AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And he’s…nice. Ish.
Okay, so he’s notmean.
He’s just…intense.Yeah, that’s a good word for him.
And I guess I just…like that.
I don’t knowwhyexactly. There’s just afeelinghere…something…and I can’t explain it. I don’t even want to try. But I want more of it, whatever it is.
“Why are you here, kid?” he says gruffly, yanking me out of my thoughts.
I roll my eyes at that word again, and freeze, caught off guard by my reaction.
Nolan cocks his head, watching me intently. Like he too senses my confusion. My shock.
What the hell’s going on with me?
Giving my head a little shake, I sit up straighter, lifting my chin, and tell him, “It’s complicated, but it’s a mistake. I don’t—”
Another scoff, this one far more telling than the other.
“This again?” He gestures to my arms. “Then what are those?”
I follow his gaze to the faint bruises and marks along the inner sides of my arms.Track marks.
They’ve faded for the most part, but a couple scarred over thanks to Pastor Marcus, who clearly did not know how to find a vein.
Crossing my arms, hiding the marks, I peer up through my lashes. “It’s not what you think,” I whisper, my voice sounding very far away.
He shakes his head. “Yeah, okay, sure.”
I flinch.
Just like that, the man from a second ago is replaced by someone I no longer recognize…yet familiar all the same.
Nolan curls his lip at me, the closest to a smile I’ve gotten, but it turns my blood cold. Icing over and crumbling any warm thoughts I may have had of him a second ago.
What…what just happened?
“Seriously? Look, I get it. We lie, we deny, we make up excuses. That’s what addicts do. But that’s out there,” he says, jabbing a finger past me toward the door. “That’s the shit we pull when we’re using, not in recovery. In here, your bullshit’s pointless. You wanna get this done and over with, and go back to whatever it is you were doing that got you in here, right?”
I frown down at my lap, not understanding. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not like him. It was a mistake. I just need to explain.
But before I can so much as stutter a word out, he steamrolls ahead.
“Well the sooner you accept you have a problem and take accountability for your fuck ups, the quicker you can be done and out of here, instead of wasting everybody’s time.”
I flinch, but it does little to deter him. If anything, it just spurs him on.
“I know your kind, kid.” Shaking his head, he gives me a look of disgust. “Spoiled, rich, stuck-up.” He tips his head to the side. “Let me guess. Got bored? Thought you were invincible? Maybe got too high one night and drove daddy’s precious Bugatti into a porch?”
Shaking my head, my mouth opens, closes—like that fish in Dr. Matyschki’s office I used to stare at growing up while he spoke with my parents.
Like then, I struggle to find my voice to correct him. He just needs to listen.
It’s no matter though, because he’s clearly already drawn up his conclusions about me.
And that—realizing just how wrong I was about him after all—well, that just fucking guts me.
