It Won't Come Easily

Chapter Seven

Lucy spent a couple of hours just walking around Chicago, trying to clear her head. She turned off her phone as soon as the text went through to Carter because she knew he would try to either text her back or call her. But she just wanted and needed to be alone.

Her reaction to his admission wasn't fair to him. He was telling her something personal and she made it all about herself and her feelings. That wasn't the right thing to do and she was sorry about that.

To a certain extent she could understand him stealing drugs from the hospital. As an addict, she imagined the temptation to be great and at that point you could probably convince yourself that you weren't hurting anyone but yourself. Stealing from her was a different story.

Knowing the lengths he went to in order to get pain medicine to fuel his addiction exposed her to the depths of his problem. Up until now she had imagined that he had gotten help before he spun out of control. But the reality is he was completely out of control.

And she didn't see it.

She was the person who was closest to him. They practically lived together and spent the majority of their time together. But she didn't know what was going on.

Looking back now, she could see things that should have raised red flags. There were suspicious behaviors, outbursts for no apparent reason and mood changes. But then…then she was oblivious to it. She easily explained it all away as being nothing.

She felt stupid. She felt like she should have been able to see things clearer back then. But there was nothing she could do about the past. She did make some realizations about the future though.

He was honest with her about something that he knew would hurt her. So maybe it was time she was honest back.

After realizing that she couldn't walk around Chicago forever, she slowly made her way back to her apartment. At some point she would have to call Carter and apologize.

Rounding the corner to her apartment door, she saw Carter sitting outside her door. The sight of him there was both comforting and nerve-wracking at the same time. He was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall and seemed to be holding something small in his hands.

She approached him slowly. When he saw her, he jumped up.

"Hey." She greeted.

"Hey." He greeted back slowly. "Are you ok?"

"Let's go inside. My neighbors are nosy sometimes." She suggested, opening her door. "How long have you been out there?"

He looked at his watch. "A couple of hours."

Her heart sank at that admission. "I'm sorry. I went for a long walk and turned off my phone."

"You disappeared on me."

"Yeah." She nodded. "I needed to be alone for a while."

"You never answered my question. Are you ok?"

"I will be." She answered honestly. "But I do have to apologize. You told me this as a part of your recovery and what did I do? I made the whole thing about me. It wasn't fair to you."

"I don't care if things are fair to me." He shrugged. "I just want you to be alright."

She closed the gap between them and gave him a tight hug. "I'm sorry Carter. I should have seen what was going on with you sooner. I should have looked out for you better than I did."

"You don't have to be sorry."

She closed her eyes as his tightened his embrace of her and she put her head on his shoulder.

"I know you said you promised yourself you'd make sure nothing else bad happened to me. That's not realistic though. You can't put that pressure on yourself. It will destroy you." He told her. "Bad things are going to happen to me. Bad things will happen to you. But we just have to get through it."

"I just…"

"No." He interrupted, pulling back from her enough so he could look into her eyes. "Lucy..." he sighed. "I'm not letting you blame yourself for this. I did it to myself. I'm the one who took the drugs. I'm the one who got myself addicted to them. There was nothing you could have done differently."

"I…"

"No." He interrupted again. "I know you don't think you did enough. But you did everything. You helped me by reporting me when you saw I had a problem. You helped them get me into rehab. You helped motivate me every day in rehab."

He took something out of his pocket and offered it to her. "I want you to have this."

She took it and realized it was a NA chip.

"It's my five month chip." He explained.

"Why?" She asked. "Why give it to me?"

"Because whether you realize it or not, you mean everything to me. I have two motivations for staying sober. One is to get my life back on track and earn the trust of everyone again. The other is to get back to being the man you thought I was before all of this. I never want to see the look you had in your eyes that day." He explained.

She was quiet as he spoke. Even though he had gotten addicted to drugs, she still thought he was the same man as before—just a little more troubled. But he was working on his demons.

She wasn't sure what to do about his admission that she meant everything to him. She wasn't expecting that.

"Carter, you're still same man as before to me." She whispered, holding the chip tightly in her fist.

They stood there for a few minutes, just staring at each other. She wasn't sure what to say, and it seemed he didn't know either. He was so close to her. It wouldn't take much to lean in and kiss him, though she knew that wasn't a good idea.

After a moment, he started to smile and lean in. She knew what that look in his eyes meant. She had seen it hundreds of times before. He was going to kiss her is she didn't stop him.

"Carter…"

"Yeah?" He asked softly.

"No." She replied, breathlessly. "This isn't a good idea."

"Uh-huh."

"So we shouldn't…"

"Uh-huh." He nodded.

He didn't stop his seemingly slow motion lean in though and she couldn't seem to move away. He used one hand to gently cup her cheek and then placed a trio of soft kisses on her lips. Then he pulled away slightly and smiled.

Even though she knew it wasn't a good idea, she took a deep breath and wrapped her arms around his neck.

He pressed his lips back on hers, this time using his tongue to explore her mouth. His hands moved around, one gently cupped her ass while the other one was on her back. Both hands were pushing her up against him as much as humanly possible but she didn't mind. She had almost forgotten how electrifying his kisses were.

She couldn't help but moan softly when he moved to start nipping at the spots on her neck that he knew would drive her wild. She let him guide her backwards until she found herself on her back on the couch with him on top of her.

His mouth went back to hers as his right hand started to make its way underneath her shirt. She closed her eyes and whimpered softly when his hand started to gently massage her breast.

But then she realized what she was doing and started to panic. She opened her eyes and found him staring at her. She pulled away, causing him to look confused. "We can't do this…" She whispered. "I can't do this…"

She saw the hurt look on his face as he got up and sat on the end of the couch. She got up too and sat on the wooden coffee table in front of him. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine." He shrugged.

"No, it's not." She argued, letting out a deep sigh. "I'm not ready for something like that. And I don't think you are either."

"Like I said, it's fine."

"Carter…"

"It's fine!" He said a little louder.

She didn't know how to make him understand what was going on in her mind because her mind was jumbled. A part of her just wanted to throw caution to the wind, take him into her bedroom and let him do whatever he wanted to her for as long as he wanted. But that wasn't a good idea for a couple of reasons.

The first was that he was still recovering. Five months of sobriety was wonderful and something to be celebrated. But everything she read said not to get into a relationship until you hit the one year mark and that was still seven months away.

The second was the fact that she didn't know what their previous relationship was anymore. Were they together after the attack just because they found solace in each others' company? She knew that wasn't what it was for her, but she couldn't be sure about Carter. He just told her that she meant everything to him, but that was a dangerous thing for an addict. And did he truly mean it or was he just swapping one addiction for another?

She also wasn't sure if she could handle a relationship right now. After everything that had happened this past year and while Carter was in rehab, she felt empty in many ways.

"Carter." She called his name but he wouldn't look at her. He just kept staring at the ground. She finally raised his chin so they could make eye contact. "Hey. I'm sorry. Can I explain? Or at least try to?"

"You don't have to" He shook his head. "I understand why you stopped. You don't care about me like that anymore." He whispered. "I got it now."

He went to stand up and she closed her eyes. "Shit." She sighed. "How come everything I do ends up making things worse?"

"I'm sorry I made you spend today with me. You were right. It wasn't a good idea." Carter apologized as he headed towards the door.

She had to hurry but got to the door before he did, body blocking him. "You're not leaving yet."

"Lucy, please move."

"Nope." She shook her head. "I'm staying right here so you can't leave until we talk."

"You do realize that I could pick you up and move you myself, right?" He couldn't help but chuckle.

She smirked. "You could try that…but I know where your most ticklish spot is and I'll exploit it if I have to."

He seemed to be debating with himself for a moment about whether he would take a chance on moving her. Finally he sighed. "Ok. Fine. We'll talk. How about we talk the weather?"

"Nope." She shook her head. "That's not the talk I wanna have."

"Lucy…"

"Please shut up and listen for just a moment, ok? Because I have stuff I need to say but it's probably going to come out all jumbled and I'll probably ramble." She asked.

She started to talk again after he nodded his head. "Here's the thing. I do care about you. I care about you even more than I did yesterday and I'll probably end up caring more about you tomorrow than I did today. Because I can't stop caring about you. There's no switch I can flip to change that and make things easier. And yeah, sometimes I wish that switch existed because since I care about you so much, I worry about you constantly."

She took a deep breath. "But I can't help it. I do worry about you constantly. I worry if you are still going to meetings…I worry if you are working too hard and pushing yourself too hard…I worry that you aren't leaning on your sponsor enough…but the thing I worry about the most is that you will relapse and I'll be the cause of it. I'm extremely proud of you for making it five months and I know you can continue that streak. But I still worry all the time. And the last thing I want to do is impede your progress."

"I've read books about what to do with recovering addicts and I've gone to the Nar-anon meetings…they all say don't get into a relationship until you've been clean for a year. I don't think you're truly ready to be in a relationship again, and I know I'm not. Does that make any sense at all?" She asked.

She watched as a smile formed on his face.

"You still care about me?"

She chuckled and rolled her eyes. "That's your main takeaway from what I said?"

"No, but it is the part I want to dwell on because it made me the happiest." He answered honestly.

She smiled. "Carter…"

"I really thought that maybe everything I put you through…everything that I said to you…that maybe it had ruined everything…that you wouldn't be able to care about me anymore." He confessed as a smirk formed on his face. "But apparently you care more for me now?"

She shook her head. "Sometimes I forget that you have a big ego and I shouldn't feed it."

"You went to Nar-anon meetings?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I went to a bunch while you were in rehab and a few more once you got out. I wanted to know what I could do and how I could best help you."

He was silent for a moment and she wondered what he was thinking. Maybe she shouldn't have told him about the Nar-anon meetings. Maybe that was too much.

"Lucy, the fact that you would do those things for me…it means the world to me." He told her, grabbing her hand. "But I really feel like I am ready to try a relationship."

She shook her head. "Carter, I'm not sure it is a good idea. You're only at five months."

"So you care about me…I care about you…but you're going to make us wait seven more months for an arbitrary date to come and go?"

When he said it like that, it didn't make much sense. But she knew that it was the best thing for him. "Yes."

He sighed. "Lucy…"

"Carter, look. Here's the deal. We can either be friends for now and not let what happened earlier happen again, or we can go our separate ways until you're farther along in your recovery. The choice is yours." She hated having to be so strict with him about this but it was for his own good.

He was quiet for a moment. "I'm going to wear you down before these seven months are done. I've got some sweet moves I can bring out."

She couldn't help but smile at his confidence in his so-called moves. Then she saw him get closer to her. "What are you doing?"

"If it might be another seven months before I can do this again, I better make it count now." Without letting her respond, he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her up against him. Then he kissed her slowly, gently probing her mouth with his tongue. He gently picked her up and turned around before letting her down.

When he pulled away, she found that she wasn't up against the door anymore.

"That will tide me over for a while." He smirked, opening her door. "Happy Valentine's Day, Luce."

She watched as he left and chuckled. Then she picked up the NA chip that had fallen on the floor and pressed it to her lips.