“Yeah right.” Stella wiped her mouth and hands with her napkin and sighed. “So you already know I’m lusting after a man I can’t have. What’s your story?”
At that, the consistently even-keeled woman’s eyes went wide. “Oh, you don’t want to know.” She waved her hand between them, but Stella could tell that the nonchalance was feigned. She’d perfected that very same act herself.
“Sure I do. But only if you want to share. I know we don’t know each other very well, but the only ears I’d be in danger of repeating your story to are firmly attached to a thousand-pound horse named Shadowdancer.”
“Shadowdancer?”
“He’s my therapist,” Stella informed her without cracking a smile.
“Ah.” Miranda took a deep breath. “Well, since I’m guessing Shadowdancer is a pretty good confidant, I can tell you that once upon a time I was very young, and very stupid.”
“Weren’t we all?” Stella said softly. Due to her new friend’s profession and her guarded demeanor, she suspected that Miranda typically did more listening than talking. She felt honored that the woman was opening up to her.
“Oh, I was exceptional at it.” The woman’s silky blond hair swayed gently as she shook her head. “Travis Clanton was a bull rider, and a damn good one. Even in high school, he was let onto a professional circuit. I would’ve followed that boy anywhere.”
“Was he cute?”
“Good God, he was sex personified.” Miranda’s ivory cheeks pinked. “But you know, boys like that…”
Again, Stella felt like the Queen of Naïveland.
“Have trouble staying faithful,” she finished for her edification. “But that wasn’t even the problem.”
Stella couldn’t imagine how that wouldn’t be a problem. It would always be a deal breaker for her.
The dreamy light faded from Miranda’s clear blue eyes as they clouded over. “He got hurt. Badly. Several times. But he was young, and his family needed the money. So he started taking painkillers so that he could keep riding.”
Stella felt like the air had been sucked out of her lungs by a high-powered vacuum. “Oh,” she breathed out.
“Yeah.” Moisture began to well in the woman’s eyes. “So I made him choose. The pills, the girls, the booze, and the bulls…or me.” She shrugged as she dabbed at her eyes with a cocktail napkin.
“He chose them,” Stella said quietly, the residual pain from her friend slowly seeping over to her.
“I don’t know.” Miranda swallowed hard. “He OD’d in a hotel in Tulsa before he told me what he’d decided.”
Oh God. Sheer panic gripped her. Talk about an unexpected turn. She hadn’t expected the woman’s story to end that way. She’d thought they were going to get more wine and toast to men being assholes.
She didn’t know how to comfort people. Not being in the habit of confiding in others, she was usually glad that they returned the favor. She spoke in the soothing voice she was used to using with Shadowdancer.
“I’m so sorry, Miranda. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must’ve been like for you.”
“Dear Lord, I didn’t mean to turn Girls’ Night Out into a pity party. Sorry.” She huffed out a breath. “He’s been gone eight years. But he’s why I took this job after finishing medical school. If I can help someone before they lose their life—and before the people who love them lose them to addiction—then I want to be in their corner for that fight.”
Stella nodded. A shameful heat burned in her cheeks. That was an awfully noble reason for working at SCR. She’d just been mostly hiding out from home.
“Have you, um, dated anyone since then?”
Her friend’s gaze dipped downward. “Not exactly. I’ve um, hooked up, I guess you could say, with a few guys just to blow off steam. But no, nothing serious.”
“You look so young. Eight years seems like—”
“I’m twenty-seven. I’ll be thirty before you know it,” Miranda told her. “But thanks for the compliment. What are you? Twenty-two? Twenty-three?”
“I’ll be twenty-three in a few weeks.”
“We’ll have to go out again to celebrate. Can I give you some unsolicited advice from someone who wishes someone would’ve given her some at twenty-two?”
Stella smiled, grateful that Miranda seemed slightly lighter after getting her story off her chest. And that she wanted to hang out again. “Sure. Shadowdancer sucks at advice.”
Her friend grinned, but then her expression went deathly serious. “If you are just lusting after him, give it two months until he’s out of SCR and meet up and get him out of your system when it won’t cost you your job.”
Stella bit her lip. Two months left meant he’d hit his thirty days. Thirty days meant he’d been moved into one of the private residences and out of the main facility. Two months had never seemed so long. This past week alone had felt like torture. Like someone had breathed life into her and then stolen it right back.
“But if it’s more than that,” Miranda continued, “like maybe you want to pursue more than one night with him, then put your two-weeks notice in and tell him how you feel. Sooner rather than later.”
Stella opened her mouth to deny that this was even in the realm of possibility, but her friend wasn’t finished.
“Maybe that seems extreme. But you don’t always get a tomorrow, Stella. Believe me I know.” Her eyes began to fill again. “Everything ends one way or another. Love, lust, life. And when it’s over, when it’s all said and done, it will be the things you didn’t say that will haunt you.”
Van’s face, those intense ocean-in-a-storm eyes of his, flashed in her mind. She wanted to see him. Right then. So damn badly. It was worse than want. It was need.
Both women were quiet as they drove back to SCR. When they parked in the designated employee area, Miranda turned to her, glancing down at the fingers Stella had knotted in her purse strap.
“Well this was fun. Sorry I’m such a bowl of sunshine. I’ll try to tamp it down next time.”
A nervous giggle escaped Stella’s throat. “Honestly, this was the most fun I’ve had…maybe ever. So I’m not sure what that says about me, but I bet you could have a hell of a time psychoanalyzing my dysfunction.”
“Nah, I’m off the clock,” her friend said with a wink. “Hey, Stella?”
Half out of Miranda’s car, she glanced back to see if she’d forgotten something.
“I can’t say much without risking my job—patient confidentiality and all that—but I’m pretty sure you’re going to risk yours, so I have to say something.”
“Okay.”
“What I said about struggling to overcome addiction being like fighting a battle? He’s fighting a bad one. Worse than most of the folks here. So…just know that if you’re going to stand in his corner, you need to commit to staying in it. You’re probably going to get a few bystander injuries if you get too close.”
Stella nodded to acknowledge that she’d heard the woman loud and clear.
She’d heard the warning. She had. But picturing Van fighting a battle with an invisible enemy he couldn’t see made her stomach turn. Because she was pretty sure he was fighting alone, the corner behind him heartbreakingly empty.
It went against everything she knew that made sense. But the knowledge that he needed her to be in that corner was soul deep.
Chapter Eighteen
Van was much more comfortable in his new living arrangement. Granted, his penthouse apartment in LA it wasn’t. And the fucking buffalo head above the fireplace wasn’t exactly his style, but he and Dave—that’s what he’d named the buffalo—weren’t doing too badly for themselves.
A small kitchenette, which he had no plans to cook in, took up one corner. A round wooden table and chairs separated that from the living area, which was really just a brown leather couch, a fireplace, and a flat screen. A decent-sized bed that was a hell of a lot more comfortable than the one in his initial room had been took up most of the floor space. A tiny bathroom with a stand-up shower stall was all that was beyond that.