Page 112 of Before You Fell

He’s still here even after I told him to go.

My chest aches so sharply I have to breathe around it, because he stayed. Of course the asshole chooses now to become impossible to leave behind.

I love him.

God help me, after everything, I still love him.

I have since I was too young to know better, wanting him so badly I mistook hunger for devotion. I took crumbs from his hand and called it dinner. Let him hurt me, then blamed myself for bleeding too loud.

But the pills are mine.

That ugly truth sits in my chest.

Phoenix broke pieces of me, but he didn’t put every pill on my tongue. Nor did he make me chase numbness every time my life got too loud.

That part is mine.

I need help. Real help that doesn’t come in a pill from someone’s palm or a powder line on a bathroom counter.

I keep watching Phoenix through the glass, my heart tugging toward him like the reckless idiot it always is.

I have never seen him like this. Phoenix never looks small or lost as if the world finally found a way to kick him hard enough to make him stay down.

I want to tell him to come back. To sit beside me and hold my hand and make all of this hurt less. But wanting Phoenix has always been the easy part.

Surviving what I let myself become because of that wanting is the part that scares the shit out of me.

I leave him on the other side of the glass. Close enough to shatter my heart. Far enough to save whatever scraps I have left.

Please, God, let me be strong enough to keep him there.

Chapter Nineteen

Willow

Rehab.

The doctor says it in a quiet voice, standing beside the hospital bed with his hands folded in front of him, as if a softer tone could sand down the edges. It doesn’t. The word still lands in my lap with all the grace of a body hitting tile.

Rehab. Treatment center. Structured support. All these clean little names for the same brutal truth, that I didn’t have this under control, and everyone in this room knows it now.

I sit against the pillows, my knees tucked beneath the blanket, my hair is dirty against my neck and my mouth still dry no matter how much water Mom keeps making me sip. Dad stands by the window, arms crossed, looking out at the parking lot as though he might find someone out there to blame.

And all through it, outside the glass, Phoenix is still there.

He has been there every time I have woken. At two in the morning, when the hallway lights were dim, he sat in the same seat with his head tipped back against the wall. At four, when a nurse came in to check on me, he was bent forward, elbows on his knees, hands locked behind his neck. At six, when the hospital started waking around us, he was in the same ugly chair, eyes closed, his face relaxed, looking too fucking beautiful for a man who has made such a mess of my heart.

I turn my head and see him staring through the glass.

For one awful second, I wonder how much of this he knows. How much he heard when Dad’s voice rose. How much of my shame has already seeped through the walls and landed at his feet.

God, I hope not. I’m embarrassed enough, lying here in a hospital bed with everyone staring at the mess I made of myself.

“We are not expecting you to do this on your own,” the doctor says, pulling my attention back. “That is why we are talking about rehab. Support. A safe place. Time away from the pressures around you. People who can help you work through what has been happening before you go home and try to manage it alone.”

Manage it alone.

That almost makes me laugh, which is inconvenient, considering my body feels one bad breath away from filing a formal complaint.