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Ben still prayed Jake, who was five at the time, had no memory of that day.
Trying to manage a two-year-old and a five-year-old, both of them screaming, and rein Christine in was more tha
n he was able to handle. Ben put Luke down on the floor and tried to get Jake settled, while also trying to keep their mother from pummeling the woman in his bed. Jimmy heard the commotion and came to help, but it was still ugly.
He got the woman out of the room, and the kids settled with another member of the band. Once they were alone, Christine told him she was done. She wanted a divorce, and she wanted full custody of the kids. On top of that, she wanted a hell of a lot of money.
“I didn’t know a lot about my financial situation then. I had money, but I didn’t really understand how much. I also married her without a pre-nup, and didn’t know whether I’d put the ranch at stake.”
He flew home with Christine and the boys, dropping them off at the house, while he stayed with his parents.
“I know I looked like hell, between the shit with Christine, the band trying to cut a record with a detached producer, and the non-stop partying. I felt like I wanted to die. That’s when I found out I was sick.”
Less than a month later he was diagnosed with cancer. The record went on hold, the divorce did not. He went through a tough surgery, followed by both chemo and radiation therapy. He stayed at his parents’ place through it all while Christine and the boys remained in the house. She was adamant that she wanted full custody of their boys, and she used his illness to fuel her fight.
He learned later that his dad intervened and made a deal with her to finalize the divorce. In exchange for giving up all claims to the ranch, and other family holdings, Ben’s family would take care of her for the rest of her life. It would continue, provided she never tried to take Ben’s boys away from him. If she ever tried, she’d lose everything.
The negotiations his father worked out on his behalf included a joint custody agreement. Christine moved into a house in town, and Ben went back to his place on the ranch as soon as he was well enough.
“You’d think with all that happened, the way Christine and I got together, the boys, the divorce, the cancer…that I would’ve stopped drinking, but I didn’t. I drank more.”
Ben and the band went back to LA to finish the album, and it wasn’t long before he started picking up old habits. He continued to drink, and self-destruct, for another five years.
“That brings me back to the beginning of the story. When I nakedly terrorized my sister-in-law.” Ben tried to put a lighthearted spin on the words he spoke, but there was nothing lighthearted about the story he told Liv.
“What happened between now and then?”
“With Christine?”
Liv nodded.
“The years before I got sober were tough. She tried to do the best for our boys. Sometimes I was easy to get along with and other times—not.”
Once he got sober, Ben asked Christine to go to counseling with him so they’d be better co-parents. They’d been able to work through a lot in those sessions, and came out of it far better than when they’d started.
Now they managed to be friends. Christine met a guy not too long after they divorced and married him. Ben told Liv he didn’t know a lot about Joe. He seemed to be good to his boys, his life with Christine stable.
The scene from the night before still plagued him. Christine knew, as well as he did, that casual drinking would never be an option for them. Christine had been going to AA since she got pregnant with Jake. Granted, he’d been in the same bar, but he wasn’t drinking. Maybe she hadn’t been either. Apart from how it affected Jake and Luke, what Christine did or didn’t do, wasn’t any of his business. Something else he needed to let go of.
“Addicts tend to be very sensitive people, Liv. We have a need to be in control, which should mean control of ourselves, but sometimes it spills onto other people in our lives.
“We also talk about everything, at least most of us do. We’ve learned that talking things through, acknowledging how we’re feeling is the key to our sobriety. As soon as I stop thinking through the decisions I make, I run the risk of making bad ones.”
Ben pulled her close to him. “Please tell me what you’re thinking, sweetheart.”
Liv tried to wrap her head around everything Ben told her. So much of it was foreign to anything she’d encountered in life. It sounded almost absurd, but she didn’t think she’d ever known another alcoholic. Her parents drank, but in moderation. She’d never seen them drunk.
There were occasions that Scott may have had more to drink than he should have. But never enough that it worried her, or that she’d even noticed. And drugs had never been a part of her life, not in any way.
She didn’t have a way to relate to so much of what he told her. She didn’t understand what drove someone to do the things he did.
His desire to talk about everything made more sense, so did his impulsiveness, and his insecurity. Above all, she understood his need for control, better than she had before.
But nothing about his life before his sobriety or since, explained his attraction to her. They had an undeniable sexual attraction, but other than that, what did they have in common?
She began to worry that Ben might see her as safe, or innocent, the same way Scott had. She wasn’t anyone’s savior, not Scott’s, not Ben’s, not even her own.
She was a normal woman who led a very simple life. She rarely took risks of any kind, rarely even stepped out of her comfort zone.
