Caleb’s POV
The first few days were hell.
The shakes. The nausea. The headaches that felt like my skull was splitting open from the inside.
Jiji didn’t leave.
She sat in the shitty plastic chair beside the bed they put me in, flipping through some beat-up magazine and pretending she wasn’t watching me suffer.
"You look like shit," she commented on day two, barely glancing up from an article about some celebrity breakup.
I groaned, shoving the damp washcloth off my forehead. "I feel like shit."
She smirked. "Good. Means you’re still alive."
I scowled at her. "You always this charming?"
"Only for you, jackass," she shot back, crossing her legs.
I should have been annoyed.
Should have wanted her to leave me the hell alone.
But I didn’t.
Because every other person in my life had either left, given up on me, or been someone I needed to push away.
But Jiji?
She just stayed.
And that scared me more than anything else.
By the end of the month, I was officially done with detox.
But the cravings? The urge to drown everything out? That wasn’t gone. It was still there, whispering in the back of my mind, waiting for me to slip.
I wouldn’t, though.
Not yet.
Jiji had made me swear to try.
"Just one week, Caleb," she had said, sitting across from me at some rundown diner she dragged me to after I got out. "Just prove to yourself that you can go one fucking week without screwing yourself over."
I had agreed.
Not for myself.
For her.
But then my phone rang. I almost ignored it.Then I saw the name.
Emma.
My chest tightened. I had spent months trying to forget her. Trying to forget what I had lost.
And now, suddenly, she was right there, on my screen.
I hesitated. Then I hit ignore.
Because I wasn’t ready to face her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.