Broken: A Billionaire Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

worthless—without value to anyone.
    If he spoke up, like most of the times when he did, probably he would just make people sorry that he had opened his mouth. Shane had that ability, and he resented it. There was nothing like telling someone off—the initial satisfaction of saying exactly what venom you meant in that moment and the slow crawl of guilt over your soul, both.
    Then, another break for “free time,” which he had found out meant mostly looking through the sparse collection of magazines, trying to find a decent book in their small library, or watching whatever DVD had been chosen for the day.
    Then dinner, another group meeting, then an hour of free time, and then lights out.
    Any deviation was not tolerated—though all this meant was that he would be pestered by the counselors or orderlies or other patients until he finally did as they asked. He found this out when he tried to beg off from a meeting after dinner.
    Shane wasn’t a fan of structure. As far as he was concerned, structure was there mostly to bring him down and make him suffer. Wasn’t that everything all the structures of life had done so far?
    His family, take that. There was a structure. There was a structure engineered entirely to make a person feel small and worthless. And if everybody came from a family, then every structure somehow had its origins back in that same family structure—and so every structure everywhere was precipitated from this feeling of superiority over people like Shane, who wanted nothing to do with them.
    Right?
    That sounded right. He gave up on the thought, though, as he had many others. Ever since the fire, most thoughts, even the good ones, the ones with a bit of poetry to them, hadn't felt like anything worth keeping. He would just find some way to destroy them anyway.
    Eventually, the day all wound down and it was time to go to bed. Shane welcomed the break. He didn’t think he had ever felt so tired and worn-out and worn-down. He felt like a stone in a river, everything passing over him and all of it trying to move right through him as well.
    In the room already was Rawls, spread out across the other bed. He wore a short, tangled beard, the kind that looked so thin that any attempt to shave it seemed like it would cut his throat. Thick bags rested under his eyes, but they only made him seem friendlier.
    Rawls said nothing as Shane prepared for bed, brushing his teeth and washing his face in the room’s small sink.
    God, but he needed a drink.
    The thought came to him suddenly, but there had never been a thought as clear as that in his head in all his life. Certainly, it was the clearest thought he had worked through all day. He needed it, and already his brain was to trying to calculate how to get it.
    “Hey man,” he said to Rawls. “You been here long?”
    “For this stay? Nah.” He shook his head. “But, I been in and out of here a few times, like I said.”
    “Really?”
    Shane still had trouble believing that. Didn't you go to rehab to end a problem?
    “Sure. Recovery doesn’t take easy with me, you know. The folks here, the doctors and all, they don’t seem to get it, but they keep welcoming me back. Olivia, she’s worried about me already, I can tell.”
    “Who’s Olivia?”
    “That pretty thing who was staring at you earlier today in the big group.”
    He recalled her dimly. It seemed so distant, now.
    “Someone was staring at me?”
    The old timer smiled. “You must be dumber than a bag of rocks if you didn’t see it. She was sorely smitten with you. I wish I could have had her looking like that at me.”
    They laid down for bed. After a day like that, Shane couldn’t imagine going through twenty-nine more. It seemed like a nightmare.
    “Listen, man, does anybody ever get out of this place?”
    “Out?” Rawls laughed. “Come on, man. You just got here.”
    “I got a girl I want to go see.”
    That was a lie, of course. But it was one that came easy. Most lies did, to