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When we got to the site where we were hiding the product, I turned off the lights, sneaking past the guards. It was Chase and Nevada who were playing pretend guard duty tonight, they knew I was coming, and knew to pretend they hadn’t seen me pull through into the garage of the rundown house. The product was hidden in a bunch of moving boxes along one wall, and I checked the contents before Neo and I loaded it up.
I was twitching by the third box. It was right fucking there, and I couldn’t get out of my head about testing it to make sure it was the good stuff, so Hammer wouldn’t get suspicious. I had to step back, pulling out my phone and dialing Brewer when it got too hard.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.
Neo flashed me a concerned look. We weren’t supposed to make any calls right now, but my skin was crawling and my anxiety was through the roof, and all I could think about was taking a hit to chill out.
When I didn’t immediately respond, Brewer spoke again. “You don’t need it. Have a drink with the man. Make up some bullshit about your old lady not puttin’ out unless you stay clean. You don’t need to get high to pull this shit off.”
I grimaced. “I feel like I need it.”
He made an irritated sound. “Hold on. Don’t hang up the phone.”
I heard his movement, the noise of the party in the background as he headed upstairs. He knocked on someone’s door and when I heard Tyson in the background, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
“He wants a hit. What the fuck do I say to keep him clean?”
He wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to Tyson. I heard him pass off the phone, and I chewed on my thumbnail, waiting for Tyson to berate me. He didn’t.
“How bad is it?”
I huffed out a breath. “On a scale of one to ten? Seven billion.”
He hummed. “It’s day three sober. That’ll happen. But if you get past day three, it’ll be easier. You just need to get through today.”
In a normal sense, that’d probably be enough. But I had to deal directly with the product today and that made this that much harder.
“Give me a reason not to. Because I can’t think of one right now.”
“Sam.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. One word tipped the balance, pushing me closer to staying clean. I needed to do this for her. This job would protect her, and me staying sober would prove that she could rely on me. I claimed her in front of the crew today, but she didn't know what that meant. If I wanted to keep her, I needed to prove I could do this.
“If I break…”
“You won’t. You can’t think like that or you’re already giving yourself permission to cave. You need to retrain your brain. Tell yourself over and over that you won’t until you’re done with whatever it is that’s triggering you. I’m assuming I don’t want to know.”
I snorted. “No shit.”
He didn’t complain, instead telling me to put him on speaker. “I don’t need to know what you’re doing. Just keep me on the line until you can’t anymore.”
I didn’t see a problem doing that, since he couldn’t see what we were doing. All he’d hear was us moving boxes, and while he could assume what was in them, he couldn’t be sure. I put him on speaker, setting the phone on one of the boxes as I moved it to the truck bed.
Tyson kept me talking, and any time I paused for too long, he reminded me what I was staying sober for. He told me stories about him finding Sam on the streets and the work she put in to build herself back up. Talking about her helped, and when we finally finished up and climbed back in the truck, I no longer felt like I was going to break.
“Thanks man. I’ve got it from here.”
“I believe in you, Clink. You can stay clean if you put your mind to it.”
I made a face at the bullshit therapy talk, but he helped me so I didn't bitch at him for it.
“I gotta go. Watch out for Sam for me.”
When he hesitated, I frowned, glancing at the screen as I pulled out of the garage again.
“What is it?”
“I’m… not comfortable being down there. I’m on my own recovery journey, and while I’ve got a few years under my belt, I still get urges now and then. Being around it wouldn’t be a good idea for me.”
