Antidote (Dazed Series Book 3) Page 2

  A soft knock sounds on the other side of my door. I managed to get a solid two hours of sleep after Dr. Evans left me alone, but now I’ve been sitting here, internally restless as fuck as I sit and wait for my mother to come in. I haven’t been cleared to get out of bed yet, so I’ve been confined to sitting here.

  “Oh, Ainsley,” she says in her soft, gentle voice as she slips into the room. My heart thaws a bit at the sight of my mother, but the guilt of how I treated her inserts itself in my mind. “I’m so glad you’re awake, sweetie. I was so worried about you.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” I assure her, my voice still hoarse. My mother reaches out, grabbing the Styrofoam cup of water from my bedside table and hands it to me. “I know I have a lot of physical therapy and shit to do, but I’m awake. I’m alive. I’ll get through it.”

  “I know you will.” My mother smiles, reaching out to grab my hand. “I was just so afraid that I was going to lose you.”

  I squeeze her hand back. “Well, you didn’t. So, we can’t focus on that.”

  She nods. “I know, I know. I’m just so happy that you are awake.”

  The guilt vanishes as I cut my eyes at her, feeling partially betrayed. “Why haven’t you bailed Killian out yet?”

  Her eyes widen and she swallows nervously. “I read the police report, Ainsley. I couldn’t justify paying his bail with you lying in here in a coma because of him.”

  “It wasn’t his fault.” I stare back at her, feeling too many emotions at once. The tears fall from my face without warning. “The drugs were mine. He took the fall for me. And the accident was an honest mistake on his part.”

  My mother stares back at me, her mouth falling open. A quiet sob escapes her lips and she covers her hand with her mouth as her eyes fill with tears. “The pills were yours? But I thought that you were doing so well, Ainsley?”

  I shake my head honestly. “I was using the entire time.” I wipe the tears away from my cheeks, but they continue to fall freely. “Not heroin. Pills. I just used heroin that day, when we got in an accident.”

  “Oh my god,” my mom breathes, her body shaking with her cries. “How could I be so damned stupid and not see it when it was literally right in front of my face?”

  “It’s not your fault.” I squeeze her hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  My mom struggles to collect herself, wiping the tears away from her face as she grabs a tissue from the bedside table and blows her nose. “I should have sent you to an inpatient treatment facility instead of outpatient. I thought that we could get through it without having to go that route. I should have listened to Killian.”

  “I’ll go into inpatient treatment if you promise me that you will post Killian’s bail.”

  My mom’s eyes search mine. “You know, even if I post his bail, he might still go to jail.”

  “We’ll worry about that when we get to that,” I tell her, my mind already made up. “If you want me to go into a treatment center, I need you to do this for me.”

  My mom shakes her head. “You need to go into treatment because you want to.”

  I swallow hard, letting the truth finally surface. “I’m ready to get help, Mom. I want to go. I just need to know that he will be okay, too. He has no bearing over me getting sober.”

  My mom stares at me for a few moments, assessing me in silence before she finally responds. “Okay. I will do it, as long as you promise that you want to get better. As soon as you are able to be discharged from here, I want you transferred directly to a treatment center.”

  I’ve spent too much time trying to escape reality. I’ve ruined too many lives, including my own. Now is my chance to finally make things right. It’s my second chance at life and I can’t afford to take this one for granted.

  “I’m ready to get sober.”

  ONE

  KILLIAN

  One year later

  I used to be a firm non-believer in things happening for a reason. With all of the bad shit that happens in the world, it never made much sense to me. What could possibly be a legitimate reason, one that’s completely justifiable, for all of the bad? I could never come up with an answer, so it was never a belief that I had.

  The foster system made me harder. The way that I grew up before being thrown into the system conditioned me into a certain way of thinking and beliefs. There was no good that came from the world. There were bad people that did bad things. No one ever did anything with good intentions behind their actions.

  It was always a fucking struggle. Growing up in the shittiest parts of the city, with the lifestyle that my mom lived, was rough. In some people’s eyes, it may have seemed like I was neglected. In the eyes of the system, as long as I had a roof over my head and food in my stomach, there was no neglect to be seen.

  I wasn’t abused. I didn’t grow up in a household like that. So, my life as a child realistically could have been worse than it was, but it wasn’t good. I was envious of what other kids had. The families, the good lives where they never had to want for anything. The childhoods that weren’t riddled with drugs and violence, crime and prostitution happening right in front of my young eyes.

  That’s what led me to hate Ainsley. She had everything that I wanted when I was a kid. It was the life that I longed for and she was taking advantage of it. She took everything that she had for granted. But all of those thoughts were before I truly got to know her. You never know what is going on in someone else’s life behind closed doors until you’re behind that door too.

  To the outside world, it looked like she had everything together. Like she could never want for anything. She had the entire world at her fingertips, with everything at her disposal. And maybe she did, but it was only to a certain extent. Her home life wasn’t as good as it seemed to everyone that was looking in from the outside.

  She struggled with her own demons, her own mental health issues. And on top of that, even though her parents were married and living under the same roof, she still had an absent father. He was never present for shit in her life. He was never around and she knew about his indiscretions that her mom didn’t know about. He was having affairs left and right, but she couldn’t tell her mom about it. She was too drunk most of the time to even have a conversation about it.

  Ainsley was taking on the weight of everyone else’s problems on her shoulders. She left no room to deal with her own problems and inside, it was tearing her apart. It was dragging her into the deep depths of depression and the only way that she knew how to escape them were drugs. She found a solace in getting fucked up. It was her way of avoiding the pain that she was dealing with internally.

  After I saw the real her—her real life behind that all American family facade—then I was able to see that my hatred for her was unwarranted. She didn’t deserve the way that I treated her at first. She didn’t deserve my cruelty, but I gave it to her anyway because I felt like she needed to be punished for taking everything for granted.

  In reality she wasn’t taking it for granted. She was just trying to deal with everything that was going on internally and externally. She was struggling with her own demons and I was making her pay for something that was beyond her control.

  I fell for her, and I fell fucking hard.

  We both fell into a vicious cycle of drugs and getting lost in each other. We were never good for each other, but we were what each other needed. And I don’t believe that it was just in that moment. We’re connected, tethered together by an invisible thread for life.

  There’s no way that I can escape her. Even if things don’t ever work out with us in the future—especially after all of the bullshit that we’ve been through—there’s no one else for me. Ainsley was it for me. And I would spend the rest of my life loving her memory more than loving someone else, wishing that they were her.

  I came into her life for a reason. It went against my beliefs. There was a reason behind everything that happened between us. The drugs, the fights that I got in. There was a chain
of events that unfolded, that all cascaded into the situation that we got ourselves in.

  I never meant to crash that car that night. Hurting Ainsley was the last thing that I wanted to do to her, especially after all of the pain that I already added to the hurt she was feeling before I entered her life. I caused so much goddamn pain in her life and none of it was really worth it in the end.

  She believed the lies that I fed her. I sent her away, back home to get help and it didn’t even work. She ended up back in the same position, with a needle in her arm and the poison coursing through her veins. I can’t help but look back at that decision I made and question all of the what ifs.

  What if I never would have sent her home? What if I wouldn’t have lied to her? Would I have actually been able to help her? Could I have tried a little harder to get her the help that she needed? Could I have tried harder and helped her myself?

  I never pushed the issue hard enough. I expressed my concerns with her and how deep she was in her addiction, but I never fully addressed it with her. Sure, we had conversations about it, but I wasn’t adamant enough. If anything, I only added to the problem because I kept trying to outrun my demons by using too.

  If I would have pushed harder, if I wouldn’t have enabled her, maybe I could have helped her instead. Looking back now, it seems like sending her home was the worst thing that I could have possibly done. I don’t know if the outpatient program even helped her at all. I hope that she learned some coping mechanisms from it, but it doesn’t seem that way since she went running back to dope the second that she was triggered by Jude.

  She was never actually clean when she was in that program.

  I should have dropped her ass off at a rehab when I first wanted to. It was an empty threat at the time because I never actually planned on sending her away like that. I know Ainsley better than she knows herself. She needed to want it for herself too. And at the time, going to rehab was the last thing on her mind.

  It would have made her hate me worse than she did when I sent her home with her mom.

  There’s so many fucking what ifs and after spending as much time locked up, I’ve had nothing to do but think.

  After the accident, they did a brief exam in the field and deemed that I didn’t have any injuries that needed to be treated. They didn’t even bother taking me to the hospital. It’s not that it would have mattered anyway. I was leaving in cuffs from the scene of the accident, whether it was in a cop car or in an ambulance.

  They found the drugs instantly. After the impact of the crash, everything was on full display. They didn’t even have to search because I didn’t have anything hiding in the car. All of it was Ainsley’s. I didn’t have anything on me and I wasn’t shooting dope.

  I took the fall for her, because how the hell could I not? If either of us was getting locked up, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her. I took the fall for it all and after the toxicology report came back showing opiates in my system, it was a wrap. They had everything that they needed to pin it all on me.

  I plead guilty to all of the charges. I ended up getting locked up for a year. And fuck, it has been the longest year of my entire life.

  I haven’t heard her voice since that night. The look on her face is cemented in my mind, as she searched frantically for me in the darkness of the night while strapped to the stretcher. There was so much emotion, so much panic in her voice as she called out for me.

  I’ve spent the past year replaying that night in my mind every fucking minute of every day. I can still hear the sound of her voice. The look of defeat on her face when I didn’t respond. The cop was a fucking asshole. I wasn’t taking any chances and making the situation any worse by calling out to her.

  I was already fucked.

  Raina came and visited me occasionally. I don’t know why she did it, especially after everything that I put their family through. She knew the truth, that it was truly an accident. She knew that the drugs were Ainsley’s but she let me take the fall because she knew that it was what needed to be done.

  After the accident, Ainsley was fucked up, mentally and physically. Raina kept me updated on all of the work that she was doing in the hospital. They transferred her to a rehab hospital to get better physically. It was Raina’s idea because she didn’t trust her being home, especially with the way things were going for her mentally.

  When they discharged her from the rehab hospital, Raina had her directly admitted into a drug and alcohol addiction treatment facility. It was where she needed to be. It was where she could get the true help that she actually needed. They were better equipped to handle her than anywhere else.

  At the treatment facility, she’d be able to get the help with getting sober and her mental health issues. She suffered gravely from depression. There were times that I even questioned whether or not she had bipolar disorder, but it was so hard to distinguish anything that could potentially be going on with her when she was doing so many drugs.

  Drugs fuck everything up.

  They take everything until there’s nothing left to take.

  I didn’t have much going for me in life, but I had her. And all it took was the drugs to take her from me. Drugs were the root cause behind our problems and they ultimately ended up having me locked behind these bars.

  When I was growing up, I always thought that I would either end up dead or in jail. After meeting Ainsley, after falling in love with her, I didn’t want either of those. My expectations for myself and my life were higher, even if I didn’t consciously recognize it at the time.

  But, here I am. I ended up exactly where I thought I would all along.

  It could be worse though. I could be dead.

  Ainsley could be dead.

  “Stone.” The corrections officer slides a key into the lock of my cell, turning it to the side. “Get the fuck up. It’s time for you to go.”

  Nodding, I stand up from my bed and amble toward the door of the cell. There was nothing in this tiny room for me to take along with me. I wanted to leave this all behind, leave it in the past and move on with my life.

  My sentencing was longer than a year. It was two years to be exact, but I was getting out early on good behavior. I struck a plea deal. I would do a shorter sentence with good behavior and agreeing to go into rehab afterward.

  I’ve been clean since I’ve been in this place, but because of the drug charges, rehab was something that they threw on the table as an out for me. The lawyer that Raina got me urged me to take the deal, so I did.

  I follow the officer through the halls, past the cells of the other unfortunate souls that will remain in here for who knows how long. I was tested so many times while I was in here by these fucking assholes, but I kept to myself. I kept my head down and my temper in check. Somehow, I managed to stay out of any of the bullshit and didn’t get into any fights.

  I’m not saying that it was easy by any means, but I was trying to look at the bigger picture. I had to keep reminding myself of what was out there for me. And the sooner that I get out of here, the sooner that I can get my life back together.

  Ainsley is the only thing that I see. Whether she wants me in her future or not, she was the driving force behind me getting through my time in jail without getting into any trouble.

  Hopefully she was waiting for me on the other side, because she was the only hope that I had left in this fucked up world.

  TWO

  KILLIAN

  My transport to the treatment facility was effortless. I was under the impression that Raina was going to take me. She had been my lifeline the entire time that I was in jail. I wasn’t able to talk to Ainsley, so Raina was the closest that I could get to her.

  There was a brief moment of disappointment when I saw an unfamiliar man waiting for me outside of the prison. He was my court appointed parole officer, since I was released on parole for five years. I don’t know the specifics behind it or if they saw me as some kind of a flight risk, but since he was my parole officer, he was in cha
rge of getting me to the treatment center.

  He got me there in one piece, thankfully. After everything that I’ve been through, I was surprised that the universe didn’t throw me a fucking curve ball and have us get in an accident and me not even make it there alive.

  That’s just the pessimistic part of my mind that’s been clouding my thoughts. It’s always been there, usually consuming any positivity that threatened to enter my mind. In prison, I tried hard to change my mindset. I tried to look at the positives and anything that could help lift my mood.

  It was all fucked. My mind was just as fucked as the next person.

  Maybe being in rehab will be good for me too. The prison system doesn’t have much to offer for inmates. They have bullshit group meetings that you go to. They made me go to all of the NA meetings and group therapies, but they didn’t do shit.

  I had so much childhood trauma and past issues that I needed to work on and to be honest, it didn’t seem like the therapists and social workers in the prison really gave a shit. It was hard to take it seriously anyway, with the amount of drugs that flow through the halls of the prison. Everything and everyone there is fucking corrupt.

  “I’ll be checking in with you weekly,” Travis, my parole officer, informs me as we walk up the front steps leading to the cabin-like building of the treatment facility. “I’m sure you know that we have to do drug tests, but I don’t know how necessary that will be with you being in a rehab anyway.”

  I give him a sideways glance. “I didn’t touch a single drug in prison and that was with them in my face every fucking day. Do you really think that I’m going to have access to anything while I’m in here?”