Page 103 of The Hometown Legend

She didn’t say anything. She had thought maybe he had an issue with alcohol. It hadn’t occurred to her that it could be related to other substances.

“For a while, it made me better. I could do more, I could push past whatever was going on in my head as far as depression or anxiety because it wasn’t me. It was like I wasn’t there. I was pretty damned vacant. But that didn’t matter. I could put on my dress uniform and show up. I could be the soldier that she needed me to be. I seemed unaffected, and that was what she wanted, so I kept pushing. When I realized it was becoming a problem, I tried to cut back. But that just...”

He took a sharp breath. “I would get so short-tempered. And that was when I was trying to assemble some bookshelves in our living room, and I couldn’t figure out the directions. I couldn’t figure the fucking directions out, and Cass was in the other room and she was on the phone, and she was just talking and talking. I just... I was so filled with fury. And I just stood up and threw the screwdriver right through the wall. Not at anyone. But that feeling of being out of control, the fury building until I couldn’t take it anymore... I just went and took more pills. Because at least they made me feel the same. But you lose weight, it’s obvious. You start looking like a junkie. And you are.” His voice was rough, and he shifted behind her. She wanted to touch him, but she was afraid to move and break the spell. “I was a junkie. I might as well have been sticking a needle into my vein. I was close enough to that. All my life, I felt better than everybody else. And it turns out that when things are hard, I don’t know what to do.” The last word was tight. Like it had cost him to speak. “I needed crutches. I didn’t walk through hellfire on my own. I made the flames hotter. Something happened to me that I had no control over, but I made it worse. And I need you to know that. I need you to know that’s part of me.”

“You’re here,” she said, because of all the things it was the only thing that came to her. They were the only words that she could find. “You’re here, you’re not dead. You’re not in the gutter. You’re healthy, fit. As far as I can tell, not taking pills.”

“No. I’ve been clean and sober for two years. And I made sure to take everything away from myself. Absolutely everything. Because I didn’t trust myself. Not anymore. I didn’t want to give myself a new thing to lean on, so that meant getting rid of everything.”

“Did you go to rehab?”

He shook his head. “No. Because I would’ve probably needed to do it through the military to have it paid for. And I had some issues with that. With people knowing. It’s a common thing. But I never thought of myself as common. There’s a lot of alcoholism in the military, but that’s easier for people to ignore. There’s a socially acceptable quality to problem drinking. But it’s not socially acceptable to have a problem with prescription pills. That’s fine. I didn’t need anyone to support me. I was killing myself. Plain and simple. I bottomed out when Cassidy told me to leave.”

“Why didn’t she want to help you?”

He closed his eyes. “She was the woman I married. You have to understand that. She and I were both golden. Absolutely golden. She was the apple of her daddy’s eye, the prom queen, the head cheerleader. She was my female counterpart in every way. Top of her class, brilliant in college. Wanted to marry a man who was going places in the military. And we went through life not recognizing that the only reason we were where we were was that we never really struggled. We didn’t have to fight. We just walked easily to right where we were. And I remember clearly one day we saw a homeless veteran with a sign. Asking for help. Asking for food. He was skinny. Obviously on drugs. And she said...it’s sad how many of them can’t hack it. And I said...I don’t get it. I’ve been out on tour, it’s shit, but you just deal with it. You get over it. You don’t need to be self-indulgent.” He laughed, hard and fractured. “That’s what I thought. That I had some kind of magical inner strength they didn’t have. And now I know, it’s a thin line separating you from becoming your worst nightmare.”

The only sound now was crickets. She didn’t speak, because she knew there was more.

“The day I left she said...you promised me that this would never be us. You became that guy holding the sign. I didn’t know I married a weak man.And I don’t think she’s right. Not about everything. But I married that woman. And I knew she was that woman when I married her. I was a man who matched her then. I am the one that changed. Not her. I’m the one that changed and I’m the one who had to go.”

She felt his heartbeat slowing beneath her fingertips. Almost like he was relieved to have it out.

She wished she could give him advice, but the truth was she was a woman with a very basic list of things she wanted to do because she hadn’t done much of anything.

The hiking trail was a triumph for her. He had been to hell and back.

“She sounds like a bitch,” said Rory.

And what really shocked her was that he laughed. He tightened his hold on her hand and laughed, the deep rumble vibrating through his body.

“Well, given that I’m the one who caused all the problems, I tend to have a nicer view.”

“I don’t have a nice view at all,” she said. “And I don’t have to. She isn’t my...my friend.”

There was a short silence. “I appreciate that.”

“Honestly. When you marry somebody, it’s supposed to be through all of that,” she said fiercely.

“Addicts hurt people, Rory. We lie. We’re erratic. We’re unpredictable. Some people want to stay and try to shepherd you through it, some don’t. Neither is wrong. That’s just how I feel about it. She didn’t change, but sometimes she was cruel, and the truth is, I made her cruel. She didn’t like that version of herself any more than she liked me, and why should she have had to keep living in that?” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I sorted myself out. But only after she kicked me out. Only after the safety net was gone. Not everything is black-and-white. I thought marriage was forever, but I thought I was going to be a certain kind of person forever. I’m not. Even if we had fought through to me getting sober, I don’t know if we would’ve worked. She’s marrying another officer. That’s never going to be me again. I’m done with that life. And it’s a life she loves. I’ll tell you what, I don’t want to be married to somebody I’m dragging down. Making miserable. I need you to know that about me. That I’m not golden, or perfect. That when shit was hard, I folded. I need you to know that I was homeless for a while. And I flirted with the idea of sticking a needle in my arm. When it was getting too hard to get pills because I was visibly and obviously a pill seeker. I need you to know that when I say I hit rock bottom, I was really far down. Because you have a right to know if you’re going to put a hand on me. I’m not the guy you wrote about in your diary.”

His words were raw and bloody. Painful.

“No,” she said. “You’re not. I think you’re better.”

It was his turn to squeeze her hand tight like he was thinking he might fall off the edge of a cliff.

And she rested her head on his shoulder and held on to him like that. Until his breathing went steady. She probably could’ve kissed him. Here in the darkness. But it felt like an even bigger triumph that he’dshared.

And she could wait. Until it was right.

You’re leaving. When will it ever be right?

She didn’t know. She had a plan. And she was so certain of it. Her list. And now here she was at the top of the mountain, that damned mountain, with Gideon Payne.

And she felt like she just wanted to stay on the mountain forever.

Not because she was afraid of climbing back down. Just because they were here together.

---