Six months later
Carter's POV
I always thought coming out of rehab would feel like crossing a finish line. Like the air would taste cleaner, like I'd step into sunlight and feel brand new.
But the world was the same.
The streets still stank of car exhaust and fast food grease. The sky was still too gray for comfort. My hands still shook when I thought too hard. I was clean, yeah. But I wasn't whole.
Six months in that place. Six months of breaking and rebuilding. Six months of group therapy where I learned to say things like "I accept responsibility" and "I acknowledge my triggers." Six months of staring at the same off-white walls until I could trace every crack with my eyes closed. Six months of nightmares where I was drowning, always drowning, and she was standing on the shore, not even trying to save me.
I thought I'd walk out a different man. Instead, I just walked out.
My counselor, Diane, had stood by the door on my last day, her eyes kind but cautious. Her graying hair was pulled back in that same severe bun she always wore, but her smile was genuine when she handed me my discharge papers.
"Remember what we talked about, Carter," she'd said, her voice low and steady. "Recovery isn't a destination. It's a practice."
I'd nodded like I understood, but honestly, all I could think about was getting out. Getting free. Getting back to—
"And Carter," she'd added, touching my arm lightly, "be careful about old attachments. Sometimes the things we think we need are the things that hurt us most."
I'd smiled tightly, promised I would remember, and walked out feeling the weight of her gaze on my back. But I already knew where I was going. Where I'd always been going.
To her.
Emily.
Some part of me—a pathetic, clinging part—still believed she'd be waiting. Still loved me. Still wanted to fix what we broke. I knew it was foolish, but after everything we'd been, I had to know.
I took the bus across town, watching familiar neighborhoods blur past the smudged window. Each stop brought me closer to her apartment, the one we'd picked out together before everything fell apart. The one with the tiny balcony where we used to drink cheap wine and talk about the future like it was something we could hold in our hands.
My heart pounded against my ribs as I walked the three flights up to her door. The hallway smelled like it always had—a strange mix of curry from 3B and the floral air freshener the landlord sprayed to mask the scent of mildew. I paused outside her door, listening. No sound from within. I took a deep breath and knocked.
She opened it wearing someone else's hoodie—too large for her frame, navy blue with a university logo I didn't recognize. Her hair was longer than I remembered, curled perfectly around her shoulders. She looked... beautiful. She always did. But different somehow. Like a photograph that had been edited just slightly—still recognizable but somehow enhanced, improved.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed with recognition. "Carter?"
"Hi," I said. My voice felt like it belonged to a stranger. Rough from disuse, or maybe from the cigarettes I'd started smoking again the moment I left rehab. A bad habit I'd promised myself I wouldn't return to. The first of many broken promises, I suspected.
There was a long pause. She didn't smile. Her expression hardened, like she was steeling herself against an unpleasant encounter.
"You look... different," she said, her eyes scanning me critically from head to toe, looking for signs of the addict she remembered.
"Six months sober," I said quietly, fighting the urge to add and counting like they taught us to say at meetings. As if quantifying sobriety somehow made it more substantial, more real.
She gave a short, humorless laugh, then stepped outside, firmly closing the door behind her. I noticed how she kept the barrier between me and whatever life she'd built in there. Whoever she'd built it with.
"What are you doing here carter" she asked me
"I came for you" I told her "I still love you"
She laughs
"I can't be with a druggie, Carter. You'll make me look bad." She crossed her arms, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Do you have any idea what people would say if they knew I was dating someone who went to rehab? How that would affect my career? My reputation?"
I stared at her, truly seeing her for the first time. This wasn't the Emily I remembered—or maybe it was, and I'd been too high to notice I mean those were the exact same words she told me before I was going to rehab but I thought after being away she would understand that I truly love her.
"I heard you told everyone," I said quietly. Everyone at school."
She didn't even have the decency to look ashamed. "People were going to find out anyway. I just controlled the narrative."
"Controlled the narrative?" I repeated, disbelief coloring my words. "You mean you made sure everyone knew what a pathetic junkie I was before I could tell my side?"
She shrugged. "Call it what you want. I had a reputation to protect."
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "Is he good to you? The new guy?"
A smug smile crossed her face. "He's on track to make partner at his firm by thirty. Drives a BMW. Comes from the right family." She paused meaningfully. "And he doesn't disappear for days on drug binges or steal money from my purse."
I flinched, remembering the desperate things I'd done when the cravings got too bad.
"Must be nice," I said bitterly. "Finding someone who fits so perfectly into your carefully curated life."
"It is," she said, not missing a beat. "It's exactly what I deserve."
I looked at her—really looked at her. The perfectly styled hair. The designer clothes. The cold, calculating look in her eyes that I'd once mistaken for passion. And I felt something unexpected: relief.
"You know what, Emily? You're right." I straightened my shoulders. "You do deserve exactly what you have."
She turned to go back inside, then paused, hand on the doorknob. "Oh, and Carter? Don't come back here again. I've moved on to better things."
With that final twist of the knife, she went back inside.
I stood there for a long time, watching the door. Not hoping she'd come back out, but trying to process the coldness I'd just witnessed. The complete lack of empathy. Had she always been this way? Had I been too blind to see it?
I finally turned and walked away, feeling a strange mix of emptiness and anger. I was sober but still reeling from the encounter. Still alone. But maybe, just maybe, better off without someone who could discard a person so easily when they no longer served her purposes.
I wandered the streets for hours, passing liquor stores and bars, testing my resolve against the magnetic pull of old habits. It would be so easy to slip back. To numb this new pain with the familiar comfort of oblivion. To prove Emily right—that I was just a loser, a junkie who couldn't stay clean.
I even went so far as to stand outside O'Malley's—the dive bar where I'd spent countless nights before rehab. Through the grimy window, I could see the same crowd hunched over the same sticky bar. The same bartender pouring the same poison. Nothing had changed in there either.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Unknown Number: It's Olivia. Heard you got out today. You okay?
I stared at the screen, something like relief washing over me. I hadn't spoken to Olivia in almost a year—not since that disastrous intervention she and Seb had staged. The one where I'd said unforgivable things. Thrown their concern back in their faces. Burned bridges I never thought I'd cross again.
Yet here she was. Reaching out.
Me: Not really.
The response was immediate.
Olivia: Where are you?
I hesitated, then typed back.
Me: Outside O'Malley's.
A long pause. Then:
Olivia: Stay there. Don't go in. I'm coming.
It was Olivia who found me again.
I don't know how she knew I'd need her just then. But she always had that way—like the universe whispered secrets in her ear the rest of us weren't allowed to hear.
I was sitting on the curb across from the bar when she pulled up in her ancient Toyota, the same one she'd had since college. She climbed out, her dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, wearing paint-splattered jeans and an oversized flannel shirt. No makeup. No pretense. Just Liv.
She didn't say anything at first, just sat down beside me on the curb, her shoulder touching mine. We watched the comings and goings of O'Malley's in silence for several minutes.
Finally, she spoke. "You saw Emily."
It wasn't a question.
"Yeah," I said, my voice rough. "How'd you know?"
"Because I know you," she said simply. Then she turned to look at me, her eyes soft but unflinching.
"She's been seeing someone for about a year now. A professor at the community college. Nice guy. Stable."
I flinched at the emphasis on that last word. Stable. Everything I wasn't.
"You could have warned me," I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
"Would you have listened?" she asked gently.
I didn't answer. We both knew I wouldn't have.
"Come on," she said after a moment, standing and offering me her hand. "Let's go somewhere that isn't here."
We met at the little bookstore on Green Street the next day, the one she used to sneak into between classes. She was sitting in the poetry section, legs folded beneath her, reading Sylvia Plath like it was scripture.
"Liv."
She looked up.
Her eyes widened, then softened. "Carter."
She stood slowly, then hugged me without hesitation. And just like that, the pieces of me I didn't know were still broken started sliding back into place.
We settled into a quiet corner of the adjoining café, away from curious ears. The barista—a girl with blue hair and more piercings than I could count—brought us steaming mugs without us having to order. Liv must be a regular, I realized. Another reminder of how life had continued without me.
"So," she said, wrapping her hands around her mug. "How was it? Really?"
I considered lying. Saying it was fine. That I was fixed now. Better. But this was Liv—the one person who had always seen through my bullshit.
"Brutal," I admitted. "Necessary, but... brutal."
She nodded, waiting for me to continue.
"They strip you down," I said, my voice low. "Make you look at all the ugly parts. The things you've been running from. The damage you've done." I stared into my coffee, watching the cream swirl into patterns. "There's nowhere to hide in there. No distractions. Just you and your demons, locked in a room together."
"And did it help?" she asked. "Facing them?"
I thought about it for a long moment. "I don't know yet. I'm sober. That's something. But the rest..." I trailed off, unsure how to explain the hollowness I still felt, the sense that sobriety was just the beginning of a much longer journey.
"The rest takes time," she finished for me. "You can't undo years of damage in six months, Carter."
"I know," I said, though part of me had hoped exactly that. Had believed that getting clean would somehow magically restore everything else too. "It's just... I thought I'd feel more... I don't know. Transformed?"
A small smile played at her lips. "Life isn't a movie. Recovery doesn't come with a montage and a neat character arc."
I laughed—actually laughed—for what felt like the first time in ages. "When did you get so wise, Liv?"
"Probably around the time I started going to Al-Anon," she said, her voice softening. "Turns out loving an addict does almost as much damage as being one."
That sobered me instantly. "I'm sorry. For everything I put you through."
She nodded, accepting the apology without dismissing it. Another thing I'd learned in rehab—not to expect instant forgiveness, not to demand that my apologies immediately erase the hurt I'd caused.
We talked for hours. About rehab. About Emily. About how things fell apart.
And then she told me everything.
About Project Echo.
About how Sebastian's father—Jonathan—had turned his son into a human experiment, subjecting him to "stimulus trials" and psychological punishment in the name of science. About how Olivia's own parents had been researchers too—cold, clinical people who treated her more like data than a daughter.
"They believed emotional regulation could be engineered," she said, her voice brittle. "They thought love was a variable. That pain could be... quantified."
Her fingers trembled as she wrapped them around a chipped mug of tea. "Seb and I—we were just kids. We didn't even realize how twisted it was until we left."
"But why would they—" I started, struggling to comprehend the magnitude of what she was describing.
"Because they thought they were creating something revolutionary," she interrupted, her eyes distant. "A new method of emotional control. They called it 'affective conditioning.' They believed they could program a person's emotional responses—make them stronger, more resilient, less vulnerable to psychological distress."
She laughed bitterly. "Turns out all they did was create a generation of adults who have to relearn how to feel."
"And then?" I asked quietly.
"We couldn't stay together," she said. "Not right away. We were too broken. Too full of each other's pain. We need to heal, but apart from each other. So we split. To breathe. To heal."
I couldn't speak. Just stared at her, trying to imagine what it must have felt like—to grow up in a house where love was conditional, calculated. Where your pain was noted on a clipboard rather than soothed with an embrace.
Suddenly, my own demons seemed smaller. More manageable.
"Do you hate them?" I asked.
"I used to," she whispered. "God, I used to hate them so much it felt like it would consume me. But now I just feel... empty when I think of them. Like they're characters from a book I read once. Distant. Unreal."
She looked up, meeting my eyes directly. "That's why I never gave up on you, you know. Even when you were at your worst. When you hurt me so much. Because I understand what it's like to be shaped by something outside your control. To have to fight for your own humanity."
I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. "I didn't deserve that kind of loyalty."
"Maybe not," she agreed, with that brutal honesty that was so essentially Liv. "But you have it anyway."
We became friends again, Olivia and I. Real friends. Not the kind who dance around their pain with jokes and sarcasm, but the kind who sit in silence together when the world is too loud.
She helped me find a small apartment not far from hers—a studio with good light and minimal reminders of my past. Helped me furnish it with secondhand finds and plants that would "give me something to care for," as she put it.
Olivia was writing—a novel about trauma and memory and lost boys. About hope.
Olivia and I moved to New York later that year. She'd been offered a publishing deal, and I needed a fresh start—somewhere without memories lurking around every corner.
I found a job at a bookstore—nothing glamorous, but something steady. Started attending meetings regularly. Made a few cautious friendships with people who didn't know my history, didn't look at me with that mixture of wariness and pity I'd grown accustomed to back home.
Slowly, the days got easier. The cravings less frequent. The regrets less consuming.
Seven Years later
It's been seven years now.
Seven years clean.
Seven years of carrying scars instead of open wounds.
Sebastian came back last year. He was different—more still, more grounded. Like the fire inside him had finally quieted. They reconnected, rekindled, remade what they had into something stronger.
He asked her to marry him.
She said yes.
And now I was standing in their wedding.
The garden was soaked in golden light. Vines curled around white trellises. Lanterns swayed gently in the spring breeze. Everyone looked perfect. Polished.
I stood at the edge, hands in my pockets, watching the ceremony from a distance.
I didn't belong in the front row. Didn't deserve to be that close to their happiness. Not yet.
Sebastian had asked me to be his best man, an honor I'd declined with as much grace as I could muster. "Some wounds are still too fresh," I'd told him. "For all of us." He'd understood. Hadn't pushed.
Olivia looked radiant in a simple ivory gown. Sebastian stood tall beside her, hands shaking just slightly as he reached for hers.
The officiant—an older woman with kind eyes—began the ceremony. "We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of two souls who have found their way back to each other against all odds..."
I swallowed hard, fighting the emotion rising in my throat. If anyone had earned this happiness, it was them. Two people who had survived the unimaginable, who had broken and rebuilt themselves, who had learned to love not despite their scars but because of them.
When Olivia spoke her vows, her voice was clear and strong.
Sebastian's voice shook slightly as he responded.
When she smiled at him—really smiled—my heart ached. Not with jealousy. With something older. Sadder.
Regret, maybe.
Not for what I'd lost with Olivia— for Emily who does not even love me that wound had healed cleaner than expected. But for all the years I'd wasted. All the connections I'd severed. All the trust I'd broken.
But there was something else there too. Something that felt surprisingly like peace.
Because they had found their way back. Despite everything.
And if they could rebuild from such complete devastation, maybe there was hope for the rest of us too.
I looked around at the celebration, at all these people joined together in joy. For so long, I'd felt like an outsider in my own life. Like I was watching everyone else move forward while I stayed trapped in a loop of self-destruction.
That's when I saw her.
Across the courtyard.
A woman I hadn't noticed earlier. She was standing alone, watching the dancers with a wistful expression. Her hair was shorter, curled at the ends. Her dress was navy blue, understated. But it was something in her eyes that caught my attention.
That stillness.
That quiet melancholy mixed with something stronger.
She met my gaze.
And she smiled, though the sadness lingered around her eyes.
My breath caught.
For a second, the noise of the wedding faded. The laughter. The music. The clinking glasses.
Just her.
And me.
I walked toward her slowly, drawn by something I couldn't name.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," she echoed.
We stood in silence for a heartbeat.
"Not much of a wedding person?" I asked finally.
She shrugged lightly. "They're beautiful. But sometimes they make you think too much."
"About what?"
"The roads not taken. The choices we make." She glanced at me. "I'm sorry. That sounds overly dramatic for a conversation with a stranger."
"I'm Carter," I offered.
She smiled, a genuine one this time. "Nice to meet you, Carter."
I noticed how she didn't offer her name in return, but somehow it didn't matter.
"You look..." I hesitated, not wanting to presume. "Like you're carrying something heavy today."
She looked surprised, then thoughtful. "Sometimes it's hard to say in words what we're feeling." Her gaze drifted to the dance floor, where Olivia and Sebastian swayed together, lost in their own world. "Don't you find that? That the biggest feelings are the hardest to express?"
I nodded, understanding completely. "The most important things are often the hardest to say."
The music shifted. A slow song.
Couples began to dance. Olivia and Sebastian moved together in the center, radiant and whole.
I looked at her.
"Do you want to dance?"
She hesitated. Then held out her hand. "I thought you'd never ask."
Her fingers were warm in mine.
We stepped onto the grass. Moved to the rhythm of a song neither of us knew. Around us, people laughed and twirled. But for me, it was just her.
We didn't talk.
We didn't need to.
For the first time in a long time, I felt like I wasn't just standing still while the world moved on without me.
I was moving too.
Forward.
Toward something real.
Something that might just be worth believing in again.