Page 12 of Salvaged Heart

12

ANDERS

B eckham dropped my hands and walked towards the window, plopping himself down on the seat and gazing out over the yard below. I doubted he could see much other than his reflection, the sun having set in the time he had been discovering all my hidden ugly parts. I hovered where he’d left me, worried that the slightest move would have him jumping to his feet again and throwing me out on my ass at the side of the road.

When he finally spoke, the voice that left him was so unlike any I had heard from him before. It was broken and fragile, unsure and laced with betrayal. “I believe you.”

I blinked, sure I had misheard him. After everything I confessed, those were the last words I had expected to hear. I hate you. You’re a good-for-nothing, lousy, useless addict. All of those things I had heard twenty-thousand times in the never-ending hell that was my addiction. But never those three.

I—believe—you.

“I’m going to help you, Anders.” He said next, sounding a little more self-assured. “But there will be rules.”

It was such a Beckham thing to say that a small laugh broke from my lips in relief. “I’d expect nothing less.” I meant it as a joke to lighten the tension, but it fell on deaf ears.

“There will be rules, and you cannot break my trust again.” He still faced away from me, but I could tell he could see every emotion on my face reflected in the window.

“I can’t promise you I won’t use again, Beckham. That’s not how this works.”

If I could turn off this insane need, I would have years ago. I would have walked away the night Jonah died, the night that man in Atlanta left me bloody and violated on the side of the street, or a million other times in between. I didn’t want to be dependent on these substances. I wanted to be clean more than anything, but it wasn’t that simple. I had a fire burning inside of me that threatened to take me under at every turn, and I was fighting it with a cracked bucket full of holes. The harder I tried to put out the flames, the more water sloshed from the sides, and I was left with nothing but an empty bucket, the fire raging like I had never even tried.

“I know that.” He whispered. “But you won’t hide it anymore, you won’t sneak around behind my back, and you won’t fight me when I try to help you.”

I could work with that. “Okay.”

“You need to get some rest. We can talk more about this in the morning.”

A sudden wave of panic swept up, threatening to drown me. The idea of being left alone was suffocating. If he walked out the door right now and left me here with all my self-hatred and darkness, it would pull me under. I wouldn’t stand a chance.

“I need you to stay. I’m not safe with myself right now.” The confession slipped from my lips like a promise, but some of the heavy pressing weight went with it.

Beckham whipped around, lips parted, anguish haunting his endless ocean-blue eyes.

“I’m not strong enough to fight this, not tonight, not alone.”

He didn’t hesitate. “Let me grab something else to wear and drag the air mattress down here. I can sleep on the floor.” I nodded, relieved that he understood what I was laying out before him but wouldn’t make a big deal of it. “What else do you have besides what rolled under the bed? You need to show me where everything is hidden.”

“Beck,” I moaned. “I can’t do that. Quitting cold turkey will cause more damage than the drugs themselves. I’ve been dependent on them too long.”

“Do you trust me, Anders?”

“No.”

He rolled his eyes. “Well, at least you’re finally being honest with me.”

Little did he know that saying I didn’t trust him had felt like a lie. I didn’t have any proof except Beckham’s words that he wouldn’t screw me over, that all this trust I was placing in him wouldn’t come back and bite me in the ass. But there was something about him. Something I could say I had never felt with anyone before in my life. I knew I was safe with him. Even though we hardly knew one another, he would do everything in his power to shelter me from this storm. It was just who he was. This strong, loyal man who loved and cared with his entire being, even if the recipient of all his kindness, was a stranger who had done nothing to deserve it.

“How about if I make you a promise not to destroy them just yet? If withdrawal becomes too much and you get too sick, then all you need to do is ask. I’ll give you what you need.”

“You would enable me like that?”

“I don’t see it that way.”

In the end, I handed everything over to him. His theory was that the act of crawling to him with my tail between my legs and begging him to allow me a fix would help discourage some of my need to use. It was the exact sort of belief you would expect from someone who had never dealt with addiction themselves. He had no idea how far I’d degraded myself in the past just to get high.

He would not be the first man I had crawled to seeking a high.

“And I am taking this.” He motioned to the broach still in his palm before sliding it into his pocket.

“Beck, that’s my only chance! I need real professional help. I don’t have the fifty grand to pay for it.” Desperation laced my every word. “I know you think keeping me away from this shit will be enough, but I need you to understand that when the cravings take over, there is nothing I won’t do to get a fix.” It was like I lost all ability to control my own body. The drugs were a flame, and I was a moth unable to do anything but hopelessly seek its warmth, knowing full well that doing so would kill me.

“Margery sent a picture of this to a collector who’s interested already. She will know it’s gone the second she looks for it.” He held his palm out, pushing it into my chest. I hadn’t noticed I had begun to crowd him, pressing him into the wall in a frivolous attempt to snatch the piece back. “There are others that will not be noticed if they disappear. She showed me all the ones they wanted to be appraised. I know which ones won’t be missed.”

“Okay.” I didn’t have a lot of options here. I was forced to trust him.

“I am going to leave for five minutes—just five. I will be right back. Don’t follow me, and don’t do anything rash.”

He hovered in the doorway, looking me up and down, trying to decide if I could be trusted for the five minutes it would take him to change clothes and hide everything I just turned over to him.

“I won’t hurt myself, I promise. Just come back as quick as you can.” He nodded once and ran up the stairs.

I counted every single second from the moment he crossed the threshold to the moment he dragged the half-deflated air mattress back across it.

Four minutes and forty-six seconds.

He pumped up the mattress the rest of the way before seeing that I was settled, fussing over me like a mother hen. “Do you need water? Wake me if you need me. No matter what the time is, promise you’ll wake me.”

“I will,” I promised, “I will.”

I drifted off to sleep on my side, watching his handsome face lit by the soft halo of his phone’s screen. His brow furrowed in concentration as he scrolled and typed furiously. Everything inside me screamed to wait for him to fall asleep and then run—run far from here, far from him.

But he'd told me he would stay. I had shown him the very worst of myself, dug out my black heart, and laid it bare before him at his feet, and he hadn’t fled. He'd chosen me, chosen to stay. So I would choose the same.

I pulled up outside Lakeside Methodist Church a few minutes before ten a.m. the following morning, Beckham clinging to my back. At some point during the ride over, he'd moved his hands from where they were chastely placed on my waist and wrapped them around my front, laying his helmet-covered chin on my shoulder, his front pressed tightly against my back. He looked like a leather-clad Koala. I wasn’t a big fan of physical touch, especially the fraternal kind, but after a long night of being emotionally rubbed raw, the heat of his body was soothing against mine.

Beck gave me a squeeze before sliding off the bike and removing his helmet. He hooked it around one arm and then lifted his hands to remove mine, making me flinch away from him.

“I can do that myself.”

He dropped them quickly, stepping back and raking a hand through his hair. He seemed nervous and jumpy, as if he were worried the second he took his eyes off me, I would dive back on the bike and bolt. If I was being honest with myself, it was a likely possibility. I rotated to look at the building we were parked outside, a simple brick structure with white columns out front and a matching white spire rising from its roof. It looked like someone had cut and pasted two different buildings together.

“I should probably tell you now, I’m not the religious type.”

He shot me a look that told me that was the very last thing he would think about me before offering a half-hearted smile. “We are not here for that.” He spoke like he was trying to corner a wild animal. “I thought it would help to attend an Addicts Anonymous meeting. There’s one here that starts,” He checked the clock on his phone, “Well, it started two minutes ago.”

Ah fuck. “Beck…”

“Anders, please. Last night, you promised you wouldn’t fight my help.”

All I could do was nod in response. There wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to walk in through those doors, sit down, and confess all my sins to a bunch of strangers. I had been to a few meetings before, and while the experience hadn’t been terrible, I’d felt isolated and like a fraud. These meetings were for people working hard every single day to continue their sobriety, dedicating their lives to their recovery, racking up chip after chip to commemorate their wins. The longest stretch between using I had ever had was seven days. Seven pathetic days. And, I hadn’t come close to it since. I didn’t belong here.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Beck.” My hand drummed a nervous beat on my leg, “I don’t want to negatively affect someone’s journey with all my…fuck.” He reached out and grabbed my hand, slotting his fingers through mine until he was holding it tightly in his.

“You can, and you will do this, Anders. I’ll be by your side the entire time.” The look on his face was so earnest it broke something inside me. Why was he doing this? Why did he even care? I was nothing to him. He didn’t even owe this to my sister. If she were here, she would have thrown my ass on the street where it belonged without a second thought. As if sensing I was shutting down, he added, “Look, we drove over here already…”

“Under false pretenses,” I grumbled.

“One meeting, Anders. If you hate it, we don’t have to come back, but you do have to try for me. Okay?”

He was so fucking lucky he was pretty. “Fine. One meeting.”

The grin he gave me in response was almost worth it. Understanding that all it would take was a half-second hesitation from him for me to take flight, he spun on his heels and dragged me towards the entrance, his hand still firmly grasped in mine.