Crave Me (The Good Ol' Boys #4)(93)

Her hand was up in the air before I got the last word out. I caught it mid-air, tugging her toward me. She tried to break free, roughly pulling her arm away from my grasp. I grabbed her other arm, the momentum of her trying to fight me off made me unintentionally slam her against the wall.

She winced but didn’t stop struggling.

“Get the f*ck out! Leave!” she yelled, whipping around.

“Stop!” I argued. “Fucking stop! I don’t want to hurt you! Calm down! Calm the f*ck down!” I ordered through a clenched jaw, trying to control her thrashing body.

She slowly gave up, panting profusely. Her chest rising and falling with each second that passed between us. I leaned forward, our lips almost touching.

“Why, Briggs? Why didn’t you f*cking tell me? Why didn’t you give me a choice in the matter? It was my baby, too. I should have had a say. Why didn’t you give me that right? Why did you take that away from me?” I asked, needing to know.

She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“As much as it kills me to have said all those things to you, I won’t apologize for it, because at the end of the day our baby is gone. No excuses will take away the fact that you didn’t have the common decency to tell me. You made the decision for both of us. Like I didn’t even matter. Were you ever planning on telling me?”

Her breathing hitched. By the look on her face, the answer was no.

I peered deep into her eyes and breathed out, “You just killed a part of me that you will NEVER get back. That I will never get back.”

I let her go, stepping away from her.

She swallowed hard, her eyes watering, her lips quivering as if she knew what I just said was true. For the first time I didn’t want to comfort her, to hold her, tell her she was my girl, and that I loved her. Because for the first time…

I was staring at a stranger and not the woman that I knew and loved. I finally understood what she meant when she said she didn’t know me. For years she kept saying that I had changed, that I had become another person, which only made me hate myself more because I knew I brought this on myself. I was the reason that she felt like she had no other choice. No other decision to be made.

I. Did. This.

That realization was my rock bottom...

Or so I thought.

“Austin…” she coaxed, reaching out for me.

It was like she knew what I was going to do even before I did.

I turned around and left.

“Austin, please don’t do this. Please, don’t lose yourself again.” she begged as I opened the door, walking out of the apartment, not bothering to shut it.

I wanted her to watch me walk out of her life. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but a part of me wanted to hurt her as much as she just hurt me.

I drove around New York City for I don’t know how long. Time just seemed to standstill as the pain in my heart took over. There wasn’t one ounce of my body that didn’t yearn. That didn’t feel like it was dying. I had never felt so empty and hollow in all my life. But the underlying demons were waiting, always my companions, always sitting right next to me, waiting for the emotional devastation to take over.

So they could come out and play.

I blinked and I was sitting on Jon’s couch, snorting line after f*cking line. Trying to forget, trying to go numb, trying to block out the last twenty-four hours. But it wasn’t working. The pain was still alive and bleeding out of me, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake.

“You want to forget, bro?” Jon asked, sensing my distress.

My bloodshot eyes settled on the needle in his hand and then back up to his face. He was tightening the belt around my upper arm before I could even answer. Telling me to make a fist.

I did.

The second I felt the needle poke through my skin, I watched my despair fill the syringe with blood. And then… Jon pushed down the plunger.

I kissed goodbye our baby.

I kissed goodbye Briggs.

I kissed goodbye Austin.

Leaning my head back against the couch, letting the crave take over.

The worst part was that I just kissed goodbye my future and everything I believed in.





<>Briggs<>


I went to the storage unit. Austin had left the key for me if I ever wanted to go there. I did. For the first time I came face to face with all my parents’ belongings. Trying to seek comfort and guidance. There was none to be found there. I decided to stop at a church on the way to the clinic, needing some sort of peace of mind. I’d never been in a church before, too afraid that all my sins would make the roof cave in on me. I didn’t even know if I was Catholic. At that point I didn’t care and it didn’t matter. I dipped one finger into the cold holy water, hoping it wouldn’t burn me and made the sign of the cross, like I’d seen in movies. One foot in front of the other, I walked toward the first pew of the empty cathedral, right before God. A man I didn’t even believe existed until that very second as I made my way into his house. The echo from my feet mimicked the sound of my heart beating against my ribs.

I got down on my knees, crying, and praying for forgiveness for what I was about to do.

“Please God… Please forgive me,” I pleaded with every last fiber of my being. “Please grant me forgiveness… I have no other choice… Please you have to believe me, just please show me some mercy. Please guide me.”