Thrive: A Friends-to-Lovers Standalone Romance (Stonewood Billionaire Brothers Series)
Thrive: Chapter 30

Therapist: The temptation will come and it will be overwhelming.

Jay: My determination will be there too and it will be impenetrable.

Jay

“You think…” I glanced around, rubbed my eyes and saw what the damage looked like to someone who hadn’t been there. A tumbler was on the floor, probably reeking of incense and booze, and powder was laid out on the table.

I tried to tuck my rage into a bottle for later. I tried not to blow up at her, but the distrust I saw all over her face whittled away at my hope. The one person I wanted to believe I wasn’t ever going to use again stood there questioning me like I was only ever an addict.

I’d been more.

I was more.

I’d stared at that cocaine most of the night.

I’d held a rolled up piece of paper in my hand ready to sniff it off the table after watching Lela do two lines.

I’d stared at the one drug that had committed to me and always been there for me and turned it down.

No one tells you that breaking off your relationship with a drug is like losing a loved one. That the pain of knowing you won’t ever feel that exact same sort of feeling again is a scary fucking thing. Sure, the loved one had screwed with your head, threatened your life, and stolen so many things from you, but they’d still been a part of you.

Saying no, especially when it was only me and the drug, was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.

Instead of the woman I loved congratulating me on doing that, she was accusing me of throwing away my sobriety and my career.

I cleared my throat. “I get this looks bad, Meek—”

She cut me off. “It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Let’s not talk about it.”

As she rushed to the sink and grabbed a towel from the counter, I realized what she was doing. “Wait a second.” I stood up. “What are you doing?”

Lela piped up from the corner of the bus like a ghost I’d completely forgotten about. “Yeah, what are you doing? Don’t you dare wipe my blow. I’m going to hit it soon.”

She threw the towel into the sink harder than necessary. “Fine. We need to go, then, Jay. Lela, it’s been interesting.”

Mikka stormed off the bus, and I stalked after her.

In the middle of the village, I yelled at her. “You have some gall coming here at the ass crack of dawn just to direct judgmental looks my way after you sped back to Dougie yesterday.”

As she spun around, her hair whipped through the air. “Go back to him? Are you insane?” she screeched. “I can’t believe you think I would go back to him.”

Her words didn’t even really register. “Oh, so then you know how I feel about you thinking I would go back to using.”

“There was cocaine on the fucking table, Jay. You slept in her trailer. Did you fuck her before you took the hit or after?” She threw the first blow swiftly, knocking the wind out of my lungs with the ruthlessness of her words.

I shook my head. Her eyes glistened in the light of the morning sun. “You know what? You’re broken.”

She took a step back, ready to be done with me.

“I’m broken too, Little Pebble. We never threw stones at each other before, and we’re not going to start now. Our ground rules were wrong. We’re broken.”

She swiped at her eyes. “I can’t… I don’t know how to not be.”

I closed the distance between us and threaded my hand in hers. “I never wanted you to be unbroken, woman. We have to work together to heal.”

She snatched her hand away. “Jay, you need to finish your scenes for the day. You need to focus on you.”

I nodded and searched her eyes, scanned her up and down and saw the way she was holding herself. “First, I want you to give me a drug test. I want you to call Bob and tell him you found me in the bus with Lela and cocaine. Let’s go back to Lorraine’s and have me take one.”

She shook her head, eyes widening. “No,” she whispered and then blurted loudly, “No! You’re not doing that. We aren’t torpedoing your role in this movie to prove… whatever you’re trying to prove.”

“The fact that you think I’m torpedoing my career means you don’t believe nothing happened on that bus. So I’m going to show you.”

She frowned.

“Lela!” I yelled. The wizard of a woman appeared in her doorway immediately. “Did we sleep together or use on your bus?”

She looked baffled by the question, like I hadn’t spent the night on her bus. “So, it might be a good time to tell you both that I’m only attracted to women. Also, we don’t use anything on my bus, Jay. But if we did, Mikka, Jay would be sober as a judge. Really not a fun guy to pull an all-nighter with, quite honestly.”

“See!” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Let’s go, little one.”

She begrudgingly followed me.

We didn’t say a word to each other on the way. I didn’t even look back to make sure she was following. She ascended the stairs like she was on death row. I grabbed the supplies and started to unbuckle in front of her. Even then, she rolled her eyes and turned around.

I pissed in the cup and set it down on the table. As I zipped back up my jeans, I walked over to sit on the bed.

She closed the bedroom door and leaned against it. She stared out the window on the opposite side of the room, then murmured, “I don’t care one way or the other, Jay.”

“You wouldn’t care if I fucked her and relapsed?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Fucking her is one thing. That’s unforgivable. Relapsing is something totally different.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning we’d get through it.”

“Your mom would never want you to be with a man who uses drugs.”

“I’m not concerned about what she wants.”

“She raised a gold standard of a daughter to be with a gold standard of a man, little one.”

“We all have our flaws.” She sighed and rubbed her neck.

“Okay.” I nodded, urging her on but not asking.

“Are you going to ask where I went?”

“No. I’m going to accept whatever you have to give.” I waited because it was her story to tell. I waited because she’d been pushed and controlled before. My anger and impatience to know where she’d been didn’t have a place here.

“What if what I have isn’t much?” she asked, her voice small.

“It’s all I want,” I said without even considering it.

“Compared to other women – ”

“There’s no other woman to compare you to for me. You’re it. I’m taking whatever you’ll give me.”

She took a steadying breath and nodded. “I’m going to tell you what happened last night, and I want you to remember that everything has been taken care of.”

Leave it to Mikka to have already solved the problem.

“I left last night because my mother called. Dougie showed up there. He showed up and he wouldn’t leave until he saw me…”

I rose to go to her but fell back to the bed when my legs gave out. With a push, I forced myself to her side and cradled her face in my hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Your movie—”

“Means nothing at all, Wrecking Ball!” I said, voice cracking. “What happened? Are you…” I assessed her with a different eye, one that looked for the smallest change in color. The faintest line across her neck and a slit covered in lipstick popped out like black on white paper. “No,” I whispered as I brushed the marks. “No, no, no.”

“It’s okay. He’s in custody. He’s going to jail.” She choked back a sob and put her hand over her mouth. “I fought back. I didn’t let him beat me into a corner and into submission again.”

The words took the floor out from under me. I almost fell to her feet, I almost let my rage run rampant at the fact that this man had gotten away with hurting her again. “Wrecking ball, you were never one to submit. Remember that.”

I pulled her in and lifted her chin. I kissed along the line I saw. I murmured into her neck, “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for letting the law bring him to justice instead of me.”

Her hands fluttered over my arms as she moaned low at my touch. “It’s for the best. I didn’t want anyone fighting my battle.”

“Your battle will always be my battle, Little Pebble. Yue Lao tied us together.” I gazed into her eyes. “I believe your mom’s story now.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she looked to the ceiling, trying her best not to let them fall. “I want to tell you that you’re crazy. I also want to believe you.”

“Believe me. Or I’ll prove it. I’ll earn your belief over time.”

I stepped back and spun around. I grabbed the cup from the counter and held it up for her to see. “To start, I’m as clean as a whistle.”

“Jay… I’m sorry, but—” she started.

“It looked bad. I get it. Lela’s never been anything to me, you know that. It’s hard to think you’ll always be scared that I might relapse, but you’re right.”

She opened her mouth and then closed it. That’s right, Little Pebble, we are going to be honest. No lies. No false hopes.

I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. “I might relapse. I have to accept that about myself too. Last night was hard. It could have been catastrophic, but I proved something to myself and hopefully to you. For now, I’m strong enough. For future reference, call me when you decide to strand the man you love.”

The smile that spread across her face was worth the pain of admitting how I felt.