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I dragged my fingers through my hair and cursed. Then I heaved a shattered breath.
I was like my mother. So much like her. And I was heading down the same path. If I didn’t figure out a healthy way to deal with my addictive personality, I was going to hurt Aya, Cam… Steve… Everyone close to me. The way my mother had hurt me.
I must have said that aloud, because Steve moved closer.
“Nash,” he said on a sigh. “She had a disease. You have it—”
I slammed my healed fist into the bed again, then again. “I’m doing the same stupid shit again.” I looked up at him, tears in my eyes. “I can’t lose Aya. I can’t. She’s the only thing that makes the pain better, bearable.”
Steve’s stoic expression cracked. “I know, son.”
“I broke the shell.” I couldn’t even look at the bits of it. My most treasured belonging, the one I’d carefully wrapped and placed in my suitcase so I was sure it survived each move, obliterated.
I rose, agitated. I walked faster and faster, ignoring the dull pain from too much to drink that had settled, an old friend, behind my eyes. I didn’t want to feel like this. My heart raced. I didn’t want to feel the emotions cascading through me, the loss and fear lashing at me.
I needed another drink. Some pills—anything to stop these emotions from ripping, flaying me. I couldn’t breathe. I fell to my knees, vaguely aware that my reaction was over the top, but my heart pounded too hard, my vision tunneled.
Alcohol, drugs had led me here. If I’d dealt with my mother and Brad’s toxicity then, I wouldn’t have it piled atop my anger toward Steve, my fear that Aya would leave me again, for good, now. But I hadn’t dealt. I’d deflected.
Because this hurt.
Badly.
And I didn’t know how to make it stop.
What if the pain didn’t stop?
I laid my forehead on my knees and rocked back and forth, back and forth. When I became aware of Steve’s arms around me, holding me up, holding me together, I gritted my teeth, refusing to break down further.
“I keep messing up,” I mumbled. My throat ached with the need to sob. I held it back.
“Mistakes are how we learn, Nash. They aren’t the problem.” He was quiet while I gritted my teeth.
Tears slithered down my cheeks, leaving me feeling even weaker.
“Your emotions are part of you; they’re real. Necessary. They make us human.”
“They fucking hurt.”
“Because the people who were supposed to love you betrayed your trust. They let you down. They were selfish and scared and stupid.”
I swiped at my cheeks with the back of my hand and met his gaze. He didn’t just mean my mother or Pop Syad. Brad didn’t count because Brad was a douche. No, Steve meant himself.
“The emotions aren’t the problem,” Steve said again. “It’s what we do with them, the choices we make, that matter.”
“I have to get on that bus,” I said, my voice flat. I scrubbed my hands over my face as I replayed my fight with Aya in my mind. I’d been a dick. I’d woken her from a dead sleep, and I’d attacked her. I hadn’t listened. I hadn’t cared what she had to say. Because I’d felt threatened. She’d been smart enough to disengage, and I’d flung that in her face, too.
“Maybe…” Steve began.
“No, I have to go. I’ll talk to my therapist—I’ll fly him out to meet with me in person. I need him with me. To keep me sober.”
“You can talk to Cam, too,” Steve said.
I shook my head. It was time for me to man up. To deal with my own shit. My own past before it ate me, dragged me under. No amount of advice would fix the demons I refused to face head-on, even after months of therapy and years of trying to drown my liver in alcohol.
Of course, “Demons” by Imagine Dragons flared to life in my battered mind. I gritted my teeth, wishing I could shut that shit down.
Aya had to have gone to the ranch, which meant Cam was pissed at me. Jenna and Aya had become close, so she and Mama Grace would circle around Aya, refusing to let me talk to her until I showed proper contrition.
