, striking again but missing.

“You know you wouldn’t stand a chance against me if this were a legit fight,” I said, the breath in my lungs sharp and hot. I was two hits from dropping or ten swings away from collapse.

“Whatever you have to tell yourself. Now, if you want me to start giving you good reports, you have to
give
me something. Dig deeper.”

“Fuck!” I snapped, swinging and connecting with his shoulder as he avoided my head shot. “I don’t know!”

“Who was in your life at the time? What were they doing? Was it your job? Think!” He jabbed right, cracking me square in the jaw.

The ring spun me slightly, not enough to fog my vision but enough to make me reach for the rope to my left to steady myself. Had to give Mr. Rodgers credit where it was fucking due. Neighborly asshole was running a fight club in his basement right next to his train set.

I leaned against the rope, breathing through my burning nose, and letting it out of my mouth. I closed my eyes and saw nothing but Blake. Her long brown hair wrapped tight in a ponytail, a sleek black tank covering her incredible breasts…but she wasn’t happy. She was crying. She thought I didn’t see. That I didn’t know
why
.

“Blake,” I whispered her name, but Thomas heard me all the same.

“Your ex-girlfriend?” He was right next to me, one hand on the rope, the other hanging heavy at his side.

“How did you---“

“Your aunt provided us with all the history she could.”

My stomach dropped to the mat. I still didn’t have a clue how much Blake had told her when she’d been contacted while out chasing. I swallowed the acid in my throat, wishing it was a sharper, clearer liquid that would make the memory fucking die.

“So, what about Blake? Was she there the day you realized you couldn’t be around mirrors anymore?”

I cut my eyes to him.

He raised a gloved hand, the muscle in the arms I never saw because of the fucking cardigans rippled like a silent threat. “Would you rather I hit you again?”

“Yes,” I said and let out a dark laugh when he cocked his arm back. I shook my head. “Yes to your question, Doc.”

He dropped his hand. “Had she said something to you? Degraded you because of your habit?”

I shook my head.

“Then what?”

I took a deep breath. I’d never spoken to anyone about this, not even Blake.

“I’d hurt her.”

Thomas nodded like it wasn’t a big surprise. And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I didn’t suppress the monster I was as well as I thought I did.

“Physically? Emotionally? Was it deliberate?”

I closed my eyes again and sank to the mat, the fight leaving me. If I shut my eyes, I could be talking about someone else. It wouldn’t really
be
me.

“Both. All three actually.”

“And?”

“And…”

What had she asked me to do? I couldn’t even remember, only that I hadn’t wanted to do it. I’d been exhausted, as usual, from work and she’d wanted me to go out somewhere. Like that was so fucking bad.

“She kept pushing for me to do something that day. I don’t know what it was. And I snapped. For so long she’d been perfectly happy just being with me. She didn’t
need
anything else. I was her only boyfriend ever, and she never chose to do anything but what I wanted, and that’s how I liked it. Wanted it. Then she fucking went to college and everything shifted. She kept pushing for change and new…and I couldn’t do it.” I sighed, the memory of standing in our potential future apartment in Tulsa, the lease in my hands, flashing behind my eyes. The threat I’d made if she chose the school over me. I could see it, but it wasn’t crystal clear…it was like watching someone else through a fogged set of glasses.

“I knew that day,” I forced myself to continue, knowing the doc would never let me be if I didn’t. “I’d never be the man she wanted me to be—the one who jumped at the chance of new possibilities, adventures, the one who could keep pace with her, the one who could let her be free to become the amazing woman I knew she was.” I swallowed hard. “I didn’t want her to go anywhere, be anyone. She was
mine
, and I liked her where she was. And I assumed if she loved me like she had for so many years, she would eventually realize there was nothing more important than me, than us. So, it became second nature to shut her down the second she asked for anything I wasn’t up for.”

Thomas sank down next to me. “Go on.”

“That day, in particular, she’d pushed a little harder, trying everything to get me out of the house. I was fucking beat, just off a twelve-hour shift, and I wanted to relax, but she kept pushing. I snapped, blew up, and then fucked her until she was raw.”

The Adams-apple bobbed underneath Thomas’ skin, and I dropped my eyes to the mat.

“And afterward?” He urged.

My breath hissed out of my lips, and I slammed the tips of the gloves into my eyes from where they stung. They smell of vinyl and sweat filled my nose.

“She was crying. I tried to act like I didn’t notice. Didn’t realize what I’d done to her, what I’d been doing to her.” I pushed harder against my closed lids, trying to force the image of her limping to the bathroom out of my head. “When I went to clean myself up…that was when I looked up and didn’t know who the fuck I was anymore. I just…” I let my hands fall. “Don’t understand what’s wrong with me. It doesn’t matter that I loved her—she was the one I wanted to hurt the most because she was supposed to be mine. She was supposed to be the one who never pushed me, questioned me. She was…everything to me. My world. And I fucking destroyed her.” I shook my head.

“There
is
something wrong with me, Doc. I
know
there is. But it’s too broken to fix.” I smacked a glove against my chest. “What I’ve done? There is no coming back from it. No forgiveness. So, yeah.” I shrugged. “I drink. I drink and drink until I can’t hear her cries, can’t hear her voice begging me to be tender, begging me to see her for who she was. I drink until every piece of my rotting soul is numb and I can’t even remember my name, let alone all the things I’ve done or why, for the life of me, I can’t understand why in the hell I did them in the first place.” There. That should be enough to get him off my back. Maybe if I was lucky it’d scare him off of ever asking me to open up again because no one needed to see what was going on in my mind, ever.