An Ounce of Hope (A Pound of Flesh #2)(5)

Although the Narcotics Anonymous twelve steps to recovery were very much part of Max’s healing process, the facility also offered more holistic-type therapy, which Max was sure would benefit someone. Just not him. He wasn’t into all that mind, body, and soul mumbo jumbo. He just wanted to get clean the fastest way possible so he could go home.

Still, after fifteen days, Max had to admit, somewhat begrudgingly, that rehab wasn’t all bad. He missed his friends and the comforts of home like crazy, of course, but it was kind of like being in prison. Only cozier. With nicer smells, nicer drapes, and easier smiles from the staff. Sure, the sessions with Elliot were a heinous chore that made Max want to do nothing but go fetal, and the group sessions were even worse, but the guys he’d met in group had definitely made his stay more interesting. Talk about crackpots.

Take Stan, for example. Stan was twenty-eight years old and a coke addict. Like Max, he’d delved into the white powder time and time again as a way of forgetting life and all the bullshit that came with it. He was a five-foot-six, tenacious Puerto Rican who could talk the hind legs off a motherf*cking donkey. And he did. Regularly. But that was just fine with Max. If Stan was talking, that meant Lyle, the group leader, and Hud, a sobriety counselor, weren’t looking in Max’s direction expecting him to say anything.

For the ten group sessions the seventeen of them had had, Max still hadn’t spoken a word. Didn’t want to speak a word. Didn’t know where the hell he’d start putting that shit in organized, fluent sentences. Jesus, being sober and lucid did nothing but encourage his once-quieted thoughts to relentlessly hammer his tortured brain from the minute he opened his eyes every morning. The luscious coke blanket he’d used unashamedly every day, numerous times a day, to silence the f*ckery taking place in his head was a distant memory. Max simply pulled the substitute blanket—the hood of his sweater—farther around his face, burrowing deeper into the fabric, and tried to relax.

Easier said than done with Stan waxing lyrical about his regrets. Oh, the regrets.

“I swear to f*cking God, does he never shut up?”

Max’s eyes slid across to the owner of the whispered complaint, Dom Hayes, another fellow cokehead with a history of dealing, misdemeanors, time inside for stupid shit, etc. He was twenty-six and, his criminal history notwithstanding, a fairly stand-up guy. He’d shared his smokes with Max on one of the first days at the joint when Max was about ready to bust out of the place and beat a hasty retreat back across the state of Pennsylvania, home. They’d been tight ever since. Interestingly enough, Dom reminded Max a lot of Carter, which was as unbearable as it was comforting.

Christ, Max missed his best friend.

Even if Carter was an *. An * who had been there for Max for nearly twenty years. An * who had done time in Arthur Kill prison for Max when shit went tits up. An * Max had pulled a gun on when he’d finally hit rock bottom. An * who, at the end of his patience, had picked an unconscious Max up off the bathroom floor and begged and yelled at him to get a grip, to go to rehab and get clean. An * who drove him for nearly four hours to the rehab facility, paid for everything without question, and hugged him hard before he left with tears in his eyes, telling Max that everything would be all right.

Max sighed and closed his eyes briefly, zoning out Stan and the other seventeen men in the room. Max knew that, without Carter, he’d be dead. He knew that, without Carter’s finances and Riley’s business know-how, his father’s auto shop would have been lost along with the reputation his dad had worked so damned hard to build. Without Carter, Max would never have survived losing Lizzie.

As always happened when he thought about her, severe pain sliced through Max’s stomach, up to his chest, clutching his heart and lungs, causing him to sit forward in his seat. He gasped through the unrelenting agony, thankful that everyone’s attention was still on Stan.

Everyone’s except Dom’s. “You okay, man?” he muttered at his side.

Max nodded, cleared his throat, and tried to breathe just the way Elliot had shown him. Slow and steady. Deep and gradual. In. Out. In. Out.

Once such a simple motion and now, without her, and without any white lines, an enduring struggle.

“So tell me about your episode in group.”

Max was starting to realize that Dr. Elliot was f*cking omniscient or some shit. Nothing got past him. Bastard must have cameras in every part of the damned center. He knew everything! Either that or his small “episode” in group wasn’t as subtle as Max had hoped.

He shrugged. “It was nothing.”

Why he continued to lie, God alone knew. It certainly didn’t make him feel any better and it certainly wasn’t going to get his ass home any sooner. And wasn’t that the endgame, to get better and then get home?

Scribble. Scribble. “Max, it will help to talk about it.” Elliot sipped from his always-present Phillies mug. Max wondered if it was coffee or something stronger, like cognac. Or whiskey. Dammit, a shot of Jack would have been a real f*cking treat right about then.

“It was the same as before,” Max murmured with a slow exhale.

Elliot’s eyes softened. “Lizzie.”

Max’s chest gave an ungrateful squeeze at the sound of the two syllables.

“Tell me,” Elliot said quietly. “Whatever you can. Tell me.”

Whether it was the soft coaxing of Elliot’s voice, or the need to show everyone he could recover, or whether it was the urgent need Max had to not let Carter down, the cracks in his emotional dam slowly started to give way. He began by telling Elliot about the party, the first time he’d seen her and not spoken to her because he’d been too chickenshit. The lighthearted abuse he’d received from Riley and Carter because he wouldn’t pick up the phone and call her for weeks after, despite his desperate need to see her again. Jesus, the need. The need that still crippled him. Fuck, and then there was the sound of her soft, eager voice when he’d finally plucked up the courage to dial the digits written on the battered piece of paper he’d had in his pocket since Riley’s shindig. Their first date at a bowling alley where she whipped his ass by nearly fifty points and then let him kiss her. The kiss, her lips . . .