AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I lift my head, slowly peeling open my eyes as I look down. My chest constricts and my stomach sinks as reality slaps me across the fucking face. Her soft brown eyes aren’t staring back up at me. Ainsley isn’t on her knees in front of me. She’s nowhere to be fucking seen.
I’m in the shower, alone, with my hand wrapped around my cock instead of Ainsley.
My hand falls away from my now limp dick and I turn around to face the water, letting it fall down my face. My imagination got the best of me, again. The defeated feeling that floods me is hard to ignore and avoid. I’ve felt defeat before, but this time it’s different.
Ainsley is here—she’s back in my life—but I’m still left with nothing but her ghost.
NINE
AINSLEY
I finish up my shift, unable to focus on anything but Killian. It’s a struggle, trying to force the thoughts of him from my mind without having the drugs to fall back on. Honestly, every emotion, every intrusive thought is impossible to ignore without having my magic potion to avoid everything.
Instead, I’m forced to feel. I’m forced to think. And sometimes I really fucking hate it.
It literally took everything in me to not go back to his bedroom and crawl into bed with him. That would have been the worst decision that I’ve made lately and thankfully I was able to resist. Maybe it wasn’t resisting. But I knew that it wasn’t what I should do, so I was able to control my impulses and stay put at my desk until it was time for me to leave.
Since I’m officially on my own without Desi here to give me a ride, I take an Uber back to the sober living house. I ended up staying later than I should have, so when I get back to the house, everyone is already in bed again.
I prefer the silence. I prefer my solitude. As much as it is nice to have someone to talk to, sometimes there’s just some shit that I don’t want to talk to anyone about. I just want to leave it in my mind to try and deal with myself. It might not be the healthiest coping mechanism, but they’re my thoughts so they are my problems.
Walking around my room, I collect my things and slip into the bathroom that’s connected to my room. I quickly undress and turn on the water, not even bothering to wait for it to warm up before I get inside the shower. The cold water shocks my system, but I need it.
Grabbing the handle, I turn the temperature up the entire way until it’s burning hot. It’s a shocking change from the cold and my body isn’t happy with me but I don’t fucking care at this point. The hot water burns my skin, not enough to do damage, but just enough for me to feel something.
Again, another unhealthy coping mechanism, but it’s not like I make a habit out of this shit.
Since I can’t use any drugs anymore, sometimes I welcome the pain. It’s a distraction and it helps with my emotions. It calms me down. Inflicting pain on myself isn’t something that I particularly care for. I don’t do anything except maybe take a scalding hot shower every now and then.
I don’t want to wash away his lingering touch. I don’t want to erase anything that has to do with Killian. I just need something that will distract me from the pain that I’m struggling with internally. He’s right, he’s entirely consumed by me, but he’s not alone. That feeling is one hundred percent mutual and that scares the shit out of me more than anything else.
Being dependent on someone else isn’t healthy. And our codependency is toxic as hell. We need to be able to exist together without having the poisonous relationship that we once had. Things have to be different this time around or it won’t work.
I won’t allow it to work, because we both deserve better from each other.
Killian makes me want to be better. Not in the sense of being better for myself or anything that’s related to my addiction. I want to be the girl that he deserves. I want to be able to freely love him unconditionally—the way that he deserves to be loved.
There isn’t a doubt in my mind that he can’t love me the way that I deserve. He already proved time and time again that he could, even with the small hiccups and the enabling that we experienced in our addictions. But things are different now. We’re both different in a sense.
Killian is still stubborn as all hell. He knows what he wants and nothing is going to stop him from getting it.
I know that he knows we can’t be together right now, not without risking our own recoveries and my job. I can’t help but think of his proposition. We snuck around in the past and we just weren’t careful enough.
We know what we did wrong then.... maybe this time it could be different.
As long as we don’t get caught...
* * *
Rolling over in bed,I roll into a warm body sitting up on the edge of my bed. My eyes fly open and I quickly sit up, a gasp slipping from my lips. “What the fuck?” I yell out.
“Shhh.” Cartier turns back to look at me over her shoulder as she presses her finger to her lips. “Everyone else is still asleep and I like it better when it’s quiet here.”
My face scrunches as I wipe the sleep from my eyes. “What are you doing in here right now?”
Cartier shrugs, turning back to stare at the wall across the room. “Today’s the anniversary of the massacre. I got tired of lying in bed alone.”
My heart clenches and my throat constricts as emotion washes over me. I never did end up looking up what happened to her. She told me that the same day that I went out and got high and got in a car accident. I feel like a fucking asshole and the guilt fills me for never asking her about it.
