CHAPTER
EIGHT
____________________
Calder
I shoved the exit door open so hard as I rushed out of the building that it bounced off the outside wall with a loud echoing bang. I went straight to my black Tesla Model S, beyond grateful that I happened to have my key fob in my pants pocket and not my suit jacket, since it was still inside my office. I pulled open the driver's side door, then lowered myself into the sleek and powerful electric car. I closed the door, started the vehicle, and swiftly pulled out of the parking lot, driving out onto the road with no idea where I was going. I didn't care as long as it was away from her.
When she'd walked up to the table while I was discussing an advertising contract with a local television station, instant lust had fallen over me. My reaction pissed me off. Then she set that damn scotch in front of me, making me even angrier. Everyone who worked for me knew I didn't drink, everyone except her apparently. I knew it was a simple mistake, but it still enraged me. Then when our hands brushed, a shock of awareness hit me, sending my desire to stratospheric levels. Apparently, she felt it too, if her startled reaction was any indication. Then she spilled the drink all over, and kept calling me sir, making me want her even more. I couldn't even think straight, and had to move to my office to finish what I was doing. I thought I was safe after that.
Then she came into my office, and I wanted her all over again, and fuck if she wasn't aroused too. Even after all these years, I could still tell by the look in her eyes and the tense lines of her body, see it in the way her heated gaze swept over me. Then she looked at my bare arms, and I panicked and pulled my sleeves down. I didn't want her to see my needle track scars. I didn't want her to know how her leaving me had sent me spiraling into an out of control addiction that almost destroyed me. I was ashamed of my weakness, ashamed of the power she once held over me, and apparently still did.
It pissed me off all over again. So much so that when she offered me that meaningless and trite apology for the past that I reacted without thinking. I shouldn't have gone anywhere near her. I should have stayed behind my desk and as far away as possible.
However, the next thing I knew I was standing right in front of her, intent on intimidating and frightening her, but it only backfired on me. Her very obvious desire and that clean citrus scent of hers, that I still remembered to this very day, had been too much for me to resist. I'd fixated on her plump and inviting lips for mere moments, but it was enough to do me in, to sever my control and send me careening into chaos as I gave into temptation and pulled her in for that fiery unbelievable kiss.
It felt so right, so good, like coming home, like finding happiness again, but it was an illusion. It wasn't real. Happiness couldn't be found with another person. You had to find what you could with yourself and live with it. I'd learned that brutal lesson twelve years ago.
Panic had hit me when I finally realized what I was doing, and I'd fled in terror, horrified and ashamed of my own weakness. Yet my lips still tingled and burned. A lingering euphoric rush still surged through my veins as my body yearned for more. The kiss was only a prelude to what I really hungered for, to heighten the rush by pressing my cock deep inside her and fucking her, to take back what was mine, to claim her. I shivered, unable to ignore how it all felt so similar to the rush of IV heroin, and I feared that when it wore off, I'd be left just as empty inside, just as lost and alone, and I'd only need more.
The light in front of me turned red, and I stopped and looked around, suddenly aware of my surroundings. Fuck. Panicked terror chased away the leftover high from the kiss. I'd unconsciously started driving toward The Armpit, heading straight for the places I used to be able to score heroin.
My hands began to shake, and I gripped the wheel to try to stop it as a craving fell over me, a bone deep longing that filled my head, pushing out everything else. I could almost smell the vinegary scent of the heroin as I cooked it on a spoon, feel the prick of the needle. I could almost feel the euphoric rapture that I knew would chase away all my troubles and make the whole world feel right for those few perfect precious moments.
I couldn't remember the last time a craving had been so strong or felt so compelling. I started thinking about exactly where I could go to do something about it. I doubted much had changed since the last time I used, and I was sure it would be so easy to score some right now, so easy just to give in. A shuddering breath escaped my body as I fought against the urge.
The light turned green just as coherent thought returned. What the fuck am I doing? I jammed my foot on the accelerator and made a completely illegal U-turn that had horns honking and profanity shouting at me, but I didn't care. There was only one thing I knew that would help me get a grip on myself, help me get back the control I so desperately needed and keep from giving in to the craving.
A short time later, I pulled up to a familiar and large sprawling brick building. I got out of my car and hurried to the entrance, then headed straight for the reception desk. The woman sitting there gave me a warm smile.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked kindly.
I told her who I was here to visit. She nodded and looked in the computer, before giving me the room number that I didn't need. I knew exactly where it was since I'd been here many times before. I followed the familiar hallways until I came to the room I was looking for. The door was open and I walked in without a word, stopping just past the doorway for a moment to look at the bland room with its beige walls and dark tile floor, and the familiar woman lying in a hospital bed, my mother.
I slowly walked toward her and sat down in the chair next to the bed. Her head was already turned toward me, and her brown eyes were open and staring unseeing straight ahead, her mouth gaping slightly. Her dark almost black hair was short, since it was easier to take care of. Her sallowed skin looked pale and almost translucent. I reached out and took one of her gnarled up hands in mine, and she didn't respond, just like always.
The doctors called it a permanent vegetative state. She'd been like this for eight years, since the very last time she overdosed on heroin, and the subsequent stroke that followed. She'd been in this extended care facility ever since. Molly Rennen had been in so deep into her addiction, so lost to it, that it took this for her finally to get clean. It was also the catalyst for me to break free as well.
I closed my eyes and remembered that morning. I'd been the one to find her. She'd been slumped unconscious on her couch in her shitty little apartment, the needle and syringe still dangling out of her skin. I didn't know how long she'd been there. She'd barely been breathing, and I couldn't rouse her no matter how I shook her or screamed at her. I'd called an ambulance, and they gave her medication to counteract the heroin, but she coded once they got her to the hospital. They worked on her and got her back. They were optimistic that she'd be alright, but then she had a massive stroke, and she was never conscious again.
I watched it all happen, alone and terrified, and still fucking high from shooting up just before going to see my mother. I'd left rehab the day before and had been on a late-night binge after relapsing yet again. I sometimes wondered if I'd just gone straight to see her that morning, instead of getting high first, that things might have turned out differently.
If all else, at least it scared me enough to send me back to rehab and really want to be clean for the first time. I hadn't touched heroin again since. The fear of ending up like my mother was far more horrifying then just dying. I wouldn't wish it on anybody, even my own mother, who hadn't exactly excelled at being a loving maternal figure.
I absently rubbed my thumb across the fragile skin of her hand. Molly had been handed a hard life, a daughter of a single mother, living in a shithole part of town with no prospects of ever getting out, and then pregnant at fifteen. She was too young, too unstable to handle being a parent, and I spent my first five years being cared for by my grandmother. But then she got sick and died. I think it was cancer.
Mom took care of me all by herself after that, but by then she'd already started using drugs and alcohol, and every year it just got worse. I was just as likely to get a hug as a slap to the face on any given day, depending on whether she'd used or not. The drugs made her sweet and loving. Withdrawal made her cruel and easily irritated. I learned quickly how to tell which Mom I was dealing with and avoided her when she got nasty.
I could still see the looks of disgust she'd give me on her bad days. She was bitter and angry about her shitty life, when she was sober enough to feel anything, and took it out on the little boy who had only made her life worse. It wasn't until I was older that I learned exactly why she felt that way about me.
One night when I was sixteen, I came home from the job I'd gotten after school stocking shelves at a grocery store to find her in withdrawal and in a foul mood. She demanded I give her what little money I had, but I refused. I needed it for school, so I could eat lunch, and I knew she was just going to use it to get drugs.
She went off on me in a loud angry tirade that I didn't even remember now, except for one thing. She told me I looked just like my father, just like the fucking bastard who raped her. I ran to my room and locked myself in, shocked and disturbed. I remember standing in front of my mirror and staring at myself in abject horror, thinking I must be part monster and no wonder she hated me. I stayed in my room until she stopped screaming at me through the door and left to go get high again. I knew then why she was always vague when I asked about my father. She never mentioned him again, and I never asked about him again either.
When I came out of my room, there was a bottle of cheap whiskey on the coffee table that Mom had left out. I took it back to my room with me and locked myself in again, feeling broken and worthless. That was the first time I ever got drunk. It definitely wasn't the last either, as I tried to drown out the pain inside me that never seemed to go away. It wasn't until I met her that I gave it up.
She took the pain away, like alcohol never could. She made me feel whole and worthwhile, and loved for the first time in my life, but then she left me, and the pain came back far worse than ever before. The booze wasn't even enough to take care of it anymore. It was unbearable. So much so that when my own mother, who was high as a kite herself at the time, offered me some of her heroin, I let her give it to me. Her blissful happy state without a care in the world was too much of a temptation to resist, and I hurt so bad, felt so bad about myself, that I didn't care about the future. I just didn't want to hurt anymore, and the heroin actually made it go away. That first time was all it took, and I spent the next four years of my life a slave to a mistress named heroin, a mistress who still threatened to enslave me again if I let my guard down.
I sat there in silence for a long time next to this woman who'd brought me into this world and made such a mess of her life, and studied her closely. What I felt most for her now, even more so than the anger and lingering resentment I still carried, was sorrow. She was given a life that she just couldn't handle, and her poor choices reflected that. It could have just as easily been me, and it still could be if I ever gave in to the cravings again. I could be lying senseless in this bed, relying on others to feed me and clean me, a prisoner inside my own body with no escape, a fate worse than death.
I stayed and watched her until I finally felt calm and in control again. I stood and leaned over my mother to place a gentle kiss on her smooth cool forehead, then walked out without having uttered a single word.
My thoughts had come full circle now, and my mother who'd helped send me spiraling down into the hellish pit of heroin addiction in the first place, somehow ended up helping me get out, and now helped me keep myself free of it too. For that I was grateful to her for every clean and sober day I'd managed to have ever since, and I'd continue to honor my mother by keeping it that way. I was stronger now, in control of my life, and I wouldn't allow anything, not even Ella, to threaten that.