Lost Avalon: A Finding Nolan Novel (10 page)

The line went dead and I was alone with the night and my own thoughts. A dangerous combination.

              I woke up the next morning still out on the patio. I had a vague memory of briefly closing my eyes to take in the sounds of the waves while lying out on the chaise lounge. Clearly it hadn’t been as brief as I’d planned.

             
Blaise was still passed out in the big canopy bed, his one leg hanging completely off of the mattress when I walked in.

             
Now was as good a time as any to start this.

             
I gently bumped my knee with his. “Wake up, Blaise. We’re in paradise. Time to feel like you’re dying.”

             
“What?” His voice was muffled by the pillow.

             
“I said it’s time to wake up.” I nudged him with my knee again. Don’t ask me why I was treating him like a leper all of a sudden. Apparently I needed the distance.

             
“Why do you keep kicking me?” I hadn’t heard him whine like that since he was eleven and I’d realized that the only thing more fun than driving the car during
Burnout 3
was using it as a projectile weapon to annihilate him anytime we played against each other.

             
“I’m not kicking you.” I lifted my foot from the ground and swung it up high enough to boot him in the ass. “That’s kicking you.”

             
He spun around and sat up straight in the bed. “Avalon! What the hell?”

             
“Oh good. You’re up.” I grinned and went to wander the rest of the room. By the time we’d gotten there the night before, I hadn’t been remotely interested in exploring our accommodations. Now that I was starving and desperate for breakfast, the first thing I wanted to locate was a phone. The second was the room service menu.

             
While I scoured the luxurious tiki hut we would be calling home for the next two weeks, Blaise was slowly but surely getting with it.

“Hey, did you tell me that I died and went to paradise?” He closed his eyes and shook his head like he was trying to clear the lingering fog from his sleeping brain.

              “Something like that. Aha!” I held up the menu triumphantly. Now all I needed was a phone. “Oooh, fresh croissants. Smoked fish, fresh fruit, this menu is amazing. Although I’m not sure what you’re going to eat. Wait, they do omelets. You want one of those?” I had spotted the phone across the room on a small desk in the corner and was hardly paying attention to Blaise as I rambled on about the food.

             
“Let me see.” He came over and sat on the edge of my chair, waiting to get a glimpse of the menu. Wouldn’t change the fact that there wasn’t much on there in the way of his usual diet, but I was happy to oblige.

             
“Yeah, I’ll have an omelet. See if they can fry up some potatoes with that or something, would you?” He handed the menu back to me and I made the call. Then, while we waited for breakfast I got started prepping the room. First stop, the mini-bar.

             
“Boozing with breakfast? That’s not usually your style, is it Ava?” He smirked. He looked like such a jackass when he thought he was being funny.

             
“Actually, I’m doing this because of
your
style. And because you agreed to get a makeover. Remember?” I took an armful of mini-bottles over to the sink, and one by one, emptied them out. The expression on Blaise’s face was almost painful.

             
“Doesn’t mean you have to throw them all away. What, you think I have no self-control?”

             
“I
know
you don’t. That’s what makes you an addict, asshole.” When I finished with the bottles I moved on to his bag and the pain turned to panic.

             
“What are you doing now?”

             
“Getting rid of any ‘ibuprofen’ you might have brought with you.” I had barely unzipped the bag when two pill bottles nearly came spilling out at me.

             
“Ava.”

             
“Blaise.” I dropped my tone, daring him to fight me. This had been his fucking plan after all. “Either you do this with me, or I’m calling Dr. Drew and signing you up for Celebrity Rehab.”

             
He didn’t say anything else after that. Just stood by while I ransacked all of his belongings in search of anything that might hinder his sobering up. By the time I was done I’d turned up another bottle of prescription pain killers, a bag of weed and a stash of mini bottles he’d swiped from the last hotel and hidden in his socks. If it hadn’t been a clear sign that he’d already planned to sabotage the process, I’d have been almost impressed by that one.

             
Breakfast was quiet. Blaise was sullen and moody and I suspected we were already entering the beginning stages of his withdrawals. It had been nearly twelve hours since his last drink and with prospects of a dry future looming over him, his outlook on sobriety had quickly turned bleak.

             
After we ate, he disappeared in the bathroom for a long time and I could only assume he was having a spectacular pout prior to finally getting around to showering.

             
Then, it was my turn. And, like a good little rehab counselor, I made him stay in the bathroom with me the entire time just so I could be sure that he didn’t try to sneak out on me while I wasn’t looking.

             
It wasn’t until sometime around lunch that I started to see it. His hands were trembling. He was getting the shakes. Not convulsions. But definitely shakes. He tried to cover by popping his knuckles repeatedly, but that only confirmed my observations since I’d noticed that particular decoy tactic long before Bora Bora.

             
I had fish sandwiches on fresh baked baguettes sent to our room around two p.m., but Blaise was already past the point of eating and never even had a bite. By dinner, he had thrown up breakfast and I knew we were about to be in for it.

             
“This is fucking stupid, Ava. I’m a grown ass man. If I want to have a motherfucking drink, I will have one.” He was digging around in his suitcase. “Where is my fucking wallet?”

             
“I took it.” I was sitting in a chair across the room, my legs pulled up against my chest and making no effort to engage with him.

             
“Give it back.” His tone was cold and hard, but it was nothing compared to the rage building in his eyes.

             
“No.” I was doing my best not to let him see that he was getting to me.

             
“Give me my wallet you fucking cunt.”

             
It’s not Blaise. It’s not Blaise. It’s the monster. Don’t feed the monster.
“No.”

             
In an instant he came flying at me, punching the wall behind me. He missed the side of my head by only an inch or two and I was already on the verge of tears, but I held them back.

             
“Feel better asshole?” I asked quietly.

             
Still fuming, he spun around and turned his back on me. This part would kill him later. I knew he’d never hurt me. Not ever. But he would hate himself for coming so close.

***

             
I walked away from Ava. The moment my fist had made contact with the wall, the severity of my anger had hit me. I’d left a massive hole behind where my rage had burst out of me, and even though I didn’t aim it at her head, the feelings were directed at her. A part of me had wanted to smash her face in. Not literally of course, but figuratively, I had wanted to obliterate everything that was standing in the way of me and a bottle of vodka. And Ava was in the way.

             
I went straight for the bathroom and repeatedly ran cold water over my face. I had started to break out in a sweat. I couldn’t tell if it was from the anxiety or yet another side effect of not having had a drink all day.

             
My hands were shaking again and there was a pounding in my head working its way into a full blown migraine. It had to stop. All of it. I needed it to go away. I wanted to feel better. It would be so simple to fix.

             
Then, her hand was on my back, the other reaching around my waist and turning me around to face her.

             
She said nothing as she peeled the already sweat soaked t-shirt over my head and replaced it with a cool wash cloth over the back of my neck. After, still silent, she turned off the water I had left running, took my hand and led me back into the main room and out onto the patio overlooking the ocean.

             
“Sit,” she finally said, pointing at one of the lounge chairs.

             
I did as I was told. I sat there hunched over, fighting the demons screaming within. I felt her sit down behind me, a leg on either side of my hip, her hands gently tracing over the bare skin of my back.

             
“What did I write?” she whispered.

             
My brain was way too fried to register anything. “I don’t know.”

             
“Pay attention.” Her finger swirled around my back a second time. Still, I didn’t have a fucking clue. “I don’t fucking know what you’re writing, okay? So don’t fucking ask me again.”

             
She didn’t. But she kept spelling out the same thing with her fingertip. Over and over again. With each time, my mind was pulled in deeper and deeper, until it couldn’t focus on anything else, and then, “Peace.”

             
“Uh-huh.” She ran her flattened palm over the same area as if she were wiping it clean. Then the fingertip returned to do its dance. “What about this one?”

             
I closed my eyes. “Do it again.”

             
She did.

             
“Trust.”

             
“Nice. How about this one.”

             
This time she wrote love.

             
I didn’t say it out loud. I just slid down until my head was in her lap, wrapping both my arms around her back and holding her close while she cradled my face in her hands and bent down to kiss my forehead. And I knew then and there, even in the midst of hell, she was the place I’d find peace, trust and even love.

Chapter 9

Things only got
worse as the night progressed. Blaise was sweating and trembling so badly, I was constantly peeling back his eyelids to make sure he wasn’t stroking out on me. It pissed him off every time I did it, but I didn’t care. It was a teensy tiny bit of peace of mind all things considered and I was taking it wherever I could get it no matter what the cost.

             
Between the nausea and lack of appetite I hadn’t been able to get him to eat anything since breakfast and was struggling to even keep water in him. Then, at around three o’clock in the morning, the process of stripping his body of the substances he’d grown so dependent on peaked.

             
I was sitting on the floor next to the bed in the darkness, listening to his heavy breathing while he tossed and turned in the sheets.

             
“Ava. You have to do something. Help me, Ava! HELP ME! WE HAVE TO SAVE HER!”

             
I closed my eyes, biting down hard on my lip. This was the part I’d dreaded most. But I knew it had been inevitable. Even if we hadn’t spoken about it in nearly ten years, it was always there. Torturing him. Haunting me. Binding us both together eternally in the ugliest way possible.

             
“She’s dead. Ava… SHE’S DEAD!” It was a desperate cry into the night and I came up off of the ground to sit down on the bed beside him. Leaning against the headboard, I gently lifted his head and rested it in my lap, stroking his damp and matted hair.

             
“It’s alright, Blaise. She isn’t in any pain. Nothing can hurt her anymore. She’s safe. She’s happy. She’s free, Blaise. Your mother is finally free.”
And soon you will be as well
.

             
He whimpered, gripping the sheets in his fists. Moments like these I could still see the same boy I’d held at thirteen when we’d walked in and found his mother, drowned in the bathtub.

             
Neither of us had ever been the same.

             
The hallucinations continued for nearly three hours as he relived the worst day of his life over and over again, screaming and sobbing until he had exhausted himself into a state of silent cries that shivered through him time and time again, tears soaking through my sweats and t-shirt while I held him as tightly as I could, barely even noticing the endless stream running down my own face.