Owen has been struggling with addiction since he was a teenager, but it takes a DUI involving another vehicle for him to finally face his issues. The road to recovery is a rough one, and for Owen it's a journey made harder by bankruptcy, loneliness, and repressed memories.<br><br>His new apartment doesn't help either. It's small, worn, and hot as hell. The only way to reach it is a tedious stretch of stairs that seems like the final insult on top of a whole pile of misery.<br><br>Thankfully, the mess comes with one bright spot: intense, pretty Sebastian, who seems to have a knack for keeping his head up and finding the beauty in everything.

Forty-Two Stairs

“But then I thought?” Craig continued, as though one could end with his previous statement and start with that one, and it would somehow make sense. “That it would be a good thing. We would get to know each other. Nice and slow. Sane and without the bullshit. You would like that. You would see I could be a good thing for you.”


Owen shoved Craig on the couch and crouched in front of it. He stared at Craig’s eyes as if there might be some explanation hidden there. Instead, he saw the bloodshot, watery, unfocussed gaze that he knew way too well from his own mirror. “Who was your sponsor, Craig? We need to call someone I think.”


Craig sat forward and grabbed Owen’s wrist. “Why couldn’t you see that I was a good thing for you? Why couldn’t you just hurry up, and do the fucking program, and get better? Don’t you realise how much more I could have given you? In the end? After? If you would have just got past all this so it could happen?”


Chapter 40