TANTRIC (Book 3 of the Soundcrush Series)

Chapter 9: Hippie Chics Run Around Porsches

Song for this chapter is Fade Into You by Mazzy Star. So good for the Savasana Lash takes in their yoga practice in the last half of the chapter!

Let's see how Ashlynn handles her craving for a fix...

Ashlynn

There aren't many people in the early afternoon meeting. I go last, introducing myself, making the statement about being an addict, and how long I've been sober, and for a few minutes I fumble with why I'm there, but eventually I just tell the truth.

I'm having a bad day.

The worst I've had in a while.

I'm sad. I'm confused. I'm hurting.

I don't like feeling bad things.

I would rather feel nothing at all.

I want a pill, or a bowl, or maybe even a line, to make me stop feeling bad things.

Talking about it doesn't make the hurt go away.

It doesn't take the craving away either.

But looking around the room at the seven other people that know exactly I feel? All of them who have just told me they have far more time sober than me?

Their silent strength sharpens my resolve.

I'm not going to use drugs today.

When I leave the meeting, Leed is sitting in his giant silver SUV, exactly where I left him. I climb in and he puts his phone down, pulling my sunglasses from my face, observing me with an unreadable expression.

"How's your headache?"

"Better," I lift the water I drank in the meeting. "You were right, it's not a migraine. No aura, no nauseau..."

"Still hate me?" he asks casually.

I take his hand. "I didn't. I don't. Thank you, for coming after me. For bringing me here."

"And the rest? Cam? The hurt?" he asks.

"I don't know. I still feel sad."

"Still want to use?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to. Not today."

"Good." He nods and throws the truck into drive, pulling out into traffic.

After a few minutes, he reaches over and wraps his fingers in mine on the console. He makes a weary, frustrated sound. "I'm sorry he left you when you were sick. I can't understand that, and I can't imagine how much that hurt you."

I look over at him, his profile—so perfect, so composed, but the sound he made...tells me the truth. There was pain in that troubled sigh. This Lion that stalks and roars and wears his sexy pride like an armor? He might have the softest heart of anyone I know. He's hurting for me. It touches me on a level I can't explain. A warmth unfurls in me, flows to where our hands are twined together, returns to my center ten times more powerful.

I don't want to talk about Cam with Leed, but I want Leed to understand me. It feels...important.

"It's not quite that simple. After my accident, Cam was there for me. Every day for months and months. I wasn't getting any better and I knew it. The worst part of it was...I felt like I was holding him hostage. My parents basically let him move in, because he was the only one that could get me out of bed at all. He didn't go to his last semester of college, because of me. He did independent studies to graduate and he did all the work, sitting in my room while I slept or watched tv with subtitles turned on, because the sound made my head hurt. He was nearly as much of a zombie as I was, except he didn't have to live like that. I hated what my condition was doing to him. Of course, I told him he should go—break up with me, forget about me. He would promise me that was not going to happen. He told me I was going to get better, I was going to finish Duke, then we were going to get married and wherever he did his residency, I would go to med school, just like we always planned. I knew it was all a fantasy at that point. I was already starting to abuse my prescriptions and I realized, when I took too much, I could be cruel to him and not care about it. So I was. I tried to push him away. I was hateful and bitter, and he started to lose patience with me. Until eventually he realized why I was so mean, and he tried all over again to save me. He tried to get me help. He tried to convince my parents that my pain management was making me an addict and that my personality changes were tied to my addiction. He refused to give up. So I took even more drugs, and completely numbed out. Nothing he did or said could move me then, no matter how much he begged or cried. He begged me to stop taking so many pills, because he was afraid I was going to overdose. I ignored him and chose the pills. One night, he told me his worst fear was waking up next to me dead. I told him he already did that every morning. He rolled me over, kissed me for the first time in months, pleaded with me to feel it, feel anything, and I just lay there and let him try to kiss me and cry. I think that's the night I broke him. The night he knew he would leave."