Page 14 of Reckless Woman
This time her reply takes ages to come through.
Cool.
That’s it?
Cool?
I stand there, staring at my cell, expecting another message to show up any second demanding all the details.
Stupid me.
I should have known not to expect rainbows and glitter cakes. I traveled to Colombia to escape Joseph, and if it was up to Viviana I’d still be running. Before I came along, he wasEl Asesino. Santiago’s red right hand. Someone to be feared and avoided. Then she shot him in a gas station parking lot, and now he’s the man who drew a line in the sand between me and her.
* * *
There are tenof us in the group today. There should be eleven, but there’s an empty chair that’s as conspicuous as a freshly squeezed zit.
Some are older than me, some are younger—it’s a perfect cross-section of well-heeled addiction. There are even a couple of washed-up rock stars…Greens is the best rehab center in Florida, after all.
We’re sitting in a neat circle, on chairs as hard as these first few minutes of introductions invariably are.
Not for me.
I’ve always been a pretty open person—a walking target, as my mom used to say. When I was a teenager, I wore my heart on both sleeves of my Nirvana T-shirt. I guess that’s what broke me after I was rescued. For the first time in my life, I clammed up. I couldn’t deal with it, so that shit had to speedball somewhere.
It’s what makes it so painful to love a man who’s a tightly closed fist. Joseph kills to relieve that pressure, but I know it’s not sustainable.
And then what?
“Would anyone like to go first?”
Rina, our therapist, is one of those extreme cat-lover types in her late-fifties, with frizzy brown hair, a purple thigh-length cardigan and half-moon glasses on a silver chain. There’s sympathy and toughness in her smile—kind of like a librarian with teeth.
“Yes, I will.” I raise my hand above a sea of relieved expressions.
“Wonderful.” Rina flicks through her notes trying to place me, then nods in encouragement. “In your own time.”
“My name is Anna. I’m twenty-eight years old and I’m an addict.”
I say it confidently because I own this statement now—the same way I own every bad thing I’ve ever done, just like Joseph taught me to.
I fought for it.
I killed for it.
I don’t tell them that, though. Jeez. They’d all be running scared back to their beachfront mansions. Instead, I share the PG version of my story—leaving out the parts about the Russian traffickers and the rapes, the murders, the cartel leader and my fiancé—the Wanted Man. I tell them all the relevant parts that they can relate to, and in turn I’m rewarded with a strange sense of relief for sharing my demons with a bunch of strangers.
“That’s wonderful, Anna,” says Rina when I run out of steam. “Thank you for trusting us with your story.” She glances around the room again. “Who’d like to go next?”
The middle-aged Soccer Mom in Gucci sweats opposite me raises her hand.
“I will.”
After that, the admissions flow freely from one person to the next, circling the room like wildfire and smoking out shame. We’re like soldiers united in this battle. We talk endlessly about consequences, about sadness and loneliness; about running from pain, and finding comfort in all the wrong places. After two hours of this, I feel like I’ve undergone the mother of all workouts for the mind and soul.
Rina’s just wrapping up when the door to the Beethoven room bangs open with the kind of drama that the late composer would be proud of.
“Sorry I missed it,” drawls a female voice, a million times more confident than mine—with an edge and an accent that fills the room with enigma and mystery. “Crosstown traffic was a bitch.”