Overtime(10)

“Because there isn’t anything to share.”

“Sure, there is. You’re an alcoholic.”

“No, I like to drink,” he said, still with his head hanging. “That doesn’t constitute an alcoholic.”

“It does when you drink to not feel something.”

He glared. “I mean, what’s the point of drinking if it’s not to forget? Everyone does it.”

“In moderation. Before you entered here, you’d gone to PT drunk five out of the six sessions, according to your physical therapist. And you also went drunk to your group meetings that were planned while we waited for a spot to open up here.”

He shrugged. “Hey, those are good odds in my opinion. And plus, they all drove me to drinking because I hate them so much.”

She tsked while a few of the guys laughed. “You shouldn’t be going drunk at all.”

“Sure, and I won’t ever again,” he said, sitting up then. “Now, can I leave?”

Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms. “The answer is still no.”

“There isn’t anything for me here. This place isn’t going to magically fix me. I’m not going to be ready for a sober life once I leave. I’m good. I don’t want to talk, I don’t even want to drink anymore, so maybe it has worked. I don’t f*cking know. I just want to play hockey and be out of here.”

“There is a lot wrong with you,” she countered without missing a beat.

Jordie scoffed, rolling his eyes before setting her with a dark, challenging look. The whole time he had been here, she had hounded him for information, trying to get him to open up about shit he didn’t even want to speak about. He was good having all his past secrets deep inside him. And plus, they had nothing to do with the fact that he liked to drink. He drank because it numbed the pain.

The pain of his career hanging in the balance.

The pain of not knowing the future.

Most of all, the pain of letting Kacey go.

Therapist Lady knew none of this. She knew nothing, only what was on paper. And he didn’t think it was any of her business about anything else. She wanted to know about his past? Read his file and leave him the f*ck alone, was his opinion.

But yet, she continued to come at him. It was time to shut her up. “Oh, yeah? Please enlighten me, Ms. Therapist Lady.”

Glaring, she held his gaze for a moment and then looked down at her file, clearing her throat. His chest seized up right as he realized what she was about to do. Before he could stop her though, she was talking.

“Well, let’s see, shall we?” she said very slowly. “But first, you’re okay if I share?” she asked, her eyes challenging, and he shrugged. He refused to be weak in front of these wack-jobs and her stuffy ass.

“Do you, lady.”

She smiled coyly. “Okay, well, your mother has been married ten times in the course of your life. When you were four, you were raped by her third husband, more than once. You were found on the bed bleeding and unresponsive from multiple areas after he beat you almost to death—”

“I don’t see how this has to do with anything. I don’t even remember it.”

“Fuck, man, did the f*cker rot for it?” Manny, a tight end for some pro football team, asked and Jordie shrugged, not wanting to shed any light on that drama.

“Oh yes, he’s still in jail. But he is up for parole this year,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “I understand that you don’t remember this, and that’s fine, but your drinking started up more than usual this year. Such a coincidence that the year Gary Davis goes up for parole is the year you’re forced to go to rehab.”

Sucking in a breath at the sound of his abuser’s name, Jordie shook his head. “That’s not the reason I drink.”

“Then what is?”

“I don’t know,” he answered quickly.

“Fine then, but this is part of your history, and I am reviewing it to remind you why you are here. Now, please allow me to finish. I let you talk when you want to complain and moan about being here, now allow me to finish,” she snapped, and Jordie glared as the stares from his fellow group members made the room feel as if it were closing in. So mousy therapist lady had a tough side. Good to know, not that he f*cking cared. Sucking in another breath, he crossed his arms tightly over his chest for protection as she went on. “Now, after years of therapy, they deemed you to have extreme trauma from the episode, which was expected—it was a very horrifying experience. You didn’t speak to anyone for two years, but somehow, your therapist writes that you recovered when you started playing hockey. He says you were a different child, that hockey healed you. It does say that you did shut down whenever anyone said his name or even brought up what happened. They feared you had suppressed the tragedy and suggested more therapy, but your mother pulled you.”

God, this was torture. Of course, he had suppressed the whole thing. It was horrible and he could still, to this day, hear his mother bitching from the bedroom about all the trials and how f*cked up he had been. Hockey saved him because Lord knows his mom was too consumed with her own issues to worry about him. He loved his mother…but only because he had to. She didn’t make his life easier to say the least, and she may have been the reason for a lot of the discrepancies in that file. Their relationship had always been strained, especially in his older years. He was more a problem to her than her child.