"We’re all dying," Conor muttered. "All of us. All the time."
"Now’s not the moment to get existential on us, Con," Finn pointed out. "Anyway, can detoxing off Oxy be that bad? I mean, it’s not heroin. They say it's harder to quit smoking and he did that when he was in his twenties. All those centuries ago."
"You're three months younger than me," I rasped. "Remind me to stab you—" I gasped out in pain before I could finish threatening him.
"I will when you're not in a blanket fort," Finn retorted snidely. "Why is he having withdrawals?"
"Because dumbfuck had started having some heroin here and there."
"Jesus," Finn boomed.
"He says it wasn't enough to get addicted, but we both know that's bullshit. That's why he's acting like Mount Rushmore is erupting."
"Once," I muttered. "Just once." After that last NA meeting, I'd fucked up.
Royally.
Waking up from that high, though, had put the pain I suffered because of my knee into perspective.
"Thank God for that," Finn muttered. "Aidan, what the hell were you thinking?"
I didn't have the chance to answer before agony sucked me under, not that I even had a reason for why I'd been so fucking stupid other than an excuse they wouldn't accept—that chronic pain was like an abyss. One you could never escape from. One that made drowning seem like a fun time. One that made me feel as if waves of spiders, their eight legs tipped in hydrochloric acid, were crawling up and down my spinal cord, sending chaos throughout my nervous system.
Heroin had seemed like an easy escape. A paradise few would ever understand because release and relief went hand in hand and, in this society, we were just supposed to man up. Suffer in silence, to the point where narcotics were the only freedom we could ever feel.
Because neither of them wanted to hear that, I didn't bother interrupting Conor when he stated, "I've been reading some books about it, so the situation is under control."
"Does that mean you’re an expert now?" Because Finn knew my brother, he wasn’t even joking.
Conor hummed. "He’s progressing at the right pace."
"Did the books tell you to sit on him?"
"Nah, but I have to get him back for all the shit he did to me when I was a kid, don’t I?"
Finn snorted out a laugh. "True. How long’s he been here?"
"Just under a week. Showed up on my doorstep after I was dealing with that little problem Eoghan had."
"You mean the decapitated head on his doorstep? Con, bro, that’s more than a ‘little’ problem."
"Not really," Conor mused. "Bodies are a lot heavier and more cumbersome. That was quite easy to dispose of."
"Knowing your da, he put it on a spike and has it in his office," Finn said with a grunt.
"Maybe. He’s very medieval, you know that."
"Yeah, figured as much over the years," was Finn’s dry comment. "Aoife told me Victoria’s sleeping better though."
"Huh. I guess you can take the girl out of the Bratva but you can’t take the Bratva out of the girl. Not sure MaryCat would be A-Okay with finding a bleeding head on her doorstep, and she’s Irish Mob."
"She’s technically a Satan’s Sinner now," Finn said wryly. "Just don’t tell her ma that."
"Did you hear what that cunt’s next game is? It’s not right, I’m telling you."
"What?" Finn queried. "I ain't heard nothing. Not since she gave birth to a boy, anyway."
"She went to Da and asked him for help in having the baby taken away from MaryCat because she's crying all the time and has postpartum depression."