Chapter 1 #2
Away from the street corners where I've sold pieces of myself for pocket change.
Away from the ghost of my mother that seems to haunt every shadow in this town.
"I can't afford—" I start.
"I'll pay for it."
"Garrett, no." I shake my head, ignoring the way the motion makes my skull pound. "That's thousands of dollars. Tens of thousands. You can't just—"
"I don't care." His voice cracks, just slightly, and I see it then—the desperation he's been trying to hide beneath the steady calm.
The terror that lives behind his eyes. "I don't care if it costs me everything I have.
Every penny in my savings. Every favor I'm owed.
I'll sell my bike if I have to. I just..
. I can't keep watching you die, Vanna." His voice breaks completely.
"I can't do it anymore. For fuck’s sake, you’re my wife. "
The tears come before I can stop them.
Hot and shameful, streaming down my cheeks and dripping onto the hospital gown.
I don't deserve this.
Don't deserve him sitting here, still fighting for me after everything I've put him through.
"Why?" The word comes out broken. Shattered. "Why do you keep doing this? I've stolen from you. Lied to you. I've disappeared for days without a word. I've done things—" I choke on the confession. "Things I can never take back. You should hate me, Garrett. You should have walked away years ago."
He's quiet for a long moment.
When he speaks, his voice is thick with emotion he rarely lets show. "Do you remember Mountaineer Field?"
The question catches me off guard. "What?"
"Mountaineer Field. We were kids. Sixteen, maybe seventeen.
You dared me to chase you across the fifty-yard line.
" A ghost of a smile crosses his face, softening the hard lines that grief has carved there.
"Your hair was flying behind you like gold in the sunlight.
You were laughing so hard you could barely run.
And I thought... I thought I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life. "
I remember.
God, I remember.
Back when everything was simple.
Back when the worst thing I had to worry about was whether Garrett Mercer would finally get the nerve to kiss me.
Back before pills and needles and trap houses.
Before I learned that my mother's addiction wasn't just her curse—it was my inheritance.
"I caught you on the twenty," he continues, his voice taking on a dreamlike quality.
"Tackled you right onto the grass. And you looked up at me with those eyes—those big, beautiful eyes—and I knew.
" His gaze holds mine. "I knew right then that I was going to love you for the rest of my life.
That nothing and no one would ever change that. "
"Garrett..."
"I've loved you since I was nine years old, Vanna.
Loved you when you were the girl next door with scraped knees and a smile that could light up the whole holler.
Loved you when you became the prettiest girl in Morgantown and every guy in school wanted you.
Married you when I was nineteen because I couldn't imagine spending another day without you being mine.
" He reaches out and takes my hand—carefully, reverently, like I might shatter.
"That's twenty-two years of loving you. I don't know how to stop. I don't want to know how to stop."
The tears are coming faster now, and I can't breathe around the lump in my throat.
Can't speak around the weight of his devotion, so unearned and so unwavering.
"But I need you to try," he says. "One more time.
I need you to really try, because if I get another call like tonight.
.." He stops, swallowing hard, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"If I have to watch them put you in the ground, Vanna, it's going to kill me too.
And I'm not ready to die. Not yet. Not when there might still be a chance for us. "
I want to say yes. I want to promise him I'll go, I'll get clean, I'll be the woman he remembers.
But I've made those promises before.
Dozens of times. Hundreds. I've broken every single one.
"What if I fail?" I whisper. "What if I go and I come back and nothing changes? What if I'm just like—"
I can't finish the sentence, but I don't have to.
We both know what I mean.
What if I'm just like my mother?
"Then we'll figure it out." He squeezes my hand. "But at least you'll have tried. At least I'll know you wanted to fight."
I think about my mother then.
The image rises unbidden—her body on the floor, lips blue, eyes open and staring at nothing.
Foam dried at the corner of her mouth.
Track marks up both arms like railroad tracks leading nowhere.
I was the one to find her.
An adult, sure, but walking into that trap house looking for the rent money she'd promised me, and instead finding the woman who gave me life lying cold and dead on a stranger's floor.
I remember the smell.
The terrible smell of death and drugs and decay.
I remember the way her hand felt when I touched it—cold and stiff, nothing like the hand that used to braid my hair when I was little, before the pills took her away from me one piece at a time.
I remember standing there, frozen, unable to scream or cry or move.
Just standing there while the world collapsed around me.
I've been chasing that oblivion ever since, trying to outrun the ghost of her, trying to forget the way her dead eyes seemed to look right through me.
You'll end up just like me.
Her voice echoes in my head, a prophecy I've been fulfilling for years.
Every hit, every overdose, every hospital visit brings me closer to her fate.
One day, someone will find me just like I found her.
Cold. Blue. Gone.
And Garrett will be the one standing there, frozen, trying to make sense of a world that has taken another woman he loves.
Is that what I want?
To make him suffer the way I've suffered?
To leave him with the same haunting memories that drove me to the needle in the first place?
For the first time in longer than I can remember, the answer is no.
I don't want to die.
The realization hits me like a slap to the face, stealing the breath from my lungs.
All these years, I've been slowly killing myself, and part of me has been okay with that.
Part of me has welcomed the possibility of an ending, of finally being free from the exhausting work of existing.
But lying here, looking at Garrett's face, at the hope and fear and love written in every line of his expression, I realize something has shifted.
I don't want to die.
I want to live.
I want to see what life could look like without the constant hunger for the next fix.
I want to wake up without my first thought being about how I'm going to get high that day.
I want to be the woman in that memory—the one with the golden hair and the bright eyes and the laughter that came so easily.
I want to be Garrett's wife again.
Really his wife. Not the ghost of one.
"Okay," I say.
Garrett goes still. "What?"
"Okay." My voice is stronger this time, steadier than it's been in months. Maybe years. "I'll go. I'll do the twelve weeks. I'll try. I really—" I have to stop as a sob escapes, breaking through the wall I've built around my heart. "I'll really try this time. I promise."
For a moment, he just stares at me.
Like he can't quite believe what he's hearing.
Like he's braced himself for rejection and doesn't know what to do with acceptance.
Then his face crumples—this mountain of a man, this Sergeant at Arms who makes grown men nervous—crumples like a child who's just been told Christmas isn't cancelled after all.
"Vanna." My name is a prayer on his lips, a benediction, a hallelujah.
He brings my hand to his mouth and presses a kiss to my knuckles, his lips warm against my too-cold skin, and I feel the wetness of his tears seeping into my pores.
"I'm scared," I admit. "I'm so fucking scared, Bloodhound. What if I can't do it? What if I'm too far gone?"
"You're not." He lifts his head, and his eyes are red-rimmed but fierce. Warrior's eyes. "You're still here. You're still fighting. That means you're not too far gone."
"I've been so lost..."
"Then let me help you find your way back." He cups my face in his hands, thumbs brushing away my tears. "I can't do the work for you. I know that. But I can make sure you know you're not alone. That you have someone waiting for you on the other side."
On the other side.
Like there's a life beyond addiction.
Like there's a future where I'm not constantly chasing my next hit, constantly disappointing everyone who loves me, constantly running from the person I've become.
I want to believe that's possible.
I want it so badly it aches.
"One week," I say. "When do we leave?"
"I'll make the calls tomorrow. We can drive up together." He pauses, something flickering in his eyes—vulnerability, maybe. Or hope. "If that's what you want."
Together.
The word feels foreign after years of pushing him away.
Years of choosing drugs over his arms, needles over his love.
Years of running in the opposite direction every time he reached for me.
"Yeah," I whisper. "That's what I want."
He kisses my forehead, his lips lingering against my skin.
I close my eyes and breathe him in—leather and oil and something uniquely him, a scent that has meant safety since I was a girl with scraped knees and stars in my eyes.
"Get some rest," he murmurs. "I'll be right here."
"You should go home. Sleep in a real bed."
"Not a chance." He settles back into the chair, his hand still wrapped around mine, warm and solid and certain. "Told you. Whatever you need."
I want to argue, but exhaustion is pulling me under like a riptide.
My eyelids feel heavy again, and this time I let them fall.
Just before sleep claims me, I hear his voice, quiet and rough with emotion.
"I'm proud of you, Van. For saying yes."
Proud of me.
When all I've done is agree to try.
When I've spent years giving him nothing but grief and broken promises and hospital visits at three in the morning.