Chapter 10
Lynn
Four weeks passed in a numb, endless drag.
I gained consciousness after nightmares that scoured my brain until my head pounded, my chest emptied, and my stomach tightened into a knot that made eating impossible.
Then I hauled myself across the clubhouse to Cobra’s game room, tech room, whatever he wanted to call it.
Sometimes Devil was there, and I’d destroy both of them at Mario Kart.
Sometimes we played other games, and I made sure they died first because it was fun, for a split second, to watch their shock dissolve into accusing anger.
The emotions never lasted long, devoured by the numbness.
But I was alive, so that was a win. And healed enough that my stitches were removed, my hands as mended as they were going to get, my ankle no longer twinging when I walked. Physically, I was back to normal. Mentally, I was a wasteland.
Some evenings, I allowed ChaCha to confiscate me for family meals in the sanctuary, where I choked down food that I didn’t taste, didn’t want, but needed to survive. Sometimes I hated it. Sometimes it was fun.
Then I got completely piss-drunk, either in the sanctuary or the Knights’ bar and rec room, and passed out so hard I got a few hours sleep before the nightmares woke me.
I planned to do the same thing tonight; why fix something if it wasn’t broken?
It wasn’t healthy, sure, and it was probably rotting my liver, but it was the only way I was surviving.
Gaming, booze, and those few rare moments where I felt something in technicolour instead of grey, endless grey. That was all I had.
I’d given up on taking the power back from my nightmares, had tried everything to crush them into smoke, to break them into easier digestible pieces. I forced out words that cut my throat on the way out. I even went to group fucking therapy because I was desperate.
I thought I’d known that feeling. Desperation.
Thought I knew it inside out after months of this hollow, painful existence.
I’d experienced every kind of desperation, could recognise it from a glimpse or flicker.
My entire life now could fit within two emotions—numbness and desperation, so I knew it as well as I knew the vacant brown eyes that stared at me from the mirror. But I’d never felt it like this.
This time, the desperation cut my skin like a razor blade and dug into the muscle beneath. It swam like acid through my veins until my heart faltered a beat.
“Tell me you’re lying,” I said to the muscular blonde woman who’d become my salvation. I was so shocked, so horrified, that I didn’t even snarl at her.
She shrugged, leaning against the bar in the common room.
“Someone fucked up ordering, so we were already short, and then we had that party at the weekend.” The Knights had finally tracked down someone on their list, and liberated an omega the same night they uncovered leads on a whole network of traffickers.
The celebrations ran through the whole night.
“We should have had enough to get us to the end of this week,” she said apologetically.
Her name was something like Lauren, Laurel, Loreen, and she’d just ruined my life by telling me we were out of everything alcoholic.
No wine, no spirits, not even a stray bottle of beer because those already went to Guardian, Prodigy, and Cobra where they sat across the room discussing something in low, serious tones.
“You must have something stashed away,” I argued with Laurie.
The look she gave me was sympathetic, soft enough to get my hackles up. “There’s nothing left, Lynn. But here.”
Me being an eternal optimist, I thought I’d sly me a secret bottle of potato vodka, but nope, it was a fucking business card. “What the hell is this?”
“I keep them on the bar for people I can see… struggling.”
“I am not struggling,” I snarled, reading the card and rolling my eyes.
She thought I needed an AA meeting. Of course she did; she didn’t know my shit because I kept that close to my chest. I slid it back across the bar, keeping my voice polite because she was my booze supplier.
“This was very kind of you, but I’m not an alcoholic.
I just need it to knock me unconscious so I can sleep. ”
“I wish I had something to give you,” Loretta (Loraine?) sighed, slipping the card back behind the bar for the next desperate person. “We're due a delivery on Friday.”
I laughed, like the world wasn’t falling apart around me. I had a routine that worked, and losing a part of it would be… bad. “Friday is three days away.”
“I know,” she said in the tone of an apology. “Have you tried joining one of Justice’s self defence classes? They might exhaust you enough that you pass out.”
Fuck, anything was worth a shot. “Thanks,” I said, and stalked away from the bar to track down Justice. Maybe punching someone would lift my mood as well as knocking me out. I might have just found a healthier coping mechanism.