Free Unbound: (InterMix) by Cara McKenna Page A

balance. For that decade,
     alcohol had been but a crutch, the lubrication that loosened his brain and mouth enough
     for him to enjoy the company of others. To make him charming enough, calm enough,
     to foster two successful businesses, to court and marry his wife.
    With a final stroke, he let the pump handle go. He stripped his ripe shirt and tossed
     it aside, got to his knees before the basin. His hands prickled the second they plunged
     into the frigid water, but the physical discomfort was welcome, its distraction dulling
     the sting of these memories.
    It hadn’t been until after Rob married that things had changed. Steadily, drinking
     had transformed into the means for becoming insensate, rather than merely a bit of
     fuel to get the social flames to catch.
    He’d gone too deep into the thing, and he could never get back to how he’d been, content
     with two or three. He’d ruined it. He’d needed it too badly, sold his soul for that
     fleeting sense of peace and belonging, not noticing the corrosion until it was far
     too late, his body and brain chewed hollow. Not until sobriety had become the illness,
     a discomfort too painful to suffer. And so the bottle, that most cherished lover,
     had risen up to kiss his lips and soothe his hurt, again and again and again.
    After that pain, loneliness had ceased to register.
    Until Merry.
    He slopped cold water down his arms, grabbed the soap and turned it around in his
     hands.
    Merry.
    She looked at him as those girls had, back in his finest days. She looked at him as
     though he were someone worth her curiosity, worth sitting down and sharing a space
     with, getting to know.
    And now he realized, he wanted that feeling again, so badly. To be seen as worth knowing,
     if not actually known. But without a drink . . . Where to even begin? And the pain
     of that uncertainty trumped the pleasure of her attention.
    Except . . .
    Except with her, out here, he wasn’t loose and charming from Dutch courage. He was
     just his solitary, stroppy self . . . yet she seemed to want to know him, anyway.
    He soaped his shoulders, chest, under his arms, and scrubbed with the washcloth. Granted,
     he was literally the only human company to be had for long miles in every direction,
     but still. She wanted to be friends, he thought, and not with his supposed best self,
     the one filtered through a pint glass and made palatable. For reasons unfathomable
     to him, she liked sober Rob, just as he was. And he didn’t think he could say that
     of any woman. Not his ex-wife. Not even his mother.
    And the man he was out here . . . Rob didn’t self-reflect often these days, but this
     was the most he’d liked himself, ever in his life.
    Well, not
liked
. But this was easily the least he’d ever loathed himself. He wasn’t the awkward,
     unnerving child, or the self-medicated charmer, or the monster that charmer was doomed
     to become. He was a slave to the seasons and weather, not the bottle.
    Merry liked the man he’d become out here. And that made him nearly like that man,
     too.
    Maybe you don’t need a drink to be that way with another person.
    Maybe. Just maybe. He dunked his head and came up dripping. Water in his eyes, he
     felt around and found the soap, lathering his hands.
    Even as his head ached from the cold, it felt so good, this wash. He worked the soap
     into his hair. Christ, he must look a mess. He hadn’t seen himself in a mirror since
     his last trip in the Land Rover—six weeks ago, surely. He needed a haircut. Had to
     be hovering somewhere between
hippie
and
homeless
. He’d better shave, at the very least.
    With his hair rinsed and dripping cold rivulets down his back, dampening the waist
     of his jeans, he lathered the hand towel and scrubbed his face, hard enough to sting.
    What could I talk to her about?
    Anything. But his brain always seized up when the time came for actual conversation.
     He’d make a list.
    San Francisco.
    Her plans once she