AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A month, I’d been coming here.
Four, fucking, weeks.
I’d never had any desire to say a word, mostly because I didn’t have the right.
The Oxy was already starting to wear off, and I’d only sank some back two hours ago. The pain was like a monster, gnawing at my nerve endings like Da gnawed on a turkey leg at the end of the Thanksgiving meal.
The sweats would come next.
The jitters.
The vomiting.
Christ, I was so fucking sick of this life. So fucking sick of trying to escape, but how—
I closed my eyes when the room burst into applause after Sandra, a housewife from Queens, finished her speech about being clean for three months, and I darted onto my feet as fast as my bum knee would let me.
“Aidan, you wish to speak?” Christopher asked, his surprise and pleasure clear.
I’d had no intention of speaking. I’d just wanted to get the hell out of this grimy community hall that stank of bleach, disinfectant, and sweaty socks. But... Asher had just admitted to jacking off twenty fucking times a day. And I was so tired of my life. The pain was here, like a physical entity in the room. I might as well have been punching my knee for the past forty minutes instead of just taking it easy...
I needed it to stop.
I needed a way to make everything stop.
“Aidan?” Christopher queried softly, his pleasure fading into unease.
I lifted my head to face the room, saw the expectant faces, scented the shitty coffee and the sugary tang of donuts that were only marginally more bearable than that tar they served, and...Asher had just admitted to jacking off twenty times a day.
I could admit to this.
“My name’s Aidan,” I rasped, “and I’ve been clean for one-hundred and twenty-three minutes...”
