Free Broken: A Billionaire Love Story by Heather Chase Page B

felt alive. Not scared or panicky, and not obsessed with her future, just purely alive and in the moment for the first time in...in...she didn’t even know when.
    And so, this relapse held a particular disappointment for her, and a particular sympathy. With the night behind him, Shane looked broken in half.
    “How do you feel?” she asked him.
    His arms were collapsed up into his chest, body slightly bent. He gave a long shrug. “Not great. I don’t know.”
    She tried to quell her feelings of sympathy for the sad man she saw in front of her. She wanted to be tough—professional.
    What she didn’t want to do—certainly not—was crawl in his lap and kiss his handsome face and tell him how it was all going to be perfectly okay.
    No, no. She couldn’t do anything like that.
    Surprisingly, earlier in the day during Big Group, while Olivia was there to listen, Shane had spoken up about his past.
    “I was in football, you know, when I was younger,” he said. “Big star. Big linebacker star. I was just, you know, this supreme athlete. I could drink like a fish and then wake up the next day, no problem, ready to go play. Now, it’s not even that much later. Ten years, maybe? And I wake up with shivers if I don’t have a drink.” He held his hand out, showing the group. “I went out, last night. I figure you all heard. I don’t know why it was that I did.” He shook his head, putting his hands back together. “No, I guess I do. I just wanted...I wanted to escape for a little bit. I didn’t want to have to deal with my sobriety yet. I could feel it coming like a train, hitting my life, and I just wanted to slide out from under the tracks for a little while longer.”
    It was a surprising admission from Shane. She was glad he had the ability to say something like that. Still, though, she was suspicious of it—it had that ring of rationalization to it, that layer of self-justified excuses that alcoholics were so desperately skilled at creating.
    “Shane?” she tried again. “This morning, when you talked about why you went out last night...”
    He nodded, eyes shining a bit. “Yeah? You heard that?”
    “Of course. Would you mind if I offered a counter explanation?”
    He shrugged. “Go for it.”
    She stood up and walked across the room and sat next to him on the small couch. She almost had no control over her actions—his clear need for human contact overshadowed any reservations she might have had.
    “I had a patient in here not too long ago,” she began. “He’s got about two years now. A sweetheart. He sends me cards every six months to let me know how he is. I don’t get many cards like that. Maybe that’s why I remember him. Anyway, when he checked in here, they had to take him to the medical wing first, like they did with you.”
    “All screwed up, huh?”
    “That’s right. His game was pain meds, though. His sister brought him in, and when he dropped him off, the sister said, ‘Good luck in there. Hopefully they can finally figure out why you’re doing this so much.’ The nurse admitting him—Nurse Andrews, she’s not here anymore—she smiled and nodded and said she hoped so too. But when his sister left, Nurse Andrews, she turned to him and said, ‘Son, it’s no mystery why you’re doing what you do. I’ll clear it up for you right now. You like the way it makes you feel, that’s all.’”
    After it was clear that the story was done, Shane frowned.
    “Sort of simplistic, isn’t it?”
    “There’s something to be said, I think, for bringing down our lofty opinions of our drug use and just putting them into atomic terms. You went out last night because you’re an alcoholic, that’s all. You drank because you’re an alcoholic. If you drink again, it’s because you’re an alcoholic.”
    He shook his hands forward into the air, frustrated. “Then how do I stop?”
    “By accepting that you’re an alcoholic.”
    “Ah,” he waved, turning away. “Who the hell wants to