Page 87 of My Sweetest Obsession
And she may not see it the way I do, but it feels like a giant step I didn’t realize I’ve been holding my breath for.
She saw me that night.
In a very dark place.
The worst I had been since I got out of rehab.
So fucking close to breaking.
And she sat there while I unloaded the horrific truth of all that I had done, those things I was never able to admit, even when we were drawn closer by our shared grief.
Ivy saw it that night, how easily I could fall back into being that person who resorts to injecting poison into their veins when the pain becomes too much.
Yet, she’s here.
She’s beside me.
And that’s enough.
That light at the end of the tunnel that I talked about when I stood in this room the morning after my epic crash seems somehow closer.
More real.
Reachable.
We refocus our attention on the front of the room as Manny finishes his opening remarks, and Riley gets up to speak first. I try to concentrate on his words, on everything he’s saying, because it’s so fucking important for me to give him the attention and support he does me, but all I can feel is how tightly she’s gripping my hand, how warm her body is where her shoulder presses against mine, the slight shifts she makes as she tries to find a more comfortable position on the shitty folding chairs, the sound of every little breath she takes.
She’s here…
And by the time Riley finishes and steps down, I feel like I’m about to jump out of my skin.
Because my body craves her.
It wants her just as bad as it did that heroin sitting on the floor beside me that night.
My knee bounces, and when Manny asks who wants to speak next, I raise my hand and push to my feet before anyone else takes that opportunity.
Because I needed to break that connection.
Because she needs to hear the things I talk about here, the things that will make her uncomfortable, the things that will show her that this addiction will always be that voice in my head and devil on my shoulder that I’m fighting against.
She was the only thing that kept me from relapsing that night, and she needs to understand how easily I could find myself in that situation again, especially with the twisted emotions that will always follow me where she’s concerned.
Ivy’s gaze flicks up to me.
I offer her a tight smile and squeeze her hand once before releasing it so I can slip past her and walk up the aisle to the front of the room.
Manny claps me on the shoulder as I turn to face all the familiar people I spend so much time with, who have helped me through everything that’s happened since I moved back to Philly, who have never once judged me, despite the fact that I have given them countless reasons to that have nothing to do with my drug use and everything to do with what I’ve done to Drew and Ivy.
And having her here now somehow makes all those confessions I’ve made seem obsolete, like they’re not nearly enough.
I reach under my shirt and grab my medallion, pulling it free and running my fingers across it. “I know most of you have heard me talk a lot about this, about why I got clean.”
My gaze lifts to her, and the way her bottom lip trembles makes me clench the metal even tighter.
“It took a long time for me to realize that getting sober for somebody else was never going to work.” I watch her back stiffen, the tears pooling in her eyes. “And not only was I doing it for someone else, but I was doing it for a terrible reason. So that I could hurt the person I loved the most in the world, in order to get the person he loved the most.”
Fuck.
