Page 215 of Always: A Legacy Novel

“She’s good with me, though. Before I left the last time, she was good. She was dealing with some shit, but as long as I was around, she was fine.”

“You know you can’t be another pill or drink for her, right?”

Cross glanced up. “What?”

“You can’t be another high for her, Cross, or the drug of the moment she uses to stay sane. You can’t be the one thing that is responsible to make her happy, or to keep her sober. She’s got to do that shit on her own. She’ll never be healthy or happy, with or without you, if she can’t be healthy and happy with herself. That’s mental health one-oh-one.”

“I don’t need a lecture, Zeke.”

“No, but you need to listen. So this is the first time—”

“Second,” Cross admitted. “She had a bad spell when she was sixteen, too, after … some shit happened. It was almost a whole year of non-stop partying and acting out. I kind of had her under control, then, too. She got better, and she was fucking good.”

“And then she wasn’t,” his friend assumed.

Cross shook his head. “I shouldn’t have left.”

“All right, so this is the second time, but here’s the thing. There’s going to be a third and fourth and fifth time, Cross, if nothing changes. You can get her sober, clean her up, and maybe make her happy for a while. If she doesn’t deal with what makes her need to run for something to get her high or numb, then she’ll be triggered again. And again, and again. It’s a circle; it’s vicious.”

“I—”

“And if it doesn’t kill her, it’ll kill you trying to stop it.”

“How do I fix this?”

“Man, you don’t get it, do you? You can’t fix it, Cross. It’s not for you to fix.”

Cross’s eyes snapped open at the slightest movement or sound on a regular day. But when he was on day three of watching Catherine detox? She just needed to breathe a bit different and he was wide awake.

He sat on the bedroom floor, his back to the closed door, one leg stretched out, and his arm propped up on his bent knee to use his hand as a pillow. He couldn’t get in bed with his girl because she was going through some kind of hot spell, and he only made it worse. He couldn’t leave the damn room because she woke up in a paranoid hell, screaming for him.

She itched.

She was cold.

She burned.

She shook.

She raged.

She cried.

She hated.

He loved.

This time, it was simply the sound of Catherine gagging that had Cross’s eyes flying wide. He was up off the floor, and just managed to catch Catherine in time as she fell off the bed. He didn’t know how in the hell she could vomit any more than she already did for the last three days, but that’s exactly what she did once he got her into the bathroom.

She retched until spatters of red came up with her spit.

Catherine cried harder.

Cross held tighter.

He didn’t know what else to do.

“I’m sorry,” he heard whispered beside him.