“It reduces symptoms. Supposedly. If this is reduced, though, cold turkey has to be a fucking bitch.” She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand then scooted back to lean against the wall. “I’d kill right now for another pill. But I never want to go through this again. This shit is the worst.”
I reached over the toilet to grab her a wad of toilet paper. “So you really do want to quit? What was it you were hooked on?”
“Thank you,” she said as I handed her the tissue. “It was oxy. I never meant to start taking it in the first place. You know me, I like the uppers, not the opiates.” She paused, her hand at her mouth as if she’d had another wave of nausea.
I put my arms out to help her back to the toilet if she needed it, but she stayed put. There was amusement in Amber’s eyes despite the ashen look on her face. A moment later, she relaxed, the bout having passed. “You’re such a good nurse,” she said when she could speak again. “It’s one of the things I’ve missed the most about you.”
I stood and crossed to the sink to get a washcloth to wipe her mouth, but also to busy myself because I didn’t know how to respond to her comment. Such a good nurse. I knew what it really alluded to – that I was good at being attentive. Good at pleasing.
I was good at it, and I loved that it was what she’d thought of when she’d thought of me. But there was so much baggage attached to the role I’d played with her, and dwelling on it would only make it more difficult to separate the person I’d been then from the person I was now. The line had already blurred so much since Reeve had rekindled my old desires. One poker in the fire was all I could handle.
Her eyes stayed fixed on me. “I missed lots of things about you,” she said, misreading my retreat. “Not just that.”
I forced my gaze to hers. “I missed a lot of things about you, too.”
She smiled, and I noticed she could do that now without grimacing in pain. “Anyway,” she said, “I only got hooked on the oxy because Micha fed them to me like candy. First, only after he’d gotten rough, or one of his men had gotten rough. Then more often. And then I wanted them all the time because it was easier to escape that way than it was to escape for real.”
My spine prickled. She’d been a prisoner to the man then. It was what Joe had believed all along.
I sat again on the side of the tub and gripped the edges with my hands. This wasn’t the conversation I needed to have with her, but it was personal and intimate and I figured it might be a good lead-in. “Escape? Were you not with him of free will? I thought you said you went to him to punish Reeve?”
“At first. Yes. Reeve and I…” she hesitated, and I realized she was trying to figure out how much to reveal, not knowing that I already knew the story. “Well, we ended badly.”
I was tired of beating around the bush. “He said he tried to keep you here.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “He told you that?”
“Yeah.” Well, that was one way to hint that he and I had become close. Amber knew him well enough to understand he didn’t give anything freely.
But Amber came up with another explanation. “Reeve probably figured there wasn’t any harm in admitting it since I was obviously not pressing charges. He’s lucky I went to Micha instead of the cops.” Her tone was tart and full of spite.
“He was actually pretty remorseful about it all.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I worried I’d said the wrong thing. I’d wanted to defend him, but perhaps I should have kept silent and let her hold onto her resentment so that she wouldn’t care that I was with him.
“He was?” She seemed more surprised about this news than that he’d admitted anything to me. “Well, that’s something.”
Her entire countenance seemed to brighten. She’d been so run-down that I was somewhat glad I could say something to cheer her, but, damn, I wished that hadn’t been it.
“So, yeah, that’s what happened,” she went on. “He wouldn’t let me leave the ranch for, I don’t know, weeks. Which really wasn’t as horrible as all that since he treated me like a queen the whole time, but it was still wrong. And I was pissed and vengeful and I stupidly ran to Micha because I knew it would get Reeve worked up. I’d only planned to fool around with him for a few weeks, you know, let it burn. But then Micha was good to me. He gave me a lot of things – really fucking nice jewelry, Em. You should have seen the emeralds. And he was so attentive. He wanted to know all about my life. I actually told him about my dad.”
“Wow.” I was pretty sure she’d never told anyone but me about the father who had repeatedly raped her until she got fed up and ran away at sixteen.
“I know, right? And Micha said he wished he could erase all that pain. I believed him.” Her voice caught, and she paused to blink back tears.
I moved to the floor next to her so I could put my arm around her. “They make it easy to believe,” I said, trying to soothe her. I knew how that felt – to trust someone not to harm and then have that trust betrayed. At least, with Reeve, I’d found a man who could give me what I craved without breaking me down.
Amber dried her tears off after only a minute. “God, I sound like a Lifetime special, don’t I?”
“Nah. You’re definitely an HBO documentary.”
She laughed. “At least I’m premium entertainment.” She leaned forward to get more toilet paper and, after dabbing at her nose, tossed it into the can at the side of the tub. “By the time I realized what he was really like, he’d already assured that I was tied to him forever.”