Alex (Cold Fury Hockey, #1)(24)
Chapter 8
Sutton
Oh, Mara…please stay strong, girl.
That’s the mantra I keep repeating in my head as I type notes in her file. I just hung up the phone with her a few minutes ago, and she’s not doing well. Now that she’s past the fear of her overdose, she’s fixating on the rush she got from the crank. She talked to me, almost longingly, of how great the euphoria felt to her. It broke my heart when she told me that she knows it felt so good because her life is so painful. It was an escape from having parents so mired in their own drug addiction that they don’t have anything left to give to their only daughter.
I urged her to come in to talk to me but she refused, and there’s not much I can do at this point. My talks with her are confidential, so I can’t reach out to anyone else for help. I certainly can’t reach out to her parents, who are the root cause of her issues. All I can do, and this is what is frustrating about my job, is talk to her, support her and pray to God she stays strong. I’m always terrified I’ll say the wrong thing. Even with all my training, and having lived through this stuff myself, I’m always painfully weighing my words and trying to gauge if I’m going too far, or maybe not far enough. It’s a constant battle with myself, wondering if I’m doing right by my kids, or could potentially say the wrong thing that will launch them into a spiral. I have many sleepless nights because I can never let it go when I get home.
Tonight will be one of those nights, I can tell.
Pushing back from my computer, I lean back in my squeaky chair and rub the bridge of my nose. I’m almost thankful for the distraction Mara provided me this morning, because I had been obsessing about Alex since that disaster of a meeting last night. Not for the first time in my professional career, I question myself. I’m thinking maybe I went a little too far with him last night, voicing a concern that maybe shouldn’t have been a concern at all.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a hangover. God knows I’ve had my share. And based on Alex’s reaction to me last night, I get the feeling that the subject of alcoholism or addiction in some form may be hitting close to home. It’s just a guess—a gut instinct; maybe I’m even recognizing something in him that I see in myself or in the kids I counsel. There’s definitely something there.
But, if I’m completely honest with myself, I may not have been so much worried about Alex’s use of alcohol as I had been a bit angry that he blew me off because he had a hangover. So that took this whole screwed-up scenario in my head and moved it from a professional consideration to a personal one, and I have no business thinking about Alex in a personal light at all.
Which is easier said than done, because there is something about him that absolutely fascinates and appeals to me as a woman. Which makes me want to lean forward and bang my head on my desk to chase those thoughts away, because it is absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong to look at him like that.
First, Alex and I are working together on a professional matter—a matter that is extremely important to me—and I need to maintain focus. On top of that, I was chosen for this project by my boss and I need to do a good job so that it boosts my career.
Pushing up out of my chair, I walk to the window that overlooks the small parking lot at the rear of our building. Resting my hands on the ledge, I lean my forehead against the cool glass and think about the most important reason I need to put Alex Crossman far from my mind.
It’s because I may have a chance to rekindle something with Brandon. We’re going to meet for dinner tonight, and this came on the heels of a text from Brandon saying he wanted to have “a serious discussion about our future together.” That text should have made me sigh with happiness but, sadly, I just felt a little “meh.”
The fact that I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other concerning Brandon has me perplexed. I keep expecting the four years of happiness we had will come washing back over me. Instead, it feels like such a distant memory that it makes me question if what we had was really all that great. I’m sure it was—I mean great for that time in my life. Young, in college, experiencing first love. But in just the short year we were apart, I’ve become different.
I’ve started my career, working long hours with little monetary reward, having nothing to show for my efforts, other than a few kids I’m able to bring back from the brink of destruction. Yet I live for those moments and they fuel me. I’ve learned to take care of myself. I’ve bought a home and I’ve completed many renovations to it all on my own. And it turns out I’m a pretty decent money manager, because after I pay all of my bills I even manage to put away some money into my savings account.
In other words, I’ve grown up a lot since Brandon and I broke up and I find that the security he once offered me no longer has the same allure.
All of these things rage through my mind, and because I’m so different, I have to wonder what it is exactly that Brandon can offer me. I have to wonder, why am I not feeling a strong pull to him? To the man I once loved?
I don’t think he broke me, because I never felt broken after we were over. I don’t think I’m bitter or angry with him. Again, fond feelings abound.
The feeling I’m getting is that maybe he’s just not enough for me right now, and that saddens me, because Brandon is truly a good man.
The more I think about it, Brandon has spent the past year living large and making the most of his single life. He’s probably been with countless women and enjoyed, to some extent, having no responsibilities to a committed relationship. I don’t begrudge him that. He was honest with me as to what he needed, and I have to give him points for not cheating on me.