Free Sarah Mine by Riann Colton Page A

hand over my heart, my stomach churning with fear and nerves.
    He ignored me and crouched down, studying the drawing. He would know the table. It had been the coffee table in my old, shitty apartment. The paper was as long as the table had been. I knew what he would see. Inked renditions of empty pill containers, a tipped over vodka bottle with a little liquid still in the bottom. And an alternating pattern on the table. Pill, shot glass, pill, shot glass. There was a half empty wine glass and a baby’s soother on the table. Two shot glasses were empty, two pills were gone.
    He walked his fingers over the combination I had taken that night. His finger stopped over the empty spot. Slowly, he tapped it, then looked at me over his shoulder.
    “Three years, one month, and three weeks ago,” I said softly, “I took a lethal combination of vodka and ecstasy that sent me into a coma. By the time the air ambulance arrived, I had gone into cardiac arrest.”
    Hill shifted his finger and tapped the soother. He said nothing, just looked at me. Nodding, I gazed up at the ceiling. The white ceiling was easier to talk to than those grey eyes. “He’s three. Lives with his dad. I’m pretty sure Donovan hasn’t told him that when he was five weeks old, his mother sat on the floor of her crappy apartment while a cheap ass band played below and she overdosed right in front of him.” Tears fell down my cheeks as I stared at the popcorn pattern on the ceiling. “Because who wants to know that, right? Who wants to know that their mother is so broken and dead on the inside that she’d rather die when she’s supposed to love him and look after him? So I gave him to the one person who did love him and would look after him. Someone not fucked in the head, someone not broken, someone not afraid to live for him.”
    Hill stood up and stared at me. I wished he’d say something. Anything. “I hated that they brought me back. Hated them all. I hated Donovan sitting beside my bed,” my jaw began to hurt as I looked back at the ceiling. “I hated Billy, that’s his name, for crying so loud that someone heard him down in the bar so they came investigating and found me. I hated the doctors. I hated them all because I just wanted it to stop, so I was planning what I’d do next when Jax appeared.
    “He didn’t leave when I told him to. He didn’t leave when I screamed at him. He sat in that goddamn chair, his stupid pen always scratching over paper. “Sarah mine,” he said, “it’s been a shitty haul for you but suck it up, darlin’. This pity party has gone on long enough. You will get clean and sober. It will suck. But by God you will not let them win this way.” Then he slapped a piece of paper in front of me that said he would pay for my rehab and give me a down payment on a house so I was not in that apartment. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe because my own family never came to see me. I don’t know. It was hell. It took a long time to stop hating everyone because I was alive. Then I stopped hating everyone. I began to draw again. I hadn’t for years. One day I had a visitor at rehab and it was Jax. Told me he found what I needed and showed me pictures of my house….my home. That’s what he called it. Sarah’s home. I couldn’t go back to that apartment, Hill. I couldn’t go back,” I whispered as I finally looked at him. He was staring at the floor, at the drawing.
    “I saw you four years ago.”
    “Yeah,” I whispered.
    “Five weeks old you said?”
    I nodded and he nodded too.
    “Hey, Hill,” he said without looking up from my sketch, “I’m pregnant.” Finally he looked at me. “That would’ve been nice to know, Sarah. That would’ve been really fucking nice to know. But this…Jax. Jax knew.”
    Shit. I nodded again as he rubbed the back of his neck.
    “My Jax?” He didn’t see me nod. A bitter laugh escaped and made my stomach hurt. “That asshole. Asking me if I knew why you got clean, acting