Dark Secrets(82)

He was barely moving.

And his mood was that of a four year old being forced to walk instead of ride in a carriage like their little brother.

"It fucking hurts, Faith. What the fuck do you want from me?" he hissed, slamming a hand into the bark of a tree and sucking in a few shallow breaths.

"Yeah, well, it has to hurt. You're an addict and you can't have pain pills in rehab so just suck it up and stop being such a baby."



       
         
       
        

Anthony didn't exactly have a lot of visitors at rehab. Most of that was due to him being a complete and utter asshole when he was first detoxing and a grumpy, in-pain jerk since then.

It wasn't that he wasn't hurting; he was. The nerve damage in his leg made it impossible for him to walk right again. He was numb from the knee down and had stabbing pains in his thigh and hip whenever he got in motion. It was something the doctors claimed would lessen if he just dealt with the pain and did the physical therapy he was supposed to.

But Anthony had spent ten years in a bottle avoiding emotional pain.

It looked like he was going to spend a year on his ass to avoid physical pain too.

Unfortunately for him, Faith wasn't as easily deterred from visiting as his father and brothers were.

"Small doses right now," Vin had said when she asked him why he wasn't going up every weekend.

She understood why.

Anthony was a dick when he was a drunk.

And he was no less dick-ish when he was in pain.

But she was determined to stick it out, to see what Anthony D'Onofrio was like when he was alcohol and pain free. She had a feeling he was actually a pretty decent guy.

That and, well, she was just too stubborn to give up. He wasn't going to out-stubborn her come hell or high water.

"Is this some kind of sick punishment for all the years I was an asshole, 'cause Faith, I think you've paid me back enough already."

Faith turned back, hands on her hips, ready to fight. But then she got a good look at him and sighed instead, dropping her arms.

He looked like shit.

There was no nice way to put it. Detoxing had made him green and sweaty and sick and miserable. He dropped twenty pounds. His face got sunken. And while he was completely detoxed, the weight had been slow to put back on and his skin had taken a grayish hue thanks to the pretty constant pain he was in. You could see it wearing on him too- in the tightness to his jaw and around his eyes, in his short temper, in his willingness to just sit around and not do anything, to all but give up.

"This isn't payback," she said, moving over toward him. "This is me making sure your leg gets better so you don't use that as an excuse to drink when you get out of here."

"Faith," he said, his tone hollow, "my leg is never going to get better. I'm half a fucking cripple for the rest of my life."

She felt a stab of pain in her gut at the truth of that. He would never not walk with a limp. He would never have full mobility again. A part of him was forever changed that night at Lam.

"You know," she said, going for levity, "there was a time when gangsters with canes were all the rage. I say we get you a black fedora, an overcoat, and some fancy spectator shoes and really commit to it. Like those people who dress up for Renaissance fares, but, you know, for mobsters," she offered. 

She got a small chuckle out of him, but seeing as it was the first sign of amusement she had heard from him since he first woke up in the hospital, she would take it.

"Come on, slacker, this was enough of a break," she said, tugging on his shirt sleeve and moving away.

He would follow her.

He would grumble the whole way.

But he would follow her.

Because whether or not anyone else could see it, Anthony D'Onofrio was determined to finally get his life on track.

"That was longer than expected," Daniel said as she walked up to where she had left him on the front deck of the rehab center two hours before.

Daniel and Anthony hadn't exactly learned to play nice yet, though she was hoping for that day eventually, so while Daniel drove out with her because she still had a permit and needed a licensed driver with her, he waited outside.

"I practically had to drag his ass half the way back," she told him, walking over and putting her hands on his hips, leaning up and angling her face upward toward him, raising a brow when he didn't immediately lower his lips to hers.

"It means we have less time to work on your badass defensive driving you've been bugging me about all week," he warned.

"Come on, we can be late for dinner, can't we?" she asked, grimacing at the idea of going at all.