Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 510(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Knox’s expression remained that blank kind of shock, almost as if he didn’t know what to say. “You’re sober.”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s the family curse. My mother, my aunt, my grandmother. Interestingly, the women in our family are the ones who kill themselves or ruin their lives with booze. Then again, it was the women in our family who had to shoulder nasty, violent men who all but caged them in the house to clean, cook and pop out children. Not that I had that excuse for my problem. I had plenty others, though.”
I’d been in the program long enough to poke fun at my faults, my addiction. It was the only way you got through. You carried the anvil of addiction long enough, you’d collapse under its weight. You had to find a way to make it light in order to survive. Or at least I did.
Most people tended to become slightly awkward or uncomfortable when I said I was sober, either doing everything they could not to ask questions or asking far too many. Neither overly bothered me; I knew people’s discomfort with my problem was a sign of something they were battling themselves.
I waited for Knox’s reaction, more curious than anything.
He stared at me for a few long moments before he took the two glasses and the bottle, moving to the sink where he promptly poured them down the drain before rinsing them with water.
I watched the whole thing, vaguely amused.
“That’s rather dramatic,” I told him when he turned. “I have the problem, not you. You can enjoy a glass, or a bottle of wine in front of me without feeling guilty.”
One moment Knox was at the sink, the next he was on me, his long legs crossing the distance between us in a few quick strides.
One of his hands clutched my hip, the other cupped my cheek. “Your problems are my problems, Piper.”
I wanted to roll my eyes, but he was just so intense about it. And the intensity with which he spoke after a week of almost indifference socked me in the gut. “Not this one,” I whispered. “And it’s not a problem anymore. I can exist around alcohol; you can enjoy it.”
His grip tightened. “I can’t enjoy something that almost destroyed you.”
I smiled. “It didn’t almost destroy—”
“It did,” he said plainly. “I see past your mask, Piper. I know you. And I consider myself an expert in destruction. I see it. And no way in fuck do I care about booze more than you. You don’t drink, I don’t drink.”
My lips were sealed together tightly so he didn’t see them quiver. Not once had I required or expected anyone close to me to monitor the way they consumed alcohol. Sure, at first, I had to be careful who I spent time with. At the beginning, I couldn’t be around friends who maybe overindulged a little too often. But again, that was my problem, not theirs. Once I got a handle on it—as much as an addict can get a handle on their addiction. They called it ‘in recovery’ as opposed to ‘recovered’ for a reason. It was not a static state, it was a constant, evolving battle. Sometimes you didn’t even realize you were fighting it, other times you were doing it tooth and nail.
Once I felt secure in my sobriety, I was fine watching people enjoy drinking. My sister did it often, and though I was jealous of her being able to have a mimosa with breakfast and then switch to coffee without issue, I was glad she could indulge.
If Knox had sat across from me sipping what I was sure was an expensive bottle of wine, it wouldn’t have changed the way I thought about him. Wouldn’t change my feelings for him.
Though I recognized this as a vaguely toxic behavior, it only served to make me more attracted to him.
It was far too intense, far too codependent. Not healthy. But I found that I didn’t want healthy, stable. Not with Knox.
“I’m in … lust with my kidnapper.” I sucked my teeth. No way was I going to use the other four-letter word. It was too soon to say, to feel. “My therapist is going to have a field day with this.”
“You have a therapist?” Knox tilted his head to regard me, offering his curiosity freely. And I took it greedily like the gift it was.
It was an effort to keep an easy expression on my face, as if we were having some kind of regular conversation and this wasn’t changing the trajectory of my life and rearranging my insides. “I’m a thirty-year-old recovering alcoholic with a fucked-up childhood,” I told him with a smile. “I’m a self-care girlie too. And I know that actual self-care isn’t just bubble baths and face masks; it’s speaking to a professional and getting your head right…”