“I didn’t choose sobriety.” I clench the wheel in a white-knuckle grip. “The man I work for—I don’t even know his name. I’ve never met him. I never will meet him, most likely. I just know him as The Boss. Inez, our direct superior, calls him ‘your employer.’ He found me mostly dead in a ditch in Hawaii, and basically had me kidnapped. I don’t know if he just…saw me and figured he’d do something about me or if he knew who I was and was looking for me, I don’t fuckin’ know.” I swallow hard, thinking back. “I remember trying to get clean. I’d gotten off the junk for about a week. Avoided my usual hangouts, the people and places I knew I’d find meth or be tempted to get it. I made it…two weeks, I think. I pussed out. Weak. Couldn’t hack it.”
“Chance…”
I shake my head. Keep talking. “You asked, I’m answering.” We’re in the desert, hauling ass down the black ribbon toward LA. “I owed my dealer several grand, and he wasn’t about to hand me anymore without getting paid. But I fuckin’…Ineededit. I beat him nearly to fuckin’ death with my bare hands, Annika. Left his ass in a puddle of blood in his living room, took his whole fuckin’ stash, and skipped islands. Hiked out into the jungle and smoked all of it. I think I was trying to OD. Inez told me later that they found me tweaked out of my fucking mind, having smoked enough meth to kill three grown men. Somehow, I didn’t fuckin’ die. I don’t know why I didn’t, don’t know how I survived when by all accounts I damn well should have. I have no memory of any of it, but Inez says they somehow got my tweaker ass on a cargo freighter.
“That ride was the most pure hell of my life, and I’ve been through some serious shit. I was literally locked in a room, essentially a prisoner, given food and water, with basic sanitation facilities, and left to ride out the detox, or die in the process. No weaning, no therapy, no chemical assistance. Just me, my addiction, the withdrawal, and that fucking room forweeks. My food was brought to me three times a day, simple but good food and clean water to drink. I had magazines and books. No electronics. No human interaction.”
I feel Annika’s eyes. Feel her sorrow—horror? Something deep, intense. “My god, Chance.”
“I went nuts. Raged, screamed, threw myself against the walls. Tore my fingernails out, broke my knuckles pounding on the door, screamed my throat bloody. Thought about suicide, it was that brutal. There wasn’t anything I could use to off myself, though, because they’d thought of that too.” I laugh. “I’ve never laid eyes on The Boss—only Inez actually knows the man personally. But yet, I owe that motherfucker my life. I also hate him in equal measure for putting me through that.”
“You’re still clean, Chance. And that’s still something to be proud of.”
I shake my head. “It was forced on me. Not like you—you chose it. You lived it. I fuckin’ hid in a basement. And I was too fuckin’ scared of relapsing to leave.”
She reaches out, curls a small soft hand around my forearm where it rests on the manual shifter. “Chance. You were in that house, same as me. You had every opportunity. You felt the temptation, same as me.” She squeezes my forearm hard, fingernails digging into flesh and muscle. “You stayed strong. We flushed it down the toilet. It’s gone.Wedid that, Chance. Together. So quit selling yourself short, okay?”
I shake my head. “I just…it feels like I cheated.”
She laughs at that, and it’s not exactly kind. It’s overtly sarcastic. “That’s bullshit, Chance. Thereisno cheating. We all suffer the same way. You, me, everyone who’s ever been addicted to that fucking evil poison. There’s no such thing as cheating. However it takes, if you get clean and you stay clean, that’s winning.Youdid that. And I almost wish I’d been locked away like you were. Maybe…maybe if I had been, I’d have stayed clean, and I’d have been to Grandpa’s funeral.”
I hold on to the thought, but I can’t stop myself from asking it. “Your gram…”
She swallows hard. “I haven’t seen her or spoken to her since I relapsed after Grandpa’s death. I…I have an acquaintance. Not a friend. Just someone I know who lives in town near Gram. I call once a month, have her check on Gram. I pay her to check on Gram, make sure she has groceries, a clean house, all that. I…can’t bring myself to…to…”
I look at Annika—her green eyes are wet. “Where does she live?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t.”
I take her hand in mine, tangle our fingers. “Annika—address.”
She whispers it to me. “But, Chance, I don’t know if I can—”
“You can.”
“I abandoned her. She lost her husband of sixty years and I fucking abandoned her to get high.”
“I don’t know her, so I got no way of knowing how she’ll react to seeing you. But I do know you gotta make the effort.” I squeeze her hand and glance at her. “You gotta stop leaving messages and sending texts and just show up in front of them. Look ’em in the eye and ask them for forgiveness. Tell ’em you’re almost a year clean, and you don’t expect them to let you back in their lives but… you want them to know you’re trying.”
“Have you done that?” she asks.
I laugh. “Got no one in my life to talk to. There was no one for me to alienate. Rev was, at the time, working for a South American drug lord and we didn’t reconnect till we were both brought into Sin. Two years, we spent apart. We’d been together every single fuckin’ day since we were ten, and those two years were fucking absolute hell without my brother.” I laugh again, shake my head. “I’m thankful, though, that he wasn’t around for that shit. To see me like that. For me to fuck over. I’m damn grateful.” I shrug. “Other than Rev, though, there wasn’t anyone in my life. No family, no other friends.”
“I thought you were in Hawaii to reconnect with your dad’s family?” she asks.
“I was. Who do you think got me on meth? My cousins.” I shake my head, huffing a growl.
“No kidding?”
“I wish I was. I tracked ’em down, reconnected. It was cool at first. They seemed like decent dudes. We partied, surfed, hung out. Drinking, sitting around bonfires. They told me about my dad and my uncle, who’d passed in a car accident a few years before I left the Marines. Then one day, they came home with a baggie of some shit, and I was drunk. Hammered off my ass. Wasn’t thinking. Figured, fuck it, I know what I can handle. I could always handle my liquor, right? Got nine kinds of fucked up that night, and when I woke up like three days later, I knew I was fuckin’ hooked. And my dumbfuck cousins enabled that shit, seein’ as they were just as hooked as me.”
“God, Chance, I’m sorry.”
I nod. “Me too. So, for them, no, there’s no going back and making amends. They gave me that shit. I hold myself responsible, because I was the one to take the pipe. No one made me do it. I did it. But they brought it into my life. So I can’t face ’em. I can’t forgive ’em. I can’t and I won’t.”
She rubs her thumb on my knuckles. “I get it.” She nods. “It’s different.”
“It’s different,” I agree.
