Broken: A Billionaire Love Story (3 page)

Still—if someone asked her what she did, she would not say waitress, or salesperson, or clerk, or whatever else. She would say she was a counselor. That was how she identified.

At the top of the steps, she took a long breath of the cold air. The temperature seemed finally to be warming up—winter perhaps, hopefully, giving out its last terrible gasp about a week and a half ago with that awful storm.

She noted, as she often did when she entered the building, about how it could badly use some redecoration. Much of the interior design was painfully retro, from the multi-colored walls to the fake plastic wood paneling in the offices. Edgemont Heights was a large, three-floor building made from dark-rusty orange bricks. Oak and ash trees pushed in on the windows, dead now, filling the grounds. In the summer, they offered welcome respite from the drearily hot weather. Now, in the winter, the branches would clog over with snow and ice, dropping melting sloshes of cold wetness onto any unwary patients and employees below.

Spring would be here soon enough, Olivia reminded herself. That was her favorite time of year—all that wonderful rebirth, when it was warm but not too warm, and just cool enough in the evenings to wear a sweater. But today—two sweaters and an overcoat, to combat the wildly varying temperatures inside the facility from room to room. Her office often ran cold, while the patient’s facilities often ran even colder. Extra blankets were always passed around, space heaters in every corner of the rec room and cafeteria.

Her day ping-ponged between research on upcoming sessions and the sessions themselves—sometimes one-on-one, sometimes with groups.

There was a kind of block scheduling to the facility, so that on Mondays she might have three one-on-ones, and on Tuesdays she might have nothing but different kinds of groups—divided by age or subject. Sometimes a group focused on relapse or triggers, or sometimes on family issues, but there was always some kind of theme, even if it was just “general issues.” It was good to give people a purpose for their encouraged communities.

So, her day began with her sliding into her office, unloading her bag and purse onto her small desk, and starting research—looking at files for any newcomers as well as refreshing herself on everyone that she was due to see in her next session.

Today was Monday. That meant the first session for the day was the “big” session, which included everyone interred at the facility, and was basically an open forum for discussion. Not too much to prepare—just a few mental exercises, reminding her to be calm and supportive, and to relieve herself of all judgment.

Olivia was no one to judge anyone. She had her own personal problems, after all—most of them named Roderick.

The big group was in the rec room—arranged assembly-style, with everyone looking toward the front. Anyone wanting to speak had to raise their hand and be called on by the chairperson of the meeting, which was decided democratically by votes from the patients. Sitting in the chairs were about forty men and women of all different ages. Dr. Strauss—the lead doctor in the facility—told Olivia that once upon a time, the facility had boasted hundreds of patients at one time. But, this had gone down since the eighties and nineties, with insurance coverage for rehabilitation being slashed left and right.

The meeting had just begun when Olivia arrived. Quietly, as the serenity prayer was read and the twelve steps read through, she made her way over toward the side and front of the meeting in the chair set out for her—probably by Hector, the orderly.

The chairperson—Margaret, an older woman who had volunteered and was subsequently elected for the job when she arrived twenty days ago—was speaking.

“I’m not sure how much more time we should spend playing music over the speakers in the afternoon,” she was saying. “It seems like two hours is rather long, especially if it’s a style of music that not everyone likes. What I propose is, instead, a back-and-forth...”

Olivia’s attention quickly drifted away when she sat down in the front and immediately saw a newcomer. She was always interested in newcomers—fortunate, as she encountered so many—but this one struck her particularly.

He was, for lack of a better word, handsome. Incredibly so. He had a strong, bearded jaw and ruggedly-trim musculature. Along with a pair of tight jeans, he wore a loose flannel shirt, the sleeves pulled up, and she could see how carved his forearms were.

She could also see the sexy lines of tattoos crawling up his neck arms, drawing her eye even more to how defined his muscles were. Edges of flames shot out on his shoulders, covering the upper part of his hard biceps. She could imagine that these tattoos slid all the way across his chest, his back...

Of course, she had seen lots of guys with ink in the facility. They were almost like badges of honor. But this was some sort of tangible sadness about this man, some incredible sorrow, inked onto his skin to be kept there in perpetuity. Her heart went out to him...and she could feel it not all the way coming right back.

The abuse of drugs or alcohol (or perhaps both) had worked their magic on him, though, that was for sure. His eyes had deep circles underneath, and were equal parts hyper-alert and dazed. Haggard, like he had been run through the laundry.

But yet, even so, he was gorgeous. The lines of his lips, the slight beard building around his jaw and mouth, the elegant tilt of his posture...all gorgeous. Devastatingly so, and Olivia found herself—despite every professional bone in her body—wanting to have a one-on-one with him as soon as she could.

It was complete folly to imagine any sort of relationship with a patient, of course. Outside of the fact that it would likely cost her all of her employment in the field (both present and future), there had to be something like a negative thirty percent chance that it would work out.

A negative thirty percent chance indicating, of course, that the relationship would both not work and also make several other aspects of her life not work as well.

An unwritten rule for addicts in their first year of recovery was not to pursue any kind of significant relationship. Doing so would unlock all manner of problems with others—as relationships always did, no matter how wonderful—and removed the focus of recovery. They had to correct the paths of their own ship first before taking on the wealth of problems that presented itself with another person.

Olivia also was well-aware that an addict had little-to-no understanding of what a healthy relationship even was, most of the time. When using whatever substances they abused, they were—as a rule—equal parts clingy, distant, and controlling to their significant others. Such a combination seemed impossible on the face of it, but the mercurial moods of addicts allowed for that perfect storm of shittiness for any sort of relationship. One moment nothing would matter at all except for their significant other of choice, and the next moment that significant other would only be in the way of their next high.

From what Olivia had learned through school and, most of all, what she had learned from interacting with the patients for the past three years, she had found that most of an addict’s problems were emotional, stemming from childhood and the way they were brought up—the biology of addiction was just a very odd and very destructive coping mechanism. Addicts didn’t like their emotions, and they only way they knew how to cope with the negative ones was to use. Over time, the using stopped working, and the negatives far outweighed the positives—and if they were lucky, this was when an addict came in to meet someone like Olivia.

Long story short, sigh and fantasize as she might at the newcomer’s brilliant blue eyes and the dangerous lines of his tattoos, any notions of romance had to quickly be killed off for her own sake. A relationship with an addict was out of the question, she told herself again. Being with someone early in their recovery would almost be like being with an adolescent—as most addicts were frozen emotionally from the point of their initial addiction, this wasn’t far off.

Having just ended a relationship with Roderick a couple of months ago, who was a relative emotional infant (though in his case, the condition had manifested for entirely different reasons), Olivia wasn’t too excited about the idea of starting such a relationship again.

And yet, Olivia saw this new face, and she couldn’t help but daydream about saving this handsome new recruit.

She felt, perhaps unjustly, that she had little ground to stand on when it came to fixing others. The amount of time she had spent with Roderick, who was so clearly abusive and wrong for her, had made her feel somewhat insane.

But taking in this newcomer, treating him so wonderfully, helping him become beautifully well and him helping her recognize all sorts of wondrous beauty about herself, and the two of them whispering soft “thank you”s in the morning forever after...

She shook her head, trying to focus on what Margaret was saying. Something about gratitude for the group. That was good.

Olivia mentally reaffirmed her position once more—it didn't matter how lonely she was getting in the evenings or all throughout the day, she was done with guys for a while. She was done with desperate phone calls in the night, done with demanding of explanations for her depressed behavior when she felt like the world was swallowing her whole, done with being yelled at, done with shoves into the wall...

Yes, Olivia was quite all right with single life for a while. It was a unique thrill to come home to an apartment completely devoid of conflict and strife, especially after eight months of just and only that.

On the podium, Margaret wrapped up her thoughts.

“Is there anything else?” asked Margaret, opening the floor. “If not, then that’s it. Let’s hit a moment of silence and move on.”

This took her by surprise. Had she been staring at the newcomer for almost thirty minutes, really?

Perhaps she had been more taken with him than she realized.

Chapter 4:

The routine at the facility was incredibly structured. Shane’s roommate, an old-timer named Rawls, ran him through it as they got dressed in the early morning. Rawls was a seasoned rehab patient, a black man in his early fifties with patchy white hair crowding for space around his balding scalp. Shane moved through a fog, blindly following Rawls, like a puppy, or even more inanimate than that—like a wagon on a rope.

Every morning, there was breakfast, a big meeting, and then physical activity. After that was lunch, then more meetings, some free time, even more meetings, dinner, free time, and lights out.

Easy, said Rawls. Just go with the flow.

Breakfast in the small cafeteria was simple. Eggs and bacon, that sort of thing. Sometimes, Shane learned, there would be fruit cups available, sometimes not. Sometimes croissants, sometimes not. Twice a week, Rawls told him, they would get supplied with those little cereal boxes, but they were always out of milk and there was no limit to how many people could take, so everybody took a lot of the little boxes for snacks.

Snacks were good, said Rawls, sugar was good. Helps with the cravings.

In the big meeting, there was a counselor speaking about some part of sobriety, and then anybody that wanted to speak could speak. This was done in what Rawls called the Rec Room, assembly style, with everyone facing the front toward a podium.

That day, the speaker talked about honesty, about how she had never been able to be honest until she was sober. Dimly it struck Shane that the speaker was also someone with an addiction.

How had she cured it? Shane wondered. Had she at all? She was here, after all.

Shane was here by mistake, he knew this already, even in the confused fog of his thinking. Rehab was for people with an answer. He didn't have an answer—just pain, and the one way to cure it.

Shane tried to listen to this speaker, but he was having a hard-time concentrating on anything. How long had he been in this place? Why was his torso so bruised, and why were his legs and hands covered in scabs?

He stared forward, blankly, absolutely zoned out. Toward the end of the meeting, he noticed a beautiful brunette staring at him, sitting down to the side of the speaker.

She was looking at him like she knew him. Did he know her?

Did he have to worry about people knowing him here? What did they know? Had he been out of the public eye long enough for people to forget his face? It had been...what, ten years since he started going underground to get away from the paparazzi?

Paulette hadn’t liked that. She loved the paparazzi, loved showing off at red carpet events. He refused to go to any of it—he would get mad at her for going, for abandoning him for that meat show. He got mad at her for everything. She never liked his poetry, never wanted him to get drunk the way he did.

Oh, Paulette. That was a whole nest of bad feelings, there. But just as soon as that nest started to untangle, bad feelings scratching and nipping at his heart, the meeting ended, and Rawls led him along to the next routine.

After the meeting was physical activity.

Physical activity could be a number of things, Rawls told him—there was a small gym with treadmills and elliptical machine; outside there was a small basketball court where six men and women were playing a pick-up game; adjacent to that, there were walking paths around the fenced garden area.

Shane, mind still all syrup and scrambles, sat down in the garden area, ignoring or waving off all attempts at communication. People seemed to get it. They seemed to know exactly where he was and how he got there. Everyone acted like they understood. He knew they couldn't understand—how could anyone understand?—but he was glad they didn't bother him.

Dazed. That was the only word for his entire life at that moment. He felt like he had been through some horrible trauma, only he didn’t remember any of it. His head not entirely screwed on right. He barely remembered arriving at the facility, and felt no tug to get away or to join, just to allow his mind to return to itself. Where had he been? What had he done?

Had someone been hurt? Had it been like...like the crash? The fire?