Page 70 of Love What's Left
His lips quirk in a gentle smile, and he places a tender hand on the nape of my neck.
“Your wife is insane,” Rege snaps.
“No I’m not. I just have zero tolerance for drunk assholes.” My words may be slow, but they’re razor sharp.
“Then good luck, babe. You bagged yourself the worst one of us all,” Rege says.
He jerks his chin to my left. “When you come to your senses, find me, bro. I have a case of Clase Azul tequila waiting for you and a yacht full of gorgeous women who’ll keep your balls so drained, you won’t remember your own name, let alone hers.”
26
Gabriel
Head hanging low, I grip our bathroom countertop until the nausea settles.
It’s been hours, but every time I think of the things Regis Martell said to Sydney, my pulse pounds with a sick sort of fury.
I once called that prick afriend. Josh tried to warn me that Rege was a piece of shit, and if I didn’t stop what I was doing, I’d become one too. I told Josh he was jealous.
Nothing was coming between me and the alcohol and sex I needed to drown out the demons in my head. Not even the person who’d been my best friend since I was nine years old.
All the people begging me to stop drinking were wrong. My brother, showing up in a nightclub to pick me up off the floor and drag my ass home covered in my own vomit, was a dick for judging me. My father, threatening to cut me off with tears in his eyes, was a control freak. My mother, reminding me that I’d already finished a bottle of wine and I didn’t need more, was a worrier.
I can bearound alcohol now without a problem. It doesn’t bother me. My brother-in-law can drink a beer, and I’ll snag the seltzer water or apple juice they always have stocked.
But I stay the fuck away from the people who try to drag me back into that lifestyle. I’m not tempted. I’m fucking ashamed of the choices I made.
I was on a binge with Rege the weekend I turned Sydney into collateral damage. I hadn’t even met her, yet, and didn’t truly understand the pain I’d caused for years. Or how one drunken, selfish act from a stranger had stripped away what little ability she had to trust anyone but herself.
She never forgave me for it. The best she could manage was to pretend it never happened. The bestIcould do was protect her from any reminder that the recovering alcoholic in me exists at all.
When life gets hard, drinking makes everything worse.It took two years of therapy for me to stop resenting the truth of that statement. Now, I embrace it. The mental and physical toll was reason enough to turn away from alcohol, but it was the lowest reason on my list. The people I love are first.
I’ll never be able to drink in moderation. That’s not who I am. With the sheer amount of alcohol I used to consume, I’d have reached organ failure before I lived to be forty. Sydney knew who I used to be—
Cold sweat prickles on the back of my neck. I retch into the sink, then brush my teeth and rinse the bowl.
Lifting my head, I stare back at my reflection.Calm the hell down.
Sydney and I left the restaurant with nothing but a few polite exchanges between us. Then she slept sitting up on the flight home, something I’ve never had anyone who wasn’t injured do. She’s been in bed ever since.
She was tired, but she could also be shutting down. She didn’t wake when we landed. I carried her inside, and she only roused long enough to change from her dress to one of my T-shirts.
I hear Sydney shuffle in the bedroom and murmur to Rufus. I paste a neutral expression on my face and open the door to find her perched on the arm of the upholstered chair, our prenup still sitting folded, and, apparently, unread, on her nightstand. She doesn’t look up from her phone when I enter.
I can guess what she’s looking at. The internet is full of photos of my past. She only needed to search for them. When she tells me she wants a divorce, I won’t blame her. Our marriage is on borrowed time.
I’ve always known how she felt about my alcoholism, and I’ll always be an alcoholic. I’ll always choose to turn away from even a single drink, because one would put me back into active addiction in a heartbeat. That may not be the experience of every alcoholic, but it’s who I am.
I move to stare out the window with unseeing eyes. After we married, Sydney had all my passcodes, used a family tracker app, and still constantly looked for signs I’d let her down. She always waited for me to prove she was right not to trust me.
I hear the sound of fabric swishing behind me and close my eyes. Rigid, I wait for Sydney’s judgment.
She wraps her arms around me from behind and rests her cheek on my back. “Are you okay?”
A whiplash of emotion flays me from the inside out. I barely breathe, uncertain if I can believe my own ears.
Finally, I turn to face her, pulling her into my arms. “I’m worried about you.”
