Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99921 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
I looked over at her. Fear was palpable in her eyes.
“I’ll do anything. Take me to rehab right now. Just give me another chance. I can’t lose you, Fox.”
“You need to want to get better for you in order for it to work. Not for me.”
“I do want to get better for me. For us.”
I was wary, but what was I going to do? Dumping her back at her mother’s would be a disaster, and taking her home again, even if she stayed clean for a few days, would just be doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. So really, what choice did I have?
“Let’s go home. You can take a shower while I call and see if we can get you a bed in rehab again.”
***
“God, I missed you.” Evie threw her arms around my neck. There was a counselor waiting outside the room, so I gave her a quick peck and pulled back.
“You look good,” I said.
She smiled. “I feel really good.”
Evie had been at South Maple Recovery Center for nineteen days now. I’d visited whenever I was home and allowed, but today was more than just a visit. It was a loved one counseling session. Not really my cup of tea, but I had to show her support. Especially since she’d invited her mother to come last week, and she hadn’t shown up. Not a shocker—not to me anyway.
Knock. Knock.
The woman who’d introduced herself as Eleanor walked in and smiled. “You two ready to get started?”
Evie took a deep breath and nodded.
“Mr. Cassidy, why don’t you go around to the other side of the table so you two are sitting across from each other, and I’ll sit over here on this end?”
“It’s Fox, please.” I pulled out Evie’s chair before walking around to sit opposite her. As soon as my ass hit the seat, she reached across the table and took my hand. Clearly, she was nervous.
“So…” Eleanor began. “Group therapy is about opening up the lines of communication and starting to rebuild relationships. The goal is to share each other’s concerns, while trying to avoid conflict and confrontation.” She looked to me. “How does that sound, Fox?”
I shrugged. “Good.”
“Great. Evie and I have been working together in one-on-one sessions the last few weeks, and she’s discovered some things about herself that she’d like to share with you. So why don’t we start there?”
“Okay.”
Eleanor and I both turned to give our attention to Evie. She chewed on her bottom lip before squeezing my hand and taking another big breath. “I had my first drink when I was nine.”
My jaw fell open. It took a lot to shock me, but she’d thrown me for a loop.
“I know.” She smiled sadly. “It’s a lot to wrap your head around—even for me, looking back now, and I lived it. But I’ve been drinking ever since.”
“I don’t understand. You didn’t drink when we first met.”
“No, I just didn’t let you see it. I don’t let most people see it. I never did until recently.”
“We’ve spent full weeks together in my off season, those times I traveled with you to competitions.”
“Yep. And I always had a bottle in my bag, hidden. I’d drink in the bathroom when I had to. That’s why I always had a candy in my mouth.”
“You told me you had low blood sugar.”
Evie shook her head and looked down.
“It’s never been easy to talk to anyone about why I did it, but I think you might understand the pressures of being an athlete as much as I do. By the time I was seven, the rink had become my second home. At first, I loved it. People would stand on the sidelines and watch me practice, and I felt like I was on top of the world. I was nine when I entered my first big competition. I’d been a superstar at my local rink, practiced twenty hours of skating and ten hours of dancing every week.” She paused, and her eyes went out of focus, like she was visualizing what came next. “I remember walking into that first competition and thinking I was the best and going to win.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even make the podium. It was devastating, a real eye opener. That night I struggled to sleep, feeling like all my hopes and dreams of someday making it to the Olympics were a joke. I’d watched my mom get pissed off or upset about things for years. Her way of dealing was to have a few drinks. So the next night, when I was still feeling awful, I waited until she was passed out and snuck a few sips from her bottle. It allowed me to forget that I’d lost the competition long enough to sleep. At first, I only drank when I lost. But eventually I used it to console myself after a bad practice, a guy blowing me off, or…” She shrugged. “Anything really.”