Broken: A Billionaire Love Story (8 page)

So really, it was for her, it was for his sobriety, that he did this. It was a
good
decision, he told himself.

All that raw, hot emotion that he felt for Olivia—god, she smelled so nice—and he could get this one last drunk out of his system and focus on sobriety forever.

Or, for the rest of his life, anyway. And he could work on getting her in the sack—because no way would she want to be with a drunk.

He, so far, had enjoyed this flirtation with sobriety. The idea of life where he could be largely in control of his actions and his emotions—which is what the groups promised him—interested him a great deal. Shane’s life so far was a mess of sorrow, and it made sense that drinking had something to do with it.

But again, he couldn’t really focus on it until he got that one last good drunk through his system.

The last one didn’t count, after all—he had blacked out for nearly ten days. Who could end their drinking after that? Who would stop drinking after getting their ass kicked in the middle of a street because they were drunk? That was silly. You had to go out with some style, for god's sake. With a little bit of poetry in the mix.

He wanted to go out swinging, have a nice ride into the sunset with a flask of whiskey at his hip. Didn’t he deserve to get drunk enough for that? Wasn’t he a big enough piece of shit to deserve to feel that good, just one more time?

The facility was at the top of a large hill, at the bottom of which was a parking lot for staff and visitors. He snuck out through the automated gate—still open—and walked down the road. He didn’t have much of a plan, yet.

Maybe a bar? Maybe a grocery store? Maybe a liquor store? Any of it would work.

Over the past few hours, he’d scrounged through the couch cushions and looked in the corners of the rehab facility's big halls and the living areas, picking up whatever spare coins he could find. And so now, he had a two dollars in change in his pocket—enough to make some kind of a purchase at a store while he walked out with a bottle of booze in his coat.

Shoplifting certainly had never been beneath him in the past, and it wasn’t now. Shane knew he really had no need to scrounge for money like that—somewhere there was a bank account practically exploding with funds, all with his name on it. But he didn’t want anything from his family. He didn’t want them to know he needed one single goddamn cent from those vipers.

So, shoplifting was his plan.

But that was a plan, like so many of his plans, that didn’t come to fruition.

Instead, a few miles down the road, after an hour of walking, there was a bar: Spark’s.

He found it hard to believe, almost, that a bar had placed itself so close to a rehab facility. It seemed in pretty poor taste.

But maybe it made sense, he thought. Maybe a great many roads to recovery had been tested—or derailed—by this bar. Maybe it was a common dream among bartender’s, getting together at conventions—“Wouldn’t you love to have a location like Spark’s? Good god. The money that must come in to that place! Every drunk just pouring themselves into every drink put out there. And if someone got way too drunk, why, the police know just where to stick ‘em.”

The parking lot was crowded but not too crowded. Nobody double-parked or sitting on the grass like sometimes he had seen in small, out-of-the-way places like this. Noises crawled out of the interior, entering the night and surrounding Shane in that sense of nostalgia that a bar always brought him. Good things happened there. Even despite all the bad, bad things he had been a part of in bars—always the first thoughts he had about them were good.

As he approached, though, doubt attacked him. Should he go in? He came all this way. He could just walk all the way back. But then, he’d feel stupid, getting caught. He’d feel more stupid getting caught and not being drunk than getting caught sober. Why even go out if he wasn’t going to drink? That was silly.

That was a coward’s move. Shane was no coward.

Olivia wouldn’t like it. He knew this already. He’d have to explain it to her somehow. There was not much of his mind that believed that he was going to walk right back in to Edgemont Heights the way he had walked out. For all that he quizzed Rawls about leaving the place, not once had he thought to quiz him about coming back in. Maybe when the guards changed shifts? But how would he know the exact moment of that, not being able to see them?

Anyway. He walked right in to the bar, of course.

Inside, though, it certainly seemed crowded—there was a game on, blaring out on the three widescreens that the bar boasted. One over the bar, two in the back behind the pool tables.

But, right there in the front, there was a stool open.

Destiny, wasn’t it? The stool open like that, in a bar like this. Crowded and all.

Something in him knew it was just chance. Something in him knew that a bar stool being open didn’t mean anything more than a bar stool being open. Someone had gone to the bathroom, or had their fill, or didn’t like crowd, or the smell, or the price of the beer.

But no, that hammering part of Shane's brain demanded, no! It was destiny. He was supposed to be here. It all made sense, now. This is why he had felt the pull so strong.

And even so, there was something telling him—nothing had pulled him here. He could walk away at any moment, even now. There was nothing that brought him here but himself—but no, he could
feel
it, this tight tug in his chest demanding that he go through with this, just like he had gone through with it countless nights before, nights he couldn’t even remember anymore.

It was sort of like if you woke up every day to go to work, with the same routine. Feed your pets, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, and then drive away. Only, one day, with your handle on the door to your car, you think—No, today I won’t.

There was nobody in the world that would accept such a thought.

He sat down.

“What’ll you have?”

The bartender was an older man with a big mustache, wearing a checkered shirt.

“Beer and a shot. Vodka.” Shane pointed out his choices. Cheap ones.

The bartender nodded, setting to work on the drinks.

“On second thought,” said Shane. “Grab me two shots, all right? Put it on a tab. It’s been a rough few days.”

The bartender nodded again. Shane thought maybe he would ask about his day or his reasons, but he didn’t. He poured the drinks and went back to his game.

With very little indecision, he downed the two shots and started working on the beer. A reflex action. Easier than he thought it should have been.

Right away he felt what he wanted to—that distant sense of falling, that lightness in his legs, the fire in his cheeks. The first little tell-tale signs of getting a buzz on. Even with the rest of the crowd so close, he could focus in entirely on himself, his depth of field narrowing to just what was right in front of him.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Shane turned, and saw the orderly, Hector. He was frowning a bit, wearing a heavy coat, but did not look all that surprised. He wasn't even in dressed in uniform—apparently there just to watch the game.

“How about we get back, huh?” asked Hector.

Shane turned back to the bar and hung his head down. His hair scraped against the glass in front of him—the beer not even finished.

“What if I don’t want to go?”

Hector shrugged. “You don’t have to go. But you should. And you know you should.”

Shane picked up the glass, half-f.

Half-empty? Half-f? Who was to say?

Even he couldn’t explain what he did next. He would think about often over the next few years. He could say, honestly, that there was something of Olivia on his mind.

“All right,” he said, standing up, teetering just slightly. “Okay. All right. Let’s go back.”

Chapter 11:

It was the afternoon once more, and once more, Olivia had Shane in front of her on the couch in her office.

She had heard of his relapse, of course. He wasn’t the first to sneak out in the night, and likely he wouldn’t be the last—that was the way when you were working with addicts. There was always one more instance of stupid, stubborn self-destruction waiting down the line.

But, this was the first time that Olivia had really had such...complex feelings for a man who relapsed.

The night before, she had worked at the outlet store, still not making a sale. She had a few opportunities, but her mind was too scattered, focusing in on the brief seconds of their beautiful, hot kiss. The way her breasts had crushed up against his chest, the strong grip of his inked hands on her hips...she had felt alive. Not scared or panicky, and not obsessed with her future, just purely alive and in the moment for the first time in...in...she didn’t even know when.

And so, this relapse held a particular disappointment for her, and a particular sympathy. With the night behind him, Shane looked broken in half.

“How do you feel?” she asked him.

His arms were collapsed up into his chest, body slightly bent. He gave a long shrug. “Not great. I don’t know.”

She tried to quell her feelings of sympathy for the sad man she saw in front of her. She wanted to be tough—professional.

What she didn’t want to do—certainly not—was crawl in his lap and kiss his handsome face and tell him how it was all going to be perfectly okay.

No, no. She couldn’t do anything like that.

Surprisingly, earlier in the day during Big Group, while Olivia was there to listen, Shane had spoken up about his past.

“I was in football, you know, when I was younger,” he said. “Big star. Big linebacker star. I was just, you know, this supreme athlete. I could drink like a fish and then wake up the next day, no problem, ready to go play. Now, it’s not even that much later. Ten years, maybe? And I wake up with shivers if I don’t have a drink.” He held his hand out, showing the group. “I went out, last night. I figure you all heard. I don’t know why it was that I did.” He shook his head, putting his hands back together. “No, I guess I do. I just wanted...I wanted to escape for a little bit. I didn’t want to have to deal with my sobriety yet. I could feel it coming like a train, hitting my life, and I just wanted to slide out from under the tracks for a little while longer.”

It was a surprising admission from Shane. She was glad he had the ability to say something like that. Still, though, she was suspicious of it—it had that ring of rationalization to it, that layer of self-justified excuses that alcoholics were so desperately skilled at creating.

“Shane?” she tried again. “This morning, when you talked about why you went out last night...”

He nodded, eyes shining a bit. “Yeah? You heard that?”

“Of course. Would you mind if I offered a counter explanation?”

He shrugged. “Go for it.”

She stood up and walked across the room and sat next to him on the small couch. She almost had no control over her actions—his clear need for human contact overshadowed any reservations she might have had.

“I had a patient in here not too long ago,” she began. “He’s got about two years now. A sweetheart. He sends me cards every six months to let me know how he is. I don’t get many cards like that. Maybe that’s why I remember him. Anyway, when he checked in here, they had to take him to the medical wing first, like they did with you.”

“All screwed up, huh?”

“That’s right. His game was pain meds, though. His sister brought him in, and when he dropped him off, the sister said, ‘Good luck in there. Hopefully they can finally figure out why you’re doing this so much.’ The nurse admitting him—Nurse Andrews, she’s not here anymore—she smiled and nodded and said she hoped so too. But when his sister left, Nurse Andrews, she turned to him and said, ‘Son, it’s no mystery why you’re doing what you do. I’ll clear it up for you right now. You like the way it makes you feel, that’s all.’”

After it was clear that the story was done, Shane frowned.

“Sort of simplistic, isn’t it?”

“There’s something to be said, I think, for bringing down our lofty opinions of our drug use and just putting them into atomic terms. You went out last night because you’re an alcoholic, that’s all. You drank because you’re an alcoholic. If you drink again, it’s because you’re an alcoholic.”

He shook his hands forward into the air, frustrated. “Then how do I stop?”

“By accepting that you’re an alcoholic.”

“Ah,” he waved, turning away. “Who the hell wants to accept that? I don’t want that. Would you want to be with an addict?”

She didn’t answer right away, and he picked up on her hesitance.

“You see? If I accept that’s what I am, then I’m definitely not going to be with you.”

It came back to that, already. She had been somewhat scared of this.

If he began to tie his recovery to Olivia, then she couldn’t in good conscience remain his counselor. But if she wasn’t his counselor, she wouldn’t be able to stare into those eyes, to admire the way his shirt clung to his broad frame, to let her eyes trace the lines of his tattoos all the way up his arms, to so viscerally imagine her lips sliding once again up and down his chin with burning need...

Besides, she had never put in a request with any other patient, ever. If she started now, with Shane...there would be questions, she was sure. And she didn’t want to get fired for one momentary lapse in judgment.

That’s what their kiss had been, right? A lapse in judgment. Not the single hottest thing she could think of, not something that made her squirm in her bed last night when she tried to go to sleep.

No, just a lapse. Yes.

“Well,” she said finally, shrugging slightly. “I don’t know if I could be with an addict, doing what I do. But I know for sure I couldn’t be with one who wasn’t working hard on recovery.”

He smiled. “Are you trying to extort sobriety out of me?”

“I don’t think I’m capable of making you or anyone else doing anything they don’t want to.”

“Even if you’re extremely pretty.”

She tried not to blush, and failed.

“It’s just...” Shane let out a long breath. His hand came down on the couch next to her. Slowly, they pushed across the light blue fabric. Though she tried to stop herself, she could feel her own fingers drifting toward his as well. “It was just a few drinks. I didn’t want them to count. I just needed it, just those few. And then I walked away.”