Broken: A Billionaire Love Story by Heather Chase Page A

keep some of your body mass?”
    Shrugging, he leaned back in the chair, still openly admiring her legs. Man, she was pretty. There was something about the way a woman’s knees slid into a skirt like that...her skin looked so healthy and vibrant.
    He should focus. “I don’t know if I’m an addict, to answer your question,” he said. “I know...I don’t know. I know I don’t drink like other people. I know it creates a lot...I don’t know. A lot of debris. But I thought . . . I don’t know.”
    He said that as if he had more to say, but there was nothing more to say.
    Olivia didn’t press him on the issue. Instead, she asked, “What do you like? Is it only drinking? Are there other drugs?”
    “Like cocaine? Pot?”
    “Sure, like those.”
    “No. I mean, I’ve tried them, but no. I did them for a while, had them for a while pretty hardcore. But cocaine was too much trouble to get and carry around. Got me into too much trouble. Pot is easier to get, but I don’t like the way it makes me feel. I’m more of a whiskey or vodka type of guy.”
    “Has it caused problems in your life? Drinking?”
    “You see me here, don’t you?”
    “It’s a problem that you’re here?”
    He chuckled. “Of course it is.”
    “Well,” she leaned forward. “I’m curious if you see it as more of a symptom of a larger problem that you’re here—that it could be seen as emblematic as a problem that you have. Or, whether you see the problem as being here, being kept away from things you want to do.”
    He took a moment to think about that.
    “I guess it’s a bit of both, to be honest.”
    “Let’s talk about that last bit, then. You’re here for another twenty-nine days.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Have you given any thought to what you’ll do when you’re out?”
    Drink, he thought instantly. Drink a lot.
    “I’m not sure.” The lie was instant and easy. “I guess a little.”
    “It probably wouldn’t be too much trouble for you to steer straight into a liquor store, I’m guessing?”
    “That’s possible.” Confirm nothing. Avoid everything. If he didn’t come down on something, it could never be said he was really, actually lying. Change the subject, he decided, get the talk off that line. “You’re pretty direct, huh?”
    “Well. It’s not a mystery to me, exactly, as to why you’re here. I think it might be to you, though.”
    “It’s no mystery.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs. It was a bit cold in the room. “I just need to figure out how to get my drinking under control, is all.”
    “Have you considered that getting drinking under your control is outside the realm of possibility?”
    “Ugh,” he shook his head, groaning. “I know where this is going.”
    She smiled. “Do you? Where’s that?”
    “You want me to join AA, isn’t that it?”
    He had heard this line of talk before. Friends from college laid it on him after sobering up. They were always the same—inviting him out to coffee, asking him his life was, how was the writing going, and then bam—why don't you clean your life up, you loser?
    “Have you joined AA so far?” Olivia asked him.
    He laughed. “Of course not.”
    “And where did that get you?”
    Shane took a moment to consider. “Beat up and stuck inside of hospital, I guess is the answer you want?”
    She shrugged. “You don’t have to go to anything or join anything you don’t want to. You’re an autonomous person. I’m just saying it’s worth considering that the places that you’ve gone to already have put you on a path that ends in...”
    “Hospitals.”
    She smiled. “I was going to say heartache.”
    “You think my heart is aching?”
    “I would be surprised if it wasn’t. People need company. Someone to care about them. Love them, like them, all of that. If you didn’t, you’d be a sociopath.”
    Shit, Shane wished he could be a sociopath. Who wouldn’t want to be able to feel nothing, when everything that he felt regularly was so