Unconditional Love

Riley 3 weeks later

"Yes. There. Don't. Stop." Row is breathless beneath me as I cradle her head and capture every detail.

The daze of her eyes, so close. Her pant. Her hands, one flat against my jaw, keeping my focus fixed on her, the other clawing at my lower back, urging me on. Her legs, sweat slicked, slipping as she tries to keep them clenched around mine. Her soft, tight warmth. God, so tight and yet so soft. The most perfect balance of force and acceptance.

"Riley," she brings both hands to her face."Riley," she repeats, helpless in the thrall of my love.

I roll into her once again, deep, so deep in her. The perfect feel of our joining is one of the few things that shatters my oxy haze, but right at this moment, I feel alive. Acute. Aware.

"I love you," I dip to her face, tasting her mouth. "I love you so much, Rowan."

One, two, three, four, five, six, more thrusts, sliding against her upper wall, and her pants become a gorgeous rhythm of small throbbing noises that finish in a long, satisfied cry as every part of her clenches.

One, two, three, four, five, six more thrusts and my brain and spine blow out with bright hot love as I spill into her.

I kiss her long and lazy as we soften into the hazy afterglow. Mine more hazy than hers, obviously.

I roll off her. Normally she rolls with me, into my side, craving the cuddle, but this time she lies still on her back, eyes closed.

She loves me, but she's lost some trust in the last few weeks. I can't blame her.

I've done the best I can, keeping my habit regulated, but I've known for months it's a problem. For three weeks, we've had difficult discussions. Like every addict, I've distracted, diverted, explained, negotiated.

She's been too soft, because her love is so tender. But eventually she put her foot down. Her firm insistence, her love, and her faith in me outweighed my fears.

So we made a deal. Today is the day. The day I have to prove my love for her.

I do love her, and I will prove it, but I fucking hate what comes next.

Any addict that relapses hates what comes next.

I reach for her hand and squeeze. Bring it to my lips, kiss it. "We should get going."

She rolls up on her side, searches my face. "I'll be there every minute," she promises.

Amazingly, I still manage to laugh . "Good god, I hope not. There's going to be a lot of unpleasantness."

Her face tightens, nearly crumples, but then my beautiful heathen reclaims the rock star inside her, and her features relax. "You've been unpleasant before. Hasn't shaken me yet."

I slide a hand into her raven hair, staring into those piercing gray eyes I adore. "True, but that's because you're unshakable, darling."

She responds to the genuine compliment with a shy smile and places a kiss over my heart, then rises, pulling on a t-shirt and pajama pants. "I'm going to the bath house to shower." She pauses, looking at the bleak dawn. "How long will it take us to get there?"

"About six hours," I yawn lazily, putting both hands behind my head. I'd much rather go back to sleep than face this day.

She picks at a ragged fingernail. She moves away from the bedroom compartment of our camper, opens some random cabinet up front, makes a variety of movements that I can't quite place, and then returns with a clenched fist.

She sits on the bed beside me and opens her palm. It contains one paltry green oxycontin. "I don't want you to get sick on the way."

There's a part of me that wants to close her fist, refuse the pill. There's a part of me that wants to snarl at the partial dose. Riley the negotiator settles somewhere in between.

"Who's driving?" I ask mildly.

"Me," she says firmly.

"You hate to drive the camper through busy exchanges, and we have to go through Saint Louis..." I wheedle, "If you give me the full dose, I can easily drive." It's the irony of the rock star lifestyle we're entrenched in that Row completely trusts me to drive high, but not jonesing and sweating and shaking.

"This is your full, prescribed dose," she says firmly.

I say nothing, just stare at the ceiling.

"Do you trust me to drive this camper?" she asks quietly.

"Yes." My answer is simple and true.

"Then I trust you to make the responsible choice here," she says, her palm still open. There are more pills, and the camper is small. When she goes to shower, I could easily ransack the cabinets. I haven't needed to, because despite the fact that she's been monitoring my intake, she hasn't asked me to restrict it. Until today.

Because we agreed. Today is D-day.

I sigh. There's no choice. There's just me, meeting the eyes of the love of my life, who has shown me her unconditional love in the last few weeks.

I pull her palm to me, lick off the pill with an exaggerated tongue that still tastes of her. Despite herself, she smiles. She tugs at my longish hair, kisses my forehead, and then slaps me lightly on the back of the head. What can I say? We're fairly fucked up, the two of us. We've been through so much shit, the moralities of regular folk simply don't apply.

"You should shower. You smell like last night's bar and sex," she say flatly.

"You think that will surprise anyone waiting on us?"

"Shower," she commands and her wrist slips from my grasp as she glides out of the camper.

I rise and pull on athletic clothes, grab my shower kit, following her through the camp ground to the bathhouse.

###

Adam, looking as blonde and brawny as ever, opens the door to his home. He gives me a twitch of a smile and the shit-cool chin tip before clapping it out.

"Brother," is all he says to me. I can't hear what he says to Row as he tucks her under his arm, drawing her in the house.

Around their kitchen island, Mac, Kade, Bodie, Ashlynn and perhaps not surprisingly, Bridge are assembled.

"Didn't know you were coming," I smile at the woman who is identical to the woman I love.

She smiles back, but it's a sad smile. "I'm here for her." She inclines her raven head toward her twin.

"I'm glad," I nod.

There's a slight silence, but before it slides to truly awkward, Ashlynn pours me a cup of tea. "You should hydrate. Have you eaten?"

I shake my head. Row intervenes. "We didn't want to stop. We wanted to get here."

"Sure," Bodie shrugs. "It's a shit day, on the edge of a detox."

"He should eat. While he can, right?" Ashlynn persists.

Everyone's eyes slide to the physician in charge.

Kade, sandy and All-American, nods. "How do you feel about some toast? Maybe one slice with avocado? Another with nut butter?" he suggests, covering the nutritional bases, I suppose.

I'm not in the slightest bit motivated to eat, already edgy and nauseous, but I see the way Row is looking at me, so I say, "Excellent."

Mac and Ashlynn move as one. In minutes there's a platter of warm toast. The nutty smell of the bread allows me to take a few bites of each.

"Where are the kids?" I ask Mac as I mechanically chew. Their baby girl Townes isn't walking yet, I expected her to be plunked somewhere nearby.

"With MJ and the Rev."

Of course. In case things get rough. Instead of saying something bitter about not being trusted around their kids, I pluck a piece of almond butter toast and tease Row with it. I can tell from the way her nose is pinched she has no appetite either, but she bites into it, taking a he piece from me, sliding her fingers along mine.

We chat lightly for a half hour, but it's not very long before Kade takes command, sliding into clinician mode. He directs my detox team of Row, Ashlynn and Bodie downstairs, where he checks my weight, heart rate and blood pressure, while Row sits on the bed with me.

Then he turns a chair around, swings into it and crosses his arms across the back.

"Before we go any further, tell me exactly how much you're taking."

"We've already told you," Row interjects.

"Addicts often lie about their dose," Kade says without the slightest bit of sympathy.

"I've told you the truth," I assure him.

"If you haven't, you could die. She could watch you die," Kade inclines his head to Row.

I turn to Row to reassure her but she's shaking her head, an expression of irritation on her beautiful face. "He's not lying. He would never do that."

"I need to hear it again," Kade says firmly, refusing to allow me to duck the shameful confession.

I tell him exactly how much I've been taking these past few weeks.

"Anymore, and I would never allow a home detox," Kade warns me. "You could go into cardiac arrest. I'm not exaggerating, Riley."

"And I'm not under-reporting," I tell him. I lock hands with Row. "I watched someone I loved die from drugs," I tell him. "I would never put Row through that. I've fought this slide the entire way, but I'm here, because my body craves these drugs, and the dependency has slowly crept up on me. But these highs are lows are a misery. As scared as I am to go through detox, I want to take back control. I'm telling the honest to God's truth, Kade."

She smiles through her worry, pulling my hand into her lap with both of hers, looking at Kade defiantly.

He looks at me a long hard moment.

he says. "So now, we wait until Riley needs our help," Kade says, rising,

He, Bodie and Ashlynn move from the bedroom into the basement rec room, leaving Row and I alone, but I don't want to tuck into bed like an invalid just yet. Not until I'm actually incapacitated with nausea, abdominal cramps and that undefinable pain that detox brings. I pull her to her feet and draw her out onto the basement patio, carrying the quilt from the bed to ward off chill of spring. We fold together on a cushioned swing, my arms locked tight around her beneath the blanket. I breathe her scent in, trying to find calm amongst the agitation that's beginning to crawl over me.

"You've never said that before—that you're scared of this," Row says quietly.

"Last time I detoxed...I was in lock-up. It was...it was very difficult." It was bloody fucking agony—a horror like I've never experienced. I had every detox symptom one could have...nearly unbearable physical pain, tortuous hallucinations. It was so bad that I was transferred to a medical facility, but I found no relief there.

"You'll get through it. We'll get through it," she says with determination.

"Of course. This time next week, we'll be playing to another disinterested bar crowd," I joke staring off in the direction of the lake, through the barren trees.

Row huffs. Then she takes a deep breath, stills the swing with her foot and pulls my face to hers. "It's going to get better. We're going to make it, I promise you. I need you to find your faith in us."

"I do have faith in us. It's the music industry I'm beginning to doubt," I tell her.

She shakes her head. "It's not them. It's us. We've lost that undefinable spark we had six months ago. The drugs have grounded it."

"So it's my fault," I say bitterly.

"And mine," she says softly. "For turning a blind eye to what you've been going through, hoping we'd hit first, and deal with it later. We have to deal with it first."

"I know. Rowan, I'm sorry. I'm truly sorry. Everything I've put you through, and now this. It's inexcusable that I let things get this far."

"Don't be sorry, my love," she says softly. "Just be faithful."

I kiss her temple, smiling at the irony of her words. To her faithful doesn't mean forsaking other lovers, or even forsaking the drugs. She's asking me to be full of faith that we can still make our dreams come true, despite the year of disappointments. It's asking a lot; I'm tapped out, but I know things will feel different, when I can actually feel things again without the numbing effect of the painkillers.

"You know, Rowan, there was once a time that I truly believed I loved you more than you were capable of loving me. That time has long passed. I'm scared, and I'm sick, but I love you with all that I am, and it's only the strength of your love that's giving me the courage to do this. I do have faith—in you."

She said nothing else, just holds me for hours as we gently swing and the spring dusk cools into the remnants of a Southern winter night. When I begin to shiver, however, we both know it isn't from the cold. A fine sweat rises with the tremor of my muscles. My gut clenches with the kind of acute cramps that are breathtaking. It takes everything in me not to push Row away, but she senses it immediately—the moment I can no longer stand our bodies to be so enmeshed.

This ordeal is one that requires the soul focus of my attention. Not even my love for her can keep my flesh one with hers.

She rises, and I am vaguely aware that she's speaking, but it's not until Bodie and Kade's arms lift me from the swing, that I realize she called them for help. They barely get me to the bed before I am vomiting into some kind of bin that Ashlynn thrusts into my face with the practiced timing of a mother who reads well the urgency of sickness.

When I can no longer sit and vomit, they lower me slowly to the bed and Ashlynn remains, exchanging a foul bin for a fresh one. I shake and retch. I'm aware of Row hovering around.

"Go," I tell her through gritted teeth. "Leave."

I don't want her to see me like this. It was enough that she had to care for me when I was hurt and could do nothing for myself. But this? This is the very last shreds of my dignity, hot and spoiled and horrible, tearing up my throat and ripping through my gut and—

"GO!" I shout at Rowan.

"He doesn't mean that," Ashlynn tells.

"Like.Bloody.Fuck.I.Don't," I growl at Ashlynn. "You.Too."

She grabs Row's forearm, keeping her in my line of sight. "She's not going anywhere, and neither am I."

I glance up at Row, who is holding a damp cloth, wanting desperately to help me, not knowing how.

I stare at Ashlynn, pleading with her. Surely she remembers what this was like...the agony in my guts that I can't control. Ashlynn rocks back on her heels beside my bed, her kind, intuitive gaze assessing. "Boys," her head turns to the side. "Bathroom."

"Oh, I can—" Row begins.

"No, let them. He's too heavy for us," she smiles at me, telling Row the lie that I'm grateful for.

For some few hours I can't count, the four of them shuffle me between bed and bathroom as my body liquifies itself in a rage, holding itself hostage for the drugs it's sure it requires. The guys do the heavy lifting, and Ashlynn calmly directs Rowan in stripping sheets and wiping away any of several kinds of filth of my ordeal. Eventually there's nothing left to fuel that particular physical rebellion, and I'm left weak, barely on the edge of consciousness, as Rowan forces me to take small sips of water.

That's when the pain begins.

Searing and undefined, acute and yet phantom. I chase the pain around and around my body, trying to catch it, squeeze the life out of it, but the burn is always ahead of me, everywhere and nowhere at once. I'm not even aware that I'm groaning and that Row is sitting on the bed beside me until she begins to cry.

"What can I do?" she wails. "We have to do something!"

She's not talking to me. She's talking to them. Kade, Bodie, and Ashlynn have no response because they all know bloody well there's nothing to be done. Detox is an unrelenting bitch.

I reach for Row's hand. "Sing to me. Please. Sing."

I say it for her sake, but once she begins, it becomes my lifeline. Every breathy phrase becomes the air I breathe, every gorgeous inflection of her voice is the succor to my pain. Song after quiet song, she gives me ease. She sings me to sleep.

In my twilight, shadows creep toward me, and I dread the terrible place where I can't tell if the slithering, snatching things are real or hallucination, but the shadows never overtake me while Row sings. Row's quiet hum spreads golden around me, bathing me in lovelight where no evil dreams can invade.

Hours and hours Row holds my hand and keeps the horrors at bay. When she grows hoarse and needs rest, another voice sings to me. Ashlynn, with her simpler, sweeter tones. They aren't magic like Row's song, but at least I am not alone. When Ashlynn sings, and I know Row is sleeping, I can weep without worry that Row will weep, too. Ashlynn soothes my head and sings and shushes me like one of her children, but her comfort is cold compared to Row's.

I fall unwillingly into dark dreams.

Forest. Beast. Horns. Witches. Chants and chalices and blood and fire. The witches call to me, but I hide from them. They want my blood. They want my secret. They want my green gold. I flee, and the beast with horns tracks me.

"Now that I have seen the foul treasure you covet, there is nowhere you can hide from me," he says. "Don't run. Be brave. Seek the goddess. She will help you sacrifice your cursed hoard and break the curse."

The beast is fearsome, and I flee him. I scramble through the forest, but I've only doubled back to the clearing with the witches and the altar and the cup full of blood. A terrifying witch whose face keeps aging in a cycle from girlhood to old age brings the chalice to me. Her chant and her gaze paralyzye me, and I know she is the goddess the beast spoke of. I look down into the chalice filled with thick red wine that's not wine at all, but blood.

"What will you sacrifice to break the curse?" she asks solemnly.

I hold out empty hands to her. As quick as lightening, she slits my wrists. It's not blood but green pills that spill from the gaping wounds and the bloodwine turns foul and boils as the pills tumble in. The flow of green pills turns into green blood gushing into the cup that never overfills and oh god, I'm going to bleed out. All the green blood in my body is pouring into that cup. No, that can't be right—blood is not green—

The witch-goddess pours the cup over my head, drenching me in the foul, boiling, bubbling filth. She points one perfect finger into the fire.

"I cannot compel you to purify," she says in a voice so much like Row's. "You must walk into the flames willingly."

I am afraid. My heart feels weak but frantic, and I think it will stop, but it doesn't. "Will it break the curse?" I pant.

"Yes. Dance into the flames and find your destiny," Sean Faraday says.

"Will you sing?" I ask him.

"You must find your own courage."

When I look into the fire, I am terrified, because there are flames, but there is also a dark pool in its center. I've almost drowned in that dark ocean before. I know what waits there.

Who waits there.

On the edge of my mind, I hear the ghost girl. Silent. Holding her breath. Waiting for me to die so she can once again speak her love.

"No," I shake my head, backing away from the flames and the dark ocean within them and the ghost within that. "No."

"You must burn your poisoned treasure and break the curse, or you must drown and go with the ghost," the witch-goddess tells me. "Your only path back to a blessed life lies through the flames."

Somehow I make my feet move, and I sing a song I don't know as I walk into the flames. The fouled blood the witch-goddess dumped over me ignites like gasoline, and I'm burning. Burning to bones, burning to ashes. The pain—oh jesus god the pain—I will do anything to stop it. The dark ocean is there. All I have to do is step into it. She's waiting there, to quench the flames and take me down into the dark peace, silent forever in her arms.

And I want to stop the pain, so badly—so very very badly—but if I wade into the ocean I will be trapped in a long-dead love with a ghost whose name I can't remember. I will suffer an eternity of regret because Rowan is the only name that fills my mind. As I burn, I lift my eyes from the dark pool, and I see through the other side of the flames.

Rowan. She's blazing with beauty and strength and surety, her raven hair coiling around her like seductive serpents. She's singing to me. Calling out my courage, binding me to her like the siren she is. I feel a cool spark like trees and ferns and shooting stars inside me that freezes the pain of the balefire burning me.

I have to go to her. My beautiful heathen's song is life.

Every step through the fire is difficult. The way over the dark ocean seems impossible with my wizened muscles and cracked bones, but I do not look at the ghost girl waiting in the deep as I leap it. I fall on the other side, stumbling through more flames, disintegrating, but Row's voice somehow keeps my dusty form together. I crawl from the flames toward Rowan's arms, but I don't quite reach her before her song is finished. As the the notes die on her lips, all the ash of me dissolves.

I am nothing.

In the nothing, I hear a voice. It is not the girl whom I loved whose name I  cannot remember.

It is the witch-goddess, her voice tinkling with mirth. I do not see what there is to be happy about, but she says, "Tuatha de danaan, I am well-pleased. Even the Romans must admire your faith," she says. "You are purified, and your curse is broken. Go now, my child. You are finally free to forge the path to your destiny."

An eternity passes in the space of one heartbeat.

"Riley," Rowan whispers. "Riley, wake up."

I open my eyes. The rising sun reflects in her gray eyes, like the first dawn.

My throat is still on fire. Rowan offers me water, and I take a small sip, eager to lubricate my cords.

"You've had a rough three days. Don't try to talk," Rowan murmurs as she presses kisses to my now cool forehead.

I smile, reaching for her, breathing her in. I have no need to talk. Only to sing—an entirely new song.