Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
CHASE
Mom hadn’t let go of my hand since we left Harbor Hall, not even during the hour-long ride home.
She’d insisted on sitting in the back seat with me—weird as hell, but I got it.
After everything I’d put her through, if holding my hand like I was five again made her feel better, I wasn’t going to argue.
Dad’s truck crunched over the gravel driveway before rolling to a stop.
The engine cut off, leaving us in heavy silence.
Mom squeezed my fingers one more time before finally releasing them so we could climb out.
The December air hit like a slap, and I hauled my sad little duffel bag from the truck bed while Mom hovered nearby like I might disappear between the truck and the front door.
“You must be starving,” she said, already heading for the house. “I’ll make whatever you want.”
“Breakfast for dinner?” The words came out smaller than I meant them to. More like the little boy who used to crawl into her bed during thunderstorms than the fuckup who’d spent the last three months in rehab.
Dad’s keys jingled behind us. “Your mother’s been practicing her pancake flip.” The forced lightness in his voice made my chest ache. It was like we were all trying too hard to pretend the last few months hadn’t happened.
The front door opened to a wall of warmth and the smell of vanilla candles—they immediately conjured the memory of Elena’s dark vanilla scent.
My boots felt heavy on the familiar hardwood.
Twelve weeks of sharing a room and constant community gathers made the comfort of home with my family feel almost surreal, like I was watching someone else’s life through a window.
“Go get settled in, sweetheart,” Mom called over her shoulder from the kitchen. “I’ll start on those pancakes.”
I trudged down the basement stairs on autopilot, my duffel bag thumping against each step. But when I hit the bottom and flicked on the lights, I froze.
“Uhhh, Mom?” I called up the stairs. “Where’s my stuff?”
“In your bedroom upstairs. I want you where I can keep an eye on you.”
Oh, son of a bitch. Actually, I was the son of a saint. I’d put my mom through hell, so if this was what she needed, so be it.
When I was back in the kitchen, seated at the island while Mom whipped up breakfast for dinner, she asked, “Have I ever told you about my sister?”
“Not much. Just that she died when you were younger.”
Mom hummed quietly while she worked. “She was three years older than me.”
The pancake batter sizzled as it hit the griddle. Mom’s hands were steady, but her voice had that slight tremor I’d learned to recognize. The one that meant she was trying to keep it together.
“Sarah was... God, she was beautiful. And smart. So damn smart. But we couldn’t outrun what was happening at home. The drinking, the drugs, the violence...” She trailed off, focused intently on the pancake like it held all the answers.
I watched her flip it with perfect precision, wondering how many mornings she’d practiced while I was gone. Wondering what memories haunted her during those quiet moments.
“I thought if I just stayed close enough, we could protect each other.” The spatula scraped against the griddle. “But sometimes... sometimes loving someone isn’t enough to save them.”
“Mom...” My throat tightened as the weight of what I’d put her through settled heavy in my chest.
She turned to face me, and there was something fierce in her eyes beneath the tears. “But you, Chase? You chose to get help. You’re fighting. And I...” Her voice broke as she cupped my face. “I get to watch my baby heal.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “For making you worry—”
“Shhh.” She pulled me into a hug, and suddenly I was six years old again, safe in my mother’s arms. The kind of safety it sounded like she’d never had at my age. “Just keep doing the work, baby. That’s all I need.”
I hugged her tighter, breathing in that mom-smell of vanilla and pancake batter.
The work.
I’d done it before, hadn’t I? Back when I first met Elena, I’d gotten my shit together. Got that instructor job at the resort, stopped hooking up with random girls at Cody’s parties...
And it had worked. For a while.
Just keep doing the work.
Which meant I had shit to do.
Find a meeting. Find a sponsor. Find a job.
I’d start there.
It was weird as shit to have my cell phone back in my hand for the first time in twelve weeks.
Eighty-four days. Two thousand and sixteen hours, give or take, but who’s counting?
I’d left it at Mom and Dad’s, not to be tempted, despite the policy at Harbor Hall allowing phones.
The device felt foreign now, like someone else’s possession I’d accidentally picked up.
I sat on the edge of my bed in my childhood bedroom that Mom had insisted I move back into.
No more basement dwelling for her precious recovering addict son.
When the screen flared to life, my phone immediately started convulsing with three months of missed notifications.
Texts. Emails. Voicemails. Social media alerts.
Each vibration felt like an accusation. Where were you?
Why didn’t you answer? Do you know what you missed?
The family group chat alone had hundreds of unread messages. I started scrolling, my stomach churning as I started from the day everything went to hell.
ELLIOT
Just dropped him off.
How’s Charlie?
God damn. Scrolling through weeks of chatter about my baby sister’s recovery would be a painful reliving of my worst mistake. All part of my penance, I guess.
MOM
They’re taking her off the ventilator today.
Swelling in her brain has gone down.
ELLIOT
That’s good, right?
MOM
It is, but we don’t know how much damage there is yet. She might be confused when she wakes up.
ELLIOT
Yeah. Okay. Let me know when she’s awake.
The first few weeks in rehab had been the hardest—on multiple levels.
Not only was I drying out and puking my way through cocaine withdrawal, but I was desperately waiting for any updates on my sister from Mom through Jackson.
He told me just enough to keep me sane, but not so much that’d I’d spiral and dwell on the pain I’d caused.
“She’s alive.”
“She’s doing better.”
“She’s recovering well.”
The rage came in waves those first few weeks. But Jackson saw right through my bullshit from day one.
“You’re not special,” he’d told me during our first session, leaning back in his chair like he had all damn day to wait me out.
“Every addict who walks through those doors thinks their situation is different. That they’re here for noble reasons.
That they can handle more information, more contact, more everything than we’re willing to give them. ”
I’d wanted to punch his smug face. Instead, I’d gripped the arms of my chair until my knuckles went white and spat out, “My sister is in a coma because of me.”
“I know.” His calm voice had only pissed me off more. “And knowing every detail of her condition right now won’t help either of you.”
He’d been right, of course. Fucking therapists.
I kept scrolling through the texts, watching my family’s life continue without me. Mom’s constant updates about Charlie’s progress. Tessa’s random funny stories trying to lighten the mood. Elliot’s short, practical responses. Jasper’s occasional check-ins.
MOM
Charlie asked for Chase today
NATALIE
Did you tell her where he is?
MOM
Yes. She cried a little but said she was proud of him.
My throat tightened. Jackson had waited three weeks to tell me Charlie was awake. Another two before he told me she’d asked about me.
“You need to focus on your own recovery first,” he’d said. “You can’t help her if you’re still wrestling your own demons.”
I’d done everything they asked. Groups. Individual therapy. Mindfulness bullshit that actually turned out to be not-so-bullshit. Even fucking art therapy, though I’d rather die than admit to anyone how much I’d gotten out of painting my feelings or whatever.
ELLIOT
Anyone seen my wife?
NATALIE
Tessa’s with me and Elena. Girls’ day.
Pedicures
MOM
GOOD! My sweet girls need the break!
My thumb froze over Elena’s name. Suddenly, I was back in that first week, shaking and sweating through withdrawal, confessing to Jackson about the married woman I couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Tell me about her.”
So I had. Everything. The night I met her at Callaghan’s. Snowboarding. The texts that had become my lifeline when they were all I had of her.
The assault.
The spiral.
The accident.
“You’ve got a lot of work to do on yourself first.”
Looking back, he was right. I’d been in no shape to be anyone’s savior when I couldn’t even save myself.
Emma Everton added Elena Ventura to the group.
MOM
Welcome to the family chaos, honey!
I stared at the screen, my heart doing that familiar stutter it always did at any mention of her.
Elena Ventura. The name hit different now—I had no idea what was happening in her life, if she was okay, where her sleazeball husband was.
Twelve weeks was a long time to be completely cut off from someone who’d become such a lifeline.
Mom had always been a collector of strays.
She’d practically adopted Tessa the second Dad brought her home after her car got stuck in a snowy ditch.
Guess Elena was her newest adoptee. Probably saw exactly what I had a year ago: a brilliant but broken woman who worked too hard and was loved too little.
Jackson’s voice echoed in my head. “Focus on your recovery. One day at a time. The rest will fall into place.”
I closed the message thread, opened my browser, and searched for the nearest NA meeting.
Step one: find a meeting.
The closest meeting to Sable Point was located in a facility I had not planned to visit again for a long, long time—for many reasons.
For starters, this was the last place I’d been before rehab, recovering from a few self-inflicted but mild wounds while my sister fought for her life. Second, it was the workplace of the one woman I wanted to see but wasn’t ready to.
I’d been sitting in the Ashford Hospital parking lot for twenty minutes, watching people come and go through the automatic doors. Each time they slid open, my heart jumped into my throat. Would this be the time I saw her?
The meeting started in ten minutes. Second floor, Room 214, according to the AA website. Simple enough. So why couldn’t I make my legs move?
My phone buzzed—Jackson checking in. Again. My therapist was nothing if not persistent.
JACKSON
Found a meeting yet?
I typed back a quick reply before shoving my phone in my pocket.
CHASE
Heading into one now
Twelve weeks of sobriety, and I still felt like a fraud. Like any minute now, someone would point at me and say, “You don’t belong here.”
But that was the point, wasn’t it? None of us belonged here. We just ended up here anyway.
I grabbed my keys and forced myself out of the truck. The Michigan winter bit at my exposed skin as I crossed the parking lot, each step feeling heavier than the last.
The hospital doors slid open with a whoosh of warm air that carried that distinct antiseptic smell. My stomach churned as I thought of Elena’s steady hands stitching me up the last time I saw her, her face carefully blank while I bled all over her ER.
Room 214. Second floor. Just get there.
The elevator was, mercifully, empty. I leaned against the back wall, watching the numbers illuminate.
One.
Two.
The doors opened, and I stepped out, turning left toward where I thought the meeting rooms would be.
That’s when I saw her.
She was standing at the nurses’ station, one hand resting on a stack of charts, the other pressed against her very pregnant stomach. The sight hit me like a linebacker trust to the chest, stopping me mid-stride.
Eighty-four days. Eighty-four days of thinking about what I’d say when I saw her again, and none of those imagined scenarios included this.
She hadn’t noticed me yet. I could’ve turned around. Got back in the elevator. Found another meeting somewhere else, anywhere else.
But then she looked up.
Her eyes widened slightly—the only tell in her otherwise composed expression. She was thinner everywhere except her belly, dark circles under her eyes that even careful makeup couldn’t completely hide.
“Chase.” Her voice was soft, professional. Like I was any other person she might encounter in these halls.
“Elena.” My voice cracked on her name.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. A cart wheeled by. Someone laughed down the hall. The world kept moving while we stood frozen, three feet and an ocean of unsaid things between us.
She shifted slightly, and that small movement drew my eyes down. My brain short-circuited.
“You’re pregnant,” I blurted out, immediately feeling like an idiot.
One corner of her mouth quirked up—that subtle expression I used to live for. “Your powers of observation remain unmatched, Chase.”
My throat went dry. “How... how far along?”
“Twenty-four weeks.” Her voice was carefully neutral, clinical. Like she was discussing any other patient’s chart.
Twenty-four weeks. I counted backward, my head spinning. Then it hit me. The timing… God, the timing.
The lights suddenly seemed too bright. The hallway too narrow. My hands started shaking, and I shoved them in my pockets. But then I got a hit of her subtle burnt sugar scent and my shoulders dropped a fraction from my ears.
“Is it—” I cleared my throat. Swallowed hard. “Is it mine?”
Because if it wasn’t…
The thought alone was enough to send me right into relapse and back to rehab. As I mentally spiraled, the question hung between us, heavy with everything we’d been, everything we’d lost. Elena’s hand tightened on the charts she was holding, her knuckles going white.
A nurse appeared at her elbow. “Dr. Ventura? They need you in Three.”
Elena’s gaze held mine for one more moment, and I saw everything there—relief, fear, grief, something that might have been hope.
But I didn’t miss what the nurse had called her.
Not Dr. Stone.
Dr. Ventura.
“I have to go,” she said quietly.
I watched her walk away, her white coat flowing behind her, until she disappeared around the corner. Then I slid down the wall to sit on the floor, not caring who saw.
I missed my first meeting.