Chapter 54 Empty Bottles
Harper's POV,
Crew's house was supposed to be empty by now.
We'd spent the past week coordinating movers, donating furniture, organizing what would go to Vancouver versus what would go to storage versus what would just be thrown away. The buyer wanted possession in ten days, which meant we had exactly one weekend left to finish packing three years of Crew's life into cardboard boxes.
I pulled into his driveway Saturday morning with coffee and breakfast sandwiches, prepared for a long day of manual labor. Crew's truck was already there, which meant he'd started without me despite promising he'd wait.
The front door was unlocked. I walked in to find him sitting on the floor of his bedroom, surrounded by cardboard boxes and loose papers and what looked like every piece of clothing he'd ever owned.
"You started without me," I said, setting the coffee on the dresser.
"Couldn't sleep. Figured I'd get a head start." He didn't look up. His voice was flat in a way that made my stomach tighten.
I sat down next to him, moving a pile of old hockey jerseys out of the way. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Just packing." He tossed a shirt into a donation box. Then another. Then stopped moving entirely.
"Crew."
He reached behind him and pulled out a garbage bag. Not the black kind for trash. The clear kind that let you see everything inside.
It was full of orange prescription bottles. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
I stared at the bag, my brain trying to process what I was seeing.
"I found them in the back of my closet," Crew said quietly. "Behind the winter coats I never wore. I'd forgotten they were there. Or maybe I didn't forget. Maybe I just didn't want to remember."
I picked up the bag carefully, like it might explode. The bottles rattled against each other, a sound that made my skin crawl. I could see labels through the plastic. Different names, different pharmacies, different doctors. Some prescriptions were in Crew's name. Others weren't.
"How long were you taking these?" I asked.
"Three years. Give or take." He pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. "It started with one prescription after my back injury. Then the pain didn't stop when the prescription ran out, so I got another one. Then another doctor. Then teammates started giving me their extras. Then I was doctor shopping in three different cities and lying about losing prescriptions so I could get refills early."
I counted the bottles visible through the plastic. Thirty-two. And that was just what I could see on one side.
"Why did you keep them?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"I don't know. At first I told myself it was just laziness. Too much work to properly dispose of them, so I'd just throw them in a bag and deal with it later. But later never came. I just kept adding to the collection." He looked at me, his eyes red-rimmed. "I think part of me wanted evidence. Proof of how bad it got. Because when you're in it, when you're high all the time, you can convince yourself it's not that serious. But this many bottles? That's serious. That's a fucking problem you can't explain away."
I set the bag down gently. "How many pills are we talking about? Total. Over three years."
"Thousands. Easily." He laughed, bitter and broken. "I was taking eight to ten pills a day toward the end. Sometimes more before games. The math is pretty damning when you actually do it."
Eight to ten pills a day. For three years.
Jesus Christ.
"Did anyone know?" I asked. "Your teammates? Coaches? Team doctors?"
"Some of them suspected. But hockey has this unwritten rule about minding your own business. If a guy shows up and plays well, you don't ask questions about how he's managing pain. You just let him manage it." He picked up one of the bottles, turning it over in his hands. "And I played well, Harper. Even high out of my mind, I played well. So nobody looked too close."
"What about Marcus? Your agent?"
"Marcus knew. He'd have to be blind not to notice. But he also knew that if I went to rehab, I'd miss games. And missing games meant less media attention, lower contract value, fewer endorsement deals. So he encouraged me to handle it quietly. Keep playing. Keep earning." Crew's voice got harder. "Everyone around me benefited from my addiction. So nobody had incentive to stop it."
I thought about Marcus, who'd seemed genuinely concerned when Crew finally collapsed. Who'd helped arrange rehab and renegotiated contracts to allow recovery time. But before that? Before the crisis became public?
He'd been part of the problem.
"I'm throwing them away," Crew said suddenly. "The bottles. All of them. I'm taking them to a pharmacy disposal tomorrow and getting rid of them properly. I should have done it months ago."
"Do you want me to go with you?"
"No. I need to do this myself." He set the bottle down and looked at me. "But Harper, you need to know what you're getting into. I'm forty-one days clean and I found a bag of empty pill bottles and my first thought was whether any of them still had pills left inside. That's where my brain went. Not relief that I'm done with that chapter. Not pride that I survived. Just addict logic checking for one last high."
"Did any of them have pills left?"
"I didn't look. Because if they did, I don't trust myself not to take them." His voice cracked. "That's what scares me most. Forty-one days sober and I'm still that person. I'm still the addict who checks empty bottles just in case."
I moved closer, wrapping my arms around him even though his whole body was rigid with tension. "You're also the person who admitted it out loud. Who's asking for help. Who's going to meetings and therapy and doing the work even when it's hard. That counts, Crew. That's not nothing."
"Doesn't feel like enough."
"It never does. But you keep doing it anyway." I pulled back to look at him. "What else did you find in the closet? Besides the bottles."
He gestured vaguely at a cardboard box near the window. "Pictures. Old team stuff. Some things from junior hockey."
I opened the box carefully. Photos of Crew in various uniforms over the years. Championship medals. Hockey cards with his face on them. And at the bottom, a team photo from what looked like fifteen years ago.
Junior hockey. Minnesota. Crew was in the back row, young and lean and grinning like he owned the world.
And standing right next to him, arm slung over his shoulders, was Joel.
They looked like brothers. Like best friends. Like two kids who had no idea they'd end up hating each other.
"That was the year we won provincials," Crew said, looking over my shoulder. "Joel and I were linemates. We were unstoppable together. I'd set him up, he'd score, everyone thought we were going to the NHL as a package deal."
"What happened?"
"Draft happened. Scouts happened. Joel started taking credit for plays we'd built together. Started giving interviews like he was carrying the team instead of it being a partnership. By the time draft day came around, his name was everywhere and mine was nowhere." Crew took the photo from me. "He got picked fifteenth overall. I didn't get picked at all. Had to fight my way up through ECHL and AHL for six years before I got my shot."
I studied the photo. They looked so young. So happy.
"Do you ever miss him?" I asked quietly. "The friend he used to be, before everything got complicated?"
"Sometimes. Then I remember he's the same person he always was. Ambitious. Willing to step on people to get ahead. I just didn't see it when we were kids because I thought we were on the same team." He put the photo back in the box. "Keep it or throw it away?"
"Keep one. Just one. To remember who you were before the bitterness."
"That feels very therapist of you."
"I've been attending a lot of therapy sessions with you. It rubs off." I kissed his temple. "What else needs to be packed?"
We spent the next four hours sorting through his life. Clothes that no longer fit went to donation. Furniture that wouldn't fit in the Vancouver condo went to storage. Kitchen stuff got packed into boxes labeled with surprising detail because Crew had apparently become obsessive about organization during rehab.
Around three PM, we took a break to eat the now-cold breakfast sandwiches I'd brought. Crew sat on the kitchen counter while I leaned against the fridge, both of us too tired to care about proper furniture.
"Maya's getting nervous about me leaving," I said, picking at my sandwich. "She keeps making jokes about it but I can tell she's actually sad."
"She's coming to Vancouver in two months though, right?"
"That's the plan. But two months is a long time when you've lived together for six months and been best friends for ten years." I took a bite, chewing slowly. "I feel guilty. Like I'm abandoning her."
"You're not abandoning her. You're building your life. That's different."
"Is it though? She let me live with her rent-free when I had nothing. She organized the fake dating plan that led to us being together. She quit her job at the Titans because of me. And now I'm leaving her alone in Seattle while I run off to start fresh."
"Harper." Crew slid off the counter and stood in front of me. "Maya is a grown woman who makes her own choices. She WANTED to help you. She CHOSE to quit her job. And she's CHOOSING to move to Vancouver in two months. You're not responsible for managing her emotions about your decisions."
"That also sounds very therapist of you."
"Dr. Okonkwo said something similar during our last session. About codependency and people-pleasing and how I need to stop trying to fix everyone's problems." He smiled slightly. "Apparently I have control issues."
"Shocking."
We finished eating in comfortable silence. The house felt strange now, half-empty and echoing. Like it was already becoming a memory instead of a place where someone lived.
"I'm going to miss this house," Crew said, looking around. "Even though it was basically a expensive storage unit for my addiction and emotional avoidance."
"It kept you safe. That matters."
"Now Vancouver gets to keep me safe. New city. New team. New life." He pulled me against him. "You think we can actually do this? Start over clean and build something that doesn't fall apart?"
"I think we can try. That's all anyone can do."
His phone buzzed. He checked it and his expression shifted.
"What's wrong?"
"The house sale. Buyers want to push closing back two weeks. Something about their financing not coming through on time." He scrolled through the email. "Which means we don't get the money we were counting on for the Vancouver down payment until after we've already moved."
"How much do we need?"
"Seventy thousand. We have about forty between us right now."
I did the math in my head. My settlement money was mostly earmarked for clinic startup costs. Crew's signing bonus was covering moving expenses and first few months rent. We'd been counting on the house sale to bridge the gap.
"We'll figure it out," I said, sounding more confident than I felt. "We can ask the Vancouver sellers for an extension. Or we do a smaller down payment and higher mortgage. Or we drain savings and rebuild later."
"I hate asking for extensions. Makes me feel like I can't handle my own business."
"Crew, literally everyone asks for extensions when life gets complicated. That's normal." I squeezed his hand. "Stop trying to be perfect at everything. It's exhausting just watching you."
He laughed, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. "Fair point."
We went back to packing. By seven PM, the bedroom was done, the living room was done, and we were both too exhausted to care about the rest.
I found Crew in the garage, staring at the bag of empty pill bottles like he was saying goodbye to someone.
"You okay?" I asked.
"Yeah." He picked up the bag. "Just acknowledging this part of my life before I close the door on it. Dr. Okonkwo said rituals help with transitions."
"Is throwing away pills a ritual?"
"It is when you kept them like trophies for three years." He looked at me. "You ready to go? I'll take these to the pharmacy tomorrow. Tonight I just want to get out of this house."
We locked up and drove back to Maya's apartment in separate cars. The whole way there, I thought about those bottles. About how close Crew had come to not surviving. About how many people around him had enabled his destruction because it benefited them.
And I thought about how fragile recovery really was. Forty-one days clean, and he was still fighting the urge to check empty bottles for pills.
This was going to be harder than either of us wanted to admit.
But we were doing it anyway.
Together.