Chapter 30 Crew's First Call
Harper's Pov,
The phone rang at exactly ten AM and I'd been sitting on Maya's couch staring at it for the past twenty minutes, waiting.
My coffee had gone cold in the mug I was holding and my hands wouldn't stop shaking no matter how many times I told myself to calm down.
"Harper Sinclair?" A woman's voice came through, professional and clipped.
"Yes, that's me."
"This is Dr. Patricia Kim from Serenity Hills Treatment Center. I'm Crew Lawson's primary therapist and I'm going to connect you with him now. You have fifteen minutes and I'll be monitoring the call. Please remember what we discussed yesterday about keeping the conversation focused on his recovery."
Yeah, I knew what that meant.
Don't tell him about the Titans threatening to fire him. Don't tell him about the five-day ultimatum Morrison gave me. Don't stress him out when he's supposed to be focusing on getting clean.
Basically, lie to the person I loved because the truth might break him when he was already so fragile.
"I understand," I said.
There was a click on the line, then some static, then silence that stretched out so long I thought we'd been disconnected somehow.
"Harper?"
His voice hit me like a physical blow and I hadn't realized how much I needed to hear it until that exact moment.
"Crew." My voice cracked despite my best efforts to sound normal. "Hi."
"Hi." He sounded different than I remembered. Clearer, like someone had wiped away a layer of fog that I hadn't even noticed was covering him before. But he also sounded fragile in a way that scared me, like he might shatter into a million pieces if I said the wrong thing.
"I've been trying to get them to let me call you for days but they kept saying it was too soon. That I needed to focus on my treatment first."
"I'm just really glad you did. How are you doing there? Are you okay?"
"I'm getting better, I think. It's been harder than I thought it would be, way harder actually." He paused and I could hear him breathing on the other end.
"But thankfully, I'm clean. Two weeks as of today."
"I'm so proud of you, Crew."
"Don't be proud of me yet. I still have four more weeks left in this place and some days… I'm not sure I'm going to make it." Another pause, longer this time.
"Tell me what's been going on out there. Tell me everything that's happened. I've had absolutely zero contact with the outside world since I got here and it's driving me completely insane not knowing what's happening with you."
My throat went tight as I remembered I shouldn't.
"Nothing's really happening out here. I'm staying with Maya still, doing some job hunting, just the usual stuff. Nothing exciting."
"Harper."
"What?"
"You're lying to me right now." His voice came out quiet but absolutely certain, like he could see right through me even over the phone. "I can hear it in your voice. Something's wrong. What happened?"
"Nothing happened. I promise I'm fine."
"That's bullshit and you know it. What's going on with the lawsuit? With the criminal charges? Did something change with any of that?"
"No, everything's basically the same. Monica's handling all the legal stuff." The lies tasted like poison in my mouth but I kept going anyway.
"Really, Crew. I'm okay. You just need to focus on getting better and not worry about me."
The silence that followed stretched out so long I thought he might have hung up on me.
"Do you know why I asked them to let me call you today?" he finally asked.
"Why?"
"Because last night in group therapy, my counselor asked what I was most afraid of. And I realized it wasn't the withdrawals or the pain or even losing hockey forever." His voice got even quieter, almost a whisper.
"...It was losing you. I'm absolutely terrified that I'm going to walk out of here in four weeks and you're going to be gone because I wasn't there when you needed me most."
"I'm not going anywhere, I promise."
"Then promise me something else."
"What?"
"Promise me you'll tell me the truth about what's happening out there. Please. I can't help you from here but I can at least know what you're dealing with."
I closed my eyes and felt tears start to burn behind my eyelids. Dr. Kim's warning echoed in my head loud and clear;
Don't stress him out. Let him focus on his own recovery first.
But Crew was asking me directly to tell him the truth. And I'd already lied to him once in this conversation and hated myself for it.
"The Titans called your mom a few days ago," I said quietly, carefully. "They're concerned about our relationship. About whether it's healthy for your recovery and your career."
"What does that even mean? Concerned how?"
I sighed."They think I'm a distraction for you. That all the media attention around me and my legal situation is bad for your image and your future with the team."
"So what, they're threatening you? Trying to make you break up with me?"
"They want us to take a break while you're in treatment. Just temporarily. So you can focus on getting clean without worrying about me or the media or anything else."
"Didn’t you tell them to go fuck themselves?" He sounded angry now, really angry.
"Please tell me you told them to go fuck themselves."
"More or less, yeah." I said.
"Good. They have absolutely no right to interfere in our personal relationship like that. What's between us is between us, not them or anyone else."
"I know."
"Harper, listen to me very carefully. Whatever they said to you, whatever they threatened you with, just ignore all of it. When I get out of here in four weeks, we'll deal with everything together. Okay? We're a team."
"Okay."
But something in my voice must have given me away because he went completely quiet again.
"There's more you're not telling me, isn't there? Something bigger than just them being concerned."
"Crew—"
"Just tell me the truth. Please. I'd rather know what's actually happening than sit in here imagining the worst case scenarios in my head for the next four weeks."
I wanted so badly to tell him everything.
I wanted to tell him about Morrison's ultimatum and the five days I had left before they fired him and Richard's coordinated campaign to destroy both of us. I wanted to stop protecting him from reality and just be completely honest for once.
But Dr. Kim's voice was still in my head, crystal clear.
"There's nothing else to tell you," I lied again, and it felt like swallowing broken glass. "I promise. Everything's under control out here."
The silence that followed felt like a judgment, like he could see right through me and knew I was lying but didn't know how to call me out on it.
"Okay," Crew finally said, and his voice sounded hollow. "If you say everything's fine, then I believe you."
"I do say that. And you really need to focus on yourself right now and getting better, not on worrying about me or what's happening out here. I can handle things on my own."
"Can you though?"
"Yes, I can."
"Because you sound completely exhausted right now. You sound like you're barely holding it together and trying really hard to pretend you're not falling apart."
"I'm fine, really."
"There's that word again. Fine." He let out a slow breath that I could hear clearly over the phone. "Harper, I know I'm the one who ended up in rehab. I know I'm the one who fucked everything up with the pills and the overdose and all of it. But that doesn't mean you have to carry everything alone while I'm locked in here. You're allowed to tell me when things are bad."
"I know that."
"Do you? Because right now it feels like you're protecting me from something and I don't know if that's because you think I'm too weak to handle it or because you don't trust me anymore."
"I trust you completely. That's not what this is about."
"Then what is it about?"
I opened my mouth to answer but no words came out because I didn't know how to explain it to him.
How do you tell someone you love that you're lying to protect them?
….That the truth might destroy their recovery?
…That you're drowning but pretending to swim because they need to believe you're okay?
"Time's almost up," Dr. Kim's voice cut in suddenly. "You have two minutes remaining."
Two minutes. That's all I had left with him.
"I love you," I said, because that at least was true. "I love you so much and I'm so proud of you for being in there and doing the work. You're the bravest person I know."
"I don't feel brave. I feel like a coward who ran away from his problems and left you to deal with the fallout alone."
"You didn't run away. You're getting help. There's a huge difference."
"Is there?" His voice got quiet again.
"Because from where I'm sitting, it feels like I abandoned you when you needed me most. And now you're lying to me about how bad things really are because you don't want to add to my stress. And I hate that, Harper. I hate that I put you in this position."
"You didn't put me anywhere. I chose to be here. I chose you."
"Even though it's destroying your life?"
"My life was already destroyed before you came into it. You're the only good thing that's happened to me in years."
He was quiet for a long moment and I could hear him breathing, could almost see him sitting there in whatever room they'd given him for this call, trying to hold himself together.
"When I get out of here," he finally said, "we're going to talk about everything. No more protecting each other. No more lies. Just the truth, even if it's ugly. Deal?"
"Deal."
"I love you, Harper. More than I've ever loved anyone. And I'm going to fix this somehow. I'm going to fix all of it."