Page 40 of Tough Justice

“One night, there was a car crash. They’d all been drinking. The driver—Marianne’s best friend—was pronounced dead at the scene. The steering wheel was embedded in her chest. She had twice the legal limit of alcohol in her blood. My sister’s two other friends got out of the car with barely a scratch. Not my sister. She was badly hurt and was prescribed opioids to deal with the pain. She got addicted.”

“Why did they do that?” Mia asked. “I mean, didn’t the doctor see what was happening before she got addicted?”

“Good questions.” He nodded solemnly. “I think it’s easier to prescribe a strong pain med than to deal with a patient’s emotional state. An average of one hundred thirty people in the U.S. die every single day from an opioid overdose. That’s over forty thousand people annually, and half those deaths involved a prescription opioid.”

He glanced at Tori again, sending her a not-so-silent message. A doctor had played a role in his sister becoming addicted, and he wanted her to know it. In addition to his scrutiny, she felt the eyes of every kid in the room on her. It was all she could do not to squirm even more.

“Whatever drove my sister to go out partying and drinking was still there after the accident. Opioids just gave her another way to retreat from what was really bothering her.”

“What was bothering her?” Rhianna asked.

Deck sifted his fingers through Thor’s thick ruff. “Me.”

Huh? Tori couldn’t imagine what was coming next. Whatever it was, she could already sense his grief from the tightening of his shoulders and the way his throat worked.

“I never figured on being a DEA agent. I was the high school senior they make movies about. Valedictorian. Star athlete with baseball scholarships to any Division 1 school I wanted. I excelled at everything. I was the proverbial ‘golden child,’” he said bitterly. “Everything came easily to me. Not for Marianne. She struggled, trying to live up to her big brother. Then she gave up trying.”

Deck stared at the ceiling, clearly reliving some part of his and his sister’s lives. “I was so self-absorbed, so focused on my own success and popularity that I didn’t see it before it was too late. Neither did my parents. My sister felt like she was living her life in my shadow. She even found out that some of her friends weren’t really her friends at all. Some only pretended to be so they could get a date with me.”

“What happened to her?” one of the boys asked.

“Eventually, her doctor cut her off from the drugs, and she resorted to stealing money from all our wallets, including mine, to buy whatever she could off the street. One day, she never came home.” Tori swallowed the lump in her throat. Like everyone else in the room, she understood what Deck would say next. “The police found her body in an alley. Dead at sixteen.” His last words came out choked, as if he rarely talked about it and still had difficulty dealing with it.

“Um, Deck?” Rhianna asked. “You said you and your parents didn’t know what was happening with her. Since she died and you couldn’t ask her, how did you know what she was thinking?”

“We found her diary. She wrote everything down.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “As I read it, it hit me. Hard. I did see it coming, but I was in denial. What happened to her was at least partly my fault. I didn’t want to see what was happening to her because it would have interfered with my life.” He jabbed a finger at his chest. “I’m telling you this for a reason. I’m still selfish. You may think I come here on my days off out of the goodness of my heart just to help you guys. True, that’s how it started, but I also come here for me. Your group therapy is my group therapy. Back then, I wish I’d had the support of other people my own age, so don’t ever hesitate to bring your loved ones here. Maybe if Marianne had gotten the help she needed in time and if the people who loved her had seen it coming and admitted what was happening, maybe she’d still be here. Married, living in a house with a white picket fence, two-point-three kids, and a dog.”

The room was deathly silent, then Deck rested his hand on Thor’s head. “At least I’ve got the dog.”

Thor craned his neck to lick Deck’s chin.

Gentle laughter went around the circle, lightening the mood some but not much. That had been his intention.

“Thanks for listening, guys,” he said.

To her amazement, every kid in the room clapped, except one. Aidan.

Tori joined in, clapping and blinking back the tears. Now, she understood so much. Like why Deck had become a DEA agent and was a walking, talking library of opioid factoids. But she’d also learned something more about the man.

There was no doubting he was a tough-as-nails federal agent. He was also a human being with a big heart that he’d just shared with a room full of teenagers. He would do everything within his power to keep each and every one of these kids from becoming a statistic, like his sister.

He might be a badge-carrying, gun-toting agent, but he was only one man, not the DEA as a whole. And like her, he’d suffered great loss.

Shockingly, she found her resentment toward Deck slipping away more and more every day.

…

As Tori gave her presentation, Deck couldn’t stop watching her lips which, naturally, made him remember kissing her last night and how much more he wanted than that one kiss he’d allowed himself.

He’d barely gotten a straight hour of sleep last night without waking up with the sheets twisted around his legs. Each time he’d woken up, he’d reminded himself why he’d done the right thing by leaving. Professional reasons aside, with his baggage, she deserved more than he was capable of giving.

A bitter taste rose in the back of his throat. The taste of sheer, raw jealousy. Whatever Tori Sampson needed, he didn’t want anyone else being the one to give it to her.

“The bottom line is,” she continued, tucking strands of auburn hair behind her ears and reconfirming how much he preferred it down, “there are many long-term effects from using illegal drugs. Infection for one.” The way her hair shimmered in the light, cradling and softening her face… And that green blouse really set off her eyes. “Shared needles can give you all kinds of communicable diseases, including HIV, hepatitis B and C, and those are just for starters. Drug abuse can also cause irreversible heart damage. Your heart can become inflamed and have to work harder to make up for the damage.”

“Can it explode?” one of the boys asked, looking up from petting Thor.

When Tori smiled, Deck’s gaze was drawn to her mouth again. Man, he needed to quit fixating on her lips.