Page 72 of Through The Woods

“Look at me, Doc.” I paused. It was now or never. “How many addicts go the rest of their lives without a relapse? How many live to say they beat it? There’s already been so much loss in this place—I can’t put anyone here through that again. I’m going to be leaving soon, so you’re not reminded of her.”

Doc ran the back of his hand across his eyes, like a toddler fighting sleep. “I wondered how long it was going to take before he opened up to you about her. You’ll never be anything like that, Neve.”

I snorted as a bitter laugh escaped. “Obviously. She got sick—I did too, but in a different way. I couldn’t cope with my life, so I medicated with snow. We couldn’t be more different.”

He propped himself up again and looked me in the eye, all traces of humor gone. “How is it you know so much, but so little? His sister was an addict and there wasn’t a damn thing any of us could do to save her.”

I grabbed Doc’s shoulder and got right in his face. “His sister? I’m talking about the woman from the picture. Who is she?” My voice had taken on that shrill tone that seemed to always accompany hysteria.

Nothing was making sense. It was as if Doc was speaking in riddles.

He shrugged out of my grasp. “The girl from the picture? Do you mean Rae? That’s her. That’s his sister.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Sister? The entire time it had been his sister? There had never been a twisted love triangle involving Twitch. “He has a sister?”

He nodded. “Had. He had a sister. Their mom abandoned them when Charm was five and Rae was two. Just left them at a grocery store. He tried to look out for her as best he could when Luck moved them from Texas up here. The club was heavy into drugs and it was really only a matter of time before Rae got in deep herself.

“She would try to clean up, but with that bitch heroin living under the same roof, she couldn’t stay away long. When H wasn’t available, she did blow. Luck turned a blind eye to it, but Charm? Charm did everything in his power to sober her up. We’d detox her, but she’d crawl right back to it.”

“That’s why you have the straps downstairs, isn’t it?” The hope that had briefly made an appearance, just as quickly left.

Doc nodded. “Yeah, for all the good it did us. When she fell for another biker, we thought it’d straighten her out, but she just dragged him down with her. Rae got pregnant and said she was gonna quit—told us that he begged her to.” He paused and roughly wiped at his face just as I did the same. Twitch had tried to save her, only to go down himself.

“We found her dead in her room not long after—she’d overdosed on heroin. Twitch attempted suicide three days later—slit his wrists and ended up in a psych ward. I didn’t think he was gonna make it. Hell, there are days that I still don’t.”

Twitch?

The scars.

I brought a hand up to my mouth, trying to muffle my sobs. He’d loved her, but she’d loved drugs more. It could’ve been the story of me and Clint. He’d never cared for me the way he did heroin.

Doc continued, “Hasn’t been right since then. Lost his girl and his baby at once. He was out on a run, so he blamed himself for it happening—thought she would’ve been fine had he stayed back. Rae was always going to do what she wanted though; it wasn’t a question of if she would OD, it was when.”

It made sense; why Twitch had gotten close to me. It was why he’d wanted to hold me the night we got high—because I reminded him of Rae; and in that moment, he had her back, however brief it was. God, he’d even convinced himself that I was her…maybe he’d even thought that he could save me where he hadn’t been able to save her.

I stumbled back into the doorway and sank down to join Doc on the floor. “So, what did Luck do?”

Doc laughed humorlessly. “He pinned it all on Charm. Said if he would’ve done a better job with her that none of it would’ve happened. The club began to split after that—if the Prez couldn’t handle his own daughter, how the hell was he supposed to run the club?”

Charm had pushed me away when I showed up, not out of spite, but because I reminded him of his dead sister.

Hurting people hurt people.

My mom used to say that all the time, but I never really thought much about it until now. Charm put up boundaries because he couldn’t relive her death again.

“Charm would drag her out to watch the sunrise—he’d read a book on helping addicts recover. Apparently, watching the sunrise is a natural high. He didn’t go out there again though until you showed up.”

The entire time I’d wanted to prove him wrong and it turned out that he’d wanted the same thing. I thought back to the first time he took me out to the ledge and the way he’d stared at me; needing me to be different.

“Is that why he took me on the motorcycle? As part of this natural high thing?”

Doc cocked his head to the side, still using his arm for support. “He took you out on the bike?”

I nodded and he continued, “Well, yeah that was one of the things he tried with Rae. He put his role as VP on hold trying to fix her—yoga, meditation, cliff jumping—you name it, the guy tried it.”

We slipped back into silence again and the weight on my chest grew heavier, not lighter. Hearing about Rae made what happened at the cliff more complicated, instead of less. Before, it was the thought of a girlfriend standing in the way. Now, it was this intense fear of not living up to his expectations. What if I was no better than her?

If given the opportunity, would I blow my sobriety?

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