Sultry Oblivion by Alexa Padgett
Nash
My head ached and my eyes burned behind my closed lids. Even my skin hurt. It was as if my entire body had decided it needed to break, not just my heart. A rough tongue grated over my cheek. I batted it away.
“Good. You’re awake.”
I lifted my head from the thick carpet and glanced around my trashed bedroom. My neck and shoulders screamed in protest as I sat up. I must have passed out. On the floor. After my rage-fest at Aya.
I dropped my head into my hands and groaned.
Jigsaw curled around my ankles, purring loudly.
“What did you take?” Steve asked. His voice was neutral, almost without inflection.
I didn’t bother to raise my head. “Why do you care?”
“I’ve always cared.”
I bit back my response about him having a shit way of showing it. The idea of attacking Steve left me exhausted. More exhausted.
“She’s gone, you know,” he added after a moment.
I raised my head, my eyes narrowing as pain sliced through my skull. “She’s back at the ranch?” I asked, hopeful. I’d talk to her, touch her… My hands stopped shaking as the image of her in my arms calmed me.
“She’s gone. And she was too upset to come upstairs again, so I gave her a T-shirt, shorts, some flip-flops, and a ride at three-thirty in the morning.” Steve hesitated for a moment.
I stood too fast, swaying from dizziness, my hand landing on the bed beside me. “Where would she go? I need to see her.”
The need was deep, visceral—like the need to take another drink of whiskey, and another, and another…
Steve shrugged and stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. He turned to leave. “She asked me not to tell you.”
I gnashed my teeth. “That’s bullshit. Tell me.”
He widened his stance and glowered. “She has the right to make this call. You clearly still have some shit to work out.”
“I have some—” I bit off the rest of my sentence. “I drank a bottle of Whistlepig, just like dear old mommy.”
Just like my mom.
Oh…
She’d used alcohol, then drugs. She’d even used sex to fill the anguished hole inside her. Just as I did. Because of her actions, sure. But also because of my own.
The ones I didn’t like to admit to.
And, just like my mother, I’d used Aya to fill my needs. Sure, she was better than drugs or alcohol, but she was a person, and I’d wrapped myself so tightly around her, all while not actually trusting her, that I’d sunk us both. One well-placed insinuation from her waste of a father, and I’d gone off the deep end. What had I even said to her last night? What had I accused her of?
I dragged my fingers through my hair and cursed. Then I heaved a shattered breath.
I was like my mother. So much like her. And I was heading down the same path. If I didn’t figure out a healthy way to deal with my addictive personality, I was going to hurt Aya, Cam… Steve… Everyone close to me. The way my mother had hurt me.
I must have said that aloud, because Steve moved closer.
“Nash,” he said on a sigh. “She had a disease. You have it—”
I slammed my healed fist into the bed again, then again. “I’m doing the same stupid shit again.” I looked up at him, tears in my eyes. “I can’t lose Aya. I can’t. She’s the only thing that makes the pain better, bearable.”
Steve’s stoic expression cracked. “I know, son.”
“I broke the shell.” I couldn’t even look at the bits of it. My most treasured belonging, the one I’d carefully wrapped and placed in my suitcase so I was sure it survived each move, obliterated.
I rose, agitated. I walked faster and faster, ignoring the dull pain from too much to drink that had settled, an old friend, behind my eyes. I didn’t want to feel like this. My heart raced. I didn’t want to feel the emotions cascading through me, the loss and fear lashing at me.
I needed another drink. Some pills—anything to stop these emotions from ripping, flaying me. I couldn’t breathe. I fell to my knees, vaguely aware that my reaction was over the top, but my heart pounded too hard, my vision tunneled.
Alcohol, drugs had led me here. If I’d dealt with my mother and Brad’s toxicity then, I wouldn’t have it piled atop my anger toward Steve, my fear that Aya would leave me again, for good, now. But I hadn’t dealt. I’d deflected.
Because this hurt.
Badly.
And I didn’t know how to make it stop.
What if the pain didn’t stop?
I laid my forehead on my knees and rocked back and forth, back and forth. When I became aware of Steve’s arms around me, holding me up, holding me together, I gritted my teeth, refusing to break down further.
“I keep messing up,” I mumbled. My throat ached with the need to sob. I held it back.
“Mistakes are how we learn, Nash. They aren’t the problem.” He was quiet while I gritted my teeth.
Tears slithered down my cheeks, leaving me feeling even weaker.
“Your emotions are part of you; they’re real. Necessary. They make us human.”
“They fucking hurt.”
“Because the people who were supposed to love you betrayed your trust. They let you down. They were selfish and scared and stupid.”
I swiped at my cheeks with the back of my hand and met his gaze. He didn’t just mean my mother or Pop Syad. Brad didn’t count because Brad was a douche. No, Steve meant himself.
“The emotions aren’t the problem,” Steve said again. “It’s what we do with them, the choices we make, that matter.”
“I have to get on that bus,” I said, my voice flat. I scrubbed my hands over my face as I replayed my fight with Aya in my mind. I’d been a dick. I’d woken her from a dead sleep, and I’d attacked her. I hadn’t listened. I hadn’t cared what she had to say. Because I’d felt threatened. She’d been smart enough to disengage, and I’d flung that in her face, too.
“Maybe…” Steve began.
“No, I have to go. I’ll talk to my therapist—I’ll fly him out to meet with me in person. I need him with me. To keep me sober.”
“You can talk to Cam, too,” Steve said.
I shook my head. It was time for me to man up. To deal with my own shit. My own past before it ate me, dragged me under. No amount of advice would fix the demons I refused to face head-on, even after months of therapy and years of trying to drown my liver in alcohol.
Of course, “Demons” by Imagine Dragons flared to life in my battered mind. I gritted my teeth, wishing I could shut that shit down.
Aya had to have gone to the ranch, which meant Cam was pissed at me. Jenna and Aya had become close, so she and Mama Grace would circle around Aya, refusing to let me talk to her until I showed proper contrition.
Families were a pain in the ass. I shook my head even as I smiled, feeling a bit lighter, thankful Aya had the Graces in her corner.
“Steve…”
He stopped at the door, turning to look at me over his shoulder. I licked my lips. Overcome your past. Don’t let it destroy you. This man, a faulty one, was my father, and he’d just picked me up off the floor.
“I need you to help me with this because I really messed up. And I can’t blame Lindsay or drugs or anything else. I broke my relationship with Aya. Just like I’ve swatted away all your attempts to reconcile. I…I’ve messed up. A lot.”
“What do you need?” he asked, hesitant but also eager.
I grimaced. “The correspondences my mother and Pop Syad left for me.” That I’d refused to open, let alone read. “And their wills. I need to deal with their deaths.”
His gaze turned knowing. “Aya emailed me her mother’s will last night while I was driving her.”
I squeezed the back of my neck. “I better read that one, too. And…would you stay with her? Please. I don’t trust her with anyone else.”
He nodded, his jaw working. Finally, he managed to say, “I’ll keep your girl safe. Do the same for yourself, all right?” He looked like he wanted to say more—no doubt about my fall off the wagon.
“I made a mistake last night,” I acknowledged, straightening to my full height. “I might not be able to fix things with Aya, but I damn well can own my actions with the whiskey. I don’t like how alcohol makes me feel. I don’t like the man I become when I drink it or when I do drugs.”
Steve nodded, but his eyes remained guarded.
“And we need to talk,” I said. Aya had asked me to, knowing my relationship with Steve bothered me. “About…you being my dad.”
He shook his head, a furrow digging into the space between his eyebrows. “Sure.” Then he laughed, but it was mirthless. “You really do know how to pick the worst time for things. Just know I’m here for you, son.” His voice caught. “I’m always here for you.”
I nodded. I needed to hear that, and I decided to believe him.