Page 17 of Reclaim Me

“Then stop stalling and answer the question. Who’s this Hunter guy, and why did you get all freaked out when Riley brought him up?”

“Because he’s her father.”

Aaron’s eyes go wide with disbelief and then, after a few seconds of processing the fact that I’ve lied to him for years, narrow into slits. “I thought you didn’t know who her father was!”

His elevated tone sends my eyes flying to the stairs to my left, searching for any sign of movement from Riley or Marcy because I don’t need either one of them overhearing this conversation. When I’m satisfied that they’re both oblivious to what’s happening down here, I turn my focus back to Aaron. He’s pacing the length of the floor in front of me with his wrists crossed over his head.

“Please keep your voice down, Aaron.”

“Keep my—” he rounds on me, a dark laugh pouring out of him. “You’ve been lying to me for years, and you expect me to keep my voice down?”

“Yes, because Riley is upstairs, and I don’t want her to hear you.”

He shakes his head, but he does lower his voice, dropping it down to a dangerous, vicious pitch that’s laced with disdain. “When you told me about Riley, I asked you. Do you remember? I asked you who her father was and if he was in her life; you looked me right in the eyes, Rae. You didn’t even flinch. You looked me in the eyes, and you told me you didn’t know who he was.”

Somewhere in between Aaron’s harsh tone and the anger dancing behind his eyes, my brain makes space for flashes of Hunter’s face. For his concentrated stare and his calm but alert expression, for his even complexion and his thick, black beard that was neatly trimmed and perfectly tailored to the shape of his strong jaw.

Even when I thought he was clean back in the day, he never looked as good as he did today, and I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know what to do with him because I don’t know this version of him. I didn’t even know the version I thought I loved, which is why it was so easy to tell the lie Aaron now hates me for and why it’s so easy to accept it now as a new, altered truth.

I don’t know who Hunter Drake is, and for the sake of my daughter and the life I’ve built without him, it’s best that I never find out.

7

HUNTER

Now

The first thing I do after Rae speeds out of the parking lot of the cemetery is go to a meeting.

I was planning to go anyway since I’m the person who leads them, but after she walked away from me without saying anything other than my name, it felt like more of a necessity than a planned part of my monotonous life. Seeing her didn’t make me want to use, but it did send emotions rushing through me in a wave strong enough to knock me off of my feet and flat on my ass.

“The only frame of reference I have for it is being slammed onto the mat.” I laugh internally at my poor choice of a metaphor. No one else in my Tuesday meeting has fighting experience, so they don’t really get it. Still, a few people nod, encouraging me to share the way I try to do for them when I’m on the other side of this dynamic.

“It’s been over a decade since I’ve seen her, and now she has a kid…” I trail off, picturing the little girl whose face I only caught a glimpse of. She looks like Rae. I remember seeing pictures of her when she was a kid in the photo albums Will took great pride in showing me the first time they had me over for dinner after the relapse that brought her into my life.

“She’s a mom.” My voice shakes, and when I grip the edges of the podium, the wood creaks in protest. “I always thought I’d know her kid. I thought they’d be my kid, too. I didn’t realize how tightly I’d held on to that idea until I was slapped in the face with the truth, which is that that won’t ever happen. I won’t know her or anything about the life she’s built without me.”

But it hasn’t stopped me from picturing it. From building an image of the man who became everything we’d thought I’d be for her—guardian of her heart, keeper of her soul, father of her child. On the drive from the cemetery to the Baptist church where every NA meeting I’ve ever attended is held, I obsessed over it. What her life looks like. The peace she must have in her home now that she doesn’t have to worry about hidden stashes and bathroom overdoses. I don’t have to know the man she chose to know that’s the case because I know Rae.

She wouldn’t choose someone like me again. The lessons I taught her in disappointment have made sure of that. Which means the man she’s with now, the father of her child, the partner who gives her peace and protection, is my opposite in every way.

Where I brought complications, he brings simplicity.

Where I brought chaos, he brings stability.

The only thing he doesn’t have on me is love. No one in this world could ever love Rae more than I have, more than I still do. Of that much, I’m certain.

I blow out a harsh breath, knowing that my love for her is as irrelevant as my feelings about her being back here in New Haven. It’s all my shit to deal with, to sort through, to process so it doesn’t turn into an excuse for me to use.

“I guess we’ll add it to the long list of things my addiction has cost me.”

Out in the crowd, I see a few people nod their agreement. One of them is a kid in the last row chewing on his thumbnail. I’ve never seen him before, but that’s not necessarily a red flag for me. Every day is someone’s first day of sobriety, their first step toward a life without drugs, and when they make that decision, they usually end up in places like this, listening to people like me talk about the ups and downs on the road to sobriety. For that reason, I usually try to keep my shares on the lighter side. Not to sugarcoat things but to avoid being yet another person contributing to the shared weight we all carry when we leave this room.

That’s what meetings with my sponsor, Nate, are for.

I lift a hand, rubbing at my forehead as the realization that I’m treating this meeting like my own personal therapy session settles on my shoulders. Shame eats away at my gut, and I rack my brain for a way to end this without it being weird.

Turns out, when you’re in the middle of baring your soul to a room full of people, some of whom are the sponsees that depend on you to keep them grounded, there’s no real way to do that.

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