For the Love of Alex by J.E. Hopkins

guys, but he felt comforted by them as they grew up in similar dysfunctional circumstances. They could relate to him in way she could not. Although she tried to be supportive, she knew those guys were dangerous and would lure Alex into trouble. They knew how to feed on Alex’s reckless side and they would encourage him to take stupid risks. Alex would gladly oblige. They gave him acceptance, and he craved it.
    They enticed him to do some tricks on their bikes as if they were supercross champions. Unfortunately Alex, riding without a helmet, landed hard on his back. He shattered his collarbone and damaged several discs in his back. Leah could never forget that day, seeing him in the hospital all bandaged and bruised. She thought he would die. So many times he had tempted death and escaped—but this time would be the last, she had feared. Her prayers were answered, though, and he survived yet again, but not without considerable pain and rehabilitation.
    The doctors were unaware of his history with heroin and prescribed him oxycontin. One taste of that drug awoke Alex’s addictive tendencies. Just like that, the years of fighting the cravings had come to an abrupt end. Oxycontin was his welcome back into the world of narcotics and he embraced it, and until this moment hadn’t looked back.
    When his oxy ran out, he found heroin again and the two had been inseparable for the last six years. He tried to hide it from her, and for a while it worked. Leah noticed the subtle changes in his personality, but she made excuses for his behavior, not wanting to accept the truth. It was the pain he would always battle thanks to the biking accident, or it was the stress of his childhood. It was anything but drugs. Anything but addiction. She couldn’t accept that the drugs had won after all those years of fighting.
    But denial could not erase the track marks on his arms or the stash of needles she found in his bedroom. She sat on the floor holding those needles and crying as the truth sank in and her denial faded. Alex found her there. He at first tried to deny it, but then he acknowledged the awful truth. He tried to convince her he had it under control, but she knew then he was the one under heroin’s control, and there was nothing she could do to change it and there still wasn’t anything she could do.
    She just had to hope he learned something from those two weeks in rehab. Maybe this could be the start of his healing.
    Is that my hope talking or just my old friend denial? “Where do we go from here?” she asked.
    “It’s time for me to get my life back. That starts with getting a job. I need to help pay some of the bills around here. I can’t stand you working two jobs while I sit here. I’m going to take some of this burden off of you, babe. You’ve been dealing with too much on your own for too long. I gotta step up and be the man you deserve.”
    She could see the determination in his eyes and she knew he meant the words he said. She wanted to trust him, trust in him, but her mind was telling her to ignore her heart and embrace the facts. Two weeks was not enough time.
    She dismissed those negative thoughts. “Just take care of yourself Alex, please. Go to meetings or whatever you need to do to stay clean. Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to do too much too soon.”
    She read enough books to know that the success rate of rehab was not high the first time around, especially with heroin addiction. Alex was more likely to fall off the wagon than to succeed, but if she supported him and believed in him maybe that could give him the push he needed to stay sober.
    “I’m not going to fail, Leah. I’m tired of failing. All that failure has led to empty dreams and broken promises. The good thing is that I am young enough to fix it. It’s not too late for me. I can’t let it be too late for me. I can’t let her win. I can’t let her know that she destroyed me.”
    Rebecca. For all his life, Alex had fought to prove that he