Life After Rehab ✓

[Chapter Sixty-Eight] Where Honesty Breeds Progress

Last chapter had zero comments and that makes me wonder if there is something about the chapter that cause that because that's very none typical. 
Well here you all are with some Lacey talk. 

Dedicated to ralucamagadan, thank you for being awesome and being there :D 
Hope you continue to enjoy the story <3

Chapter Sixty-Eight – Where Honesty Breeds Progress
Bailey's Pov

"Why do you pretend like you never knew her?" That got me, it's a reason I never wanted to talk to him about it.

"Because you had enough to deal with." Maybe, but how could he think it would help to pretend? Empathy was more helpful than sympathy.

"Pretending she wasn't real makes it worse. Why should I be honest and real if you want to lie to yourself and to me?" This honesty thing goes both ways. He wasn't just a doctor to any of us that went through rehab; that was how they wanted it there. Robert was like an uncle; brotherly and fatherly.

"At the time I didn't see it that way. I was trying to do everything I could to be the one to help you through it, so that you didn't have to go to someone else. Distancing myself from her loss was the way I did that. You know I care for all of you; Julian and yourself more for obvious reasons now. But I wasn't as close to her as you, Julian and Kylie. It seemed easier that you talked to someone who knew her."

"Can I ask you something personal?" This may be crossing a line, but I felt like I needed to know.

"Okay." He said yes, but I still hesitated.

"Did losing Lacey remind you of Lucy?" The words tasted bad somehow when he averted his gaze. But wasn't she the reason he did this? Why he left his office and came to Kylie to help addicts?

"Fuck Bailey." He's never cursed like that in front of me, and certainly not at me; I tensed up.

"How long ago did she die?" Yet I pushed.

"Lucy died eleven years ago. I was twenty-one when she was born and she was twenty-one when she committed suicide. Lacey was the same age. Yes that had an effect on me." He was on edge, and in a sick way that made me feel a little satisfaction. He was always doing the same thing to me and maybe he should remember what we're feeling a little bit.

But I had no satisfaction that he was hurting over his daughter's suicide, I wasn't an emotional sadist.

"There isn't a day that goes by where I don't miss her, I hate feeling pain but at the same time I want to embrace it because it should be painful. When I feel numb to it it's like I didn't love her." She impacted so many lives; we should still feel the pull in our hearts when we think about her.

When I die, I fear being forgotten or that no one will miss me.

"One day the two will combine and you'll feel a tug and you'll remember her joy rather than her death. No one is forgetting her and no one would forget you." But what if they did; what if we do?

"Sometimes I hate her. How could she think so little of me and our friendship to leave like that, but I know it's not about me. I can't find a balance. Other days I torment myself wondering that if only I could have truly loved her like she did me, it would have given her enough happiness to keep going." Lacey was my best friend, but I knew how she felt about me; that she felt the same things Julian did.

"No. You are who you are Bailey and never question something like that. You couldn't be gay for her anymore than she could be straight for someone else. You are with Julian, she knew that and she accepted that from the beginning. She wanted all of this for you, she knew back then and believed in your love before the two of you did."