“24 Hours of Us”
- facethyfear
- Mar 16
- 7 min read
A FaceThyFear Original Recovery Romance
1. The First Fix Wasn’t Drugs
The rain hit the roof of the halfway house in slow, lazy drops, thickening the air, wrapping around the body like a second skin.
Jax sat on the worn-out couch in the common area, bouncing his knee, his fingers drumming absently on his thigh.
One month.
Thirty days.
Seven hundred and twenty hours.
That’s how long it had been since he last had heroin in his system.
And the itch was still there—not just in his veins but in his bones, in the quiet moments, in the spaces between his ribs where the silence crept in and whispered sweet nothings.
It would be so easy.
So damn easy to fade into nothingness again.
Then she walked in.
Camille.
She moved like she owned the place, even though they were all here for the same reason—to fix themselves, to unlearn the self-destruction they had perfected over the years.
Everything about her screamed too good for this place.
Jet-black hair, sleek and perfect, not a single strand out of place. Nails always painted some high-class shade of nude, like she had stepped out of a salon and not a group therapy session about trauma and relapse prevention.
Even in rehab, she smelled like money—like expensive perfume covering up the scent of withdrawal.
She carried herself like someone who had seen the inside of penthouses and the bottom of rock bottom.
Jax had seen her before, in passing. He knew the type.
Camille was recovering from meth, but she wore her addiction like a badge of honor, like it somehow made her smarter than the junkies nodding off in group. Like she had played the game and come out sharper for it.
Jax didn’t mind.
He liked a little poison in his women.
She paused in the archway of the room, looking at him like she could already see inside his head, like she was reading his thoughts before he could even form them.
Her lip curled slightly.
“You’re staring, Jax.”
“I’m appreciating,” he corrected, letting his gaze drag up her curves.
She wasn’t rail-thin like when she first arrived. Her body had softened, rounded in all the right places. She was real now, no longer a ghost of herself.
Camille rolled her eyes, but she didn’t look away.
“Group’s starting,” she said. “You coming, or are you gonna sit there and mope about how much you hate yourself?”
Jax grinned, slow and lazy.
Sharp teeth, like a wolf sizing up its next move.
“If you wanted to be alone with me, Camille, all you had to do was ask.”
She smirked, but something darker flickered in her eyes.
A challenge.
They both knew what this was.
A game.
And maybe something else.
2. Temptation’s Door
The wrecked car sat in the empty lot behind the halfway house, half-sunk into the mud, its windows shattered, its insides gutted.
Jax almost missed him.
Leo.
Once, they ran together—fast cars, quick money, dirtier highs. Jax had been the driver. Leo had been the reckless one, the fire, the kind of guy who never thought the crash was coming.
But now?
Leo sat slumped in the back seat, his arm limp, his hoodie stained and too loose on his frame. A bent spoon and lighter lay on the floor beside him, the needle hovering just above a fresh track mark.
Jax took a step forward, his breath slow, steady. Controlled.
“Leo,” he said, his voice low.
Leo barely looked up. His eyelids fluttered like he was half-awake, half-gone, his other hand weakly fumbling to push the plunger down.
The sight should’ve made Jax’s stomach twist.
It didn’t.
Because it wasn’t tempting. It wasn’t romantic.
It was pathetic.
Camille stepped beside Jax, silent, watching.
But she wasn’t looking at Leo.
She was looking at Jax’s face.
She was waiting. Watching.
Would his hands shake? Would his breath hitch? Would his body betray him with the pull of old hunger?
Jax felt her eyes on him more than he felt the weight of the scene in front of him.
But he already knew.
The ghost of heroin was long gone.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and even, stepping back like he was closing the door on something—on someone—he used to be.
He looked down at Leo, the guy who used to be invincible. The guy who once joked that “Junkies don’t die, they just disappear for a while.”
Leo was disappearing right in front of him.
Jax swallowed the lump in his throat.
“I hope you make it out, man.”
Leo didn’t answer.
Didn’t even look at him.
Jax turned, feeling Camille’s hand brush against his as they walked away.
And for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t running.
Tastes Better Than the High
The night air outside the halfway house was thick with moisture, the remnants of the earlier rain clinging to everything like a second skin. Jax and Camille didn’t speak as they walked side by side, their steps slow, deliberate.
They had left the wrecked car, left Leo behind with the ghosts of their past, but the weight of it still clung to Jax like an old addiction.
Camille felt it, too.
“You good?” she finally asked, her voice softer than usual.
Jax exhaled through his nose, rolling his shoulders as if trying to shake something off. “Yeah.”
A beat of silence passed.
“Liar,” she murmured.
Jax huffed a quiet laugh, shoving his hands into his hoodie pockets. He appreciated that she didn’t try to feed him some you did the right thing speech. Didn’t tell him how strong he was or how far he’d come.
She just saw him.
That was enough.
They reached the back entrance of the house, stepping inside. The common area was dark, quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the old floors. Most of the others were already in their rooms, lost in restless sleep or silent battles with their own demons.
Jax was about to head upstairs when Camille caught his sleeve.
“Come with me,” she said.
Her tone left no room for argument, but Jax wouldn’t have fought it anyway.
She led him through the hall, past the flickering exit sign, past the walls covered in posters about recovery, accountability, taking life one day at a time.
Camille’s room was small, just like his. A narrow bed, a chair with a pile of clothes draped over it, a nightstand cluttered with books and an untouched bottle of water.
She closed the door behind them, locking it with a quiet click.
For a moment, they just stood there, the weight of the day settling between them.
Then Camille reached for him.
Jax barely had time to register the movement before her hands were gripping his hoodie, pulling him toward her. The air between them crackled—charged with the same reckless energy they used to chase in different ways.
And then he kissed her.
Hard. Needy.
Desperate in a way that felt dangerously close to the past—but different.
No chemical fog. No hazy in-betweens. Just them.
Two addicts trying to hold onto something real in a world that had taken too much.
Her hands slid beneath his hoodie, nails scraping lightly against his skin as he backed her against the wall. The heat between them burned, but not the kind that would destroy.
It was the kind that made bones ache in the best way.
The kind that reminded them they were still alive.
Jax’s hands found her waist, fingers tracing the curve of her hips as she pressed closer.
She moaned softly as his lips moved down her neck, slow and teasing, like he had all the time in the world.
“This is dangerous,” she whispered, voice breathless.
“So are we.”
Her legs tightened around him, and he swore he could feel her pulse racing beneath his hands.
Jax wanted more—so much more—but there was a line, one they both knew not to cross.
Not yet.
His forehead rested against hers as they both caught their breath, their bodies still pressed together.
“We should stop,” Camille murmured, though her grip on his shirt said otherwise.
Jax smirked. “We should.”
Neither of them moved.
4. 24 Hours at a Time
The room was still, except for the slow rise and fall of their breaths. The heat between them had settled into something quieter now—something steady. Not just hunger, not just need. Something deeper.
Jax lay on his back, one arm draped over Camille’s waist, his fingers tracing lazy patterns along the bare skin of her back. Her head rested against his chest, hair spilling across his shoulder.
For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t running from anything.
For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t pretending she had somewhere better to be.
Neither of them spoke at first. The silence wasn’t heavy—it was earned.
Then Camille shifted slightly, reaching into the pocket of her jeans, which lay crumpled on the floor beside the bed. She pulled out a small, round object and held it between her fingers.
A single white chip.
It looked small in her hand, but Jax knew what it meant.
She turned it over slowly, her thumb running along the worn edges. The moonlight slipping through the blinds caught the faint lettering on the surface:
24 Hours Sober.
She exhaled, staring at it for a long moment before speaking.
“Got it for a friend,” she murmured, her voice softer now, almost hesitant.
Jax waited.
She didn’t have to say it.
Never made it past 24 hours.
Jax’s chest tightened as he reached out, taking the chip from her fingers. It was warm from her touch, its weight somehow heavier than it should be. He ran his thumb over the smooth surface, feeling the ghosts of all the people they had lost.
People like Leo.
People like the versions of themselves they used to be.
People who never got to see what was on the other side of the madness.
“We earn another one tomorrow,” Camille said, her voice steady now. Not a question. A fact.
Jax gripped the chip tighter, turning his head to press a kiss to her forehead.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “We do.”
They weren’t stupid. They knew the road ahead wasn’t some fairytale ending. There were no promises of forever.
No illusions of perfection.
Just today.
And today, they didn’t use.
Final Words from the Author (FTF-Exclusive)
Some love stories aren’t about happily ever after.
Some love stories are about fighting for one more day together.
Jax and Camille aren’t perfect. They’re damaged, messy, flawed—but they survived.
Because today, they didn’t use.
And sometimes, that’s the realest love story of all.
FaceThyFear | “You can’t put a shark on a leash.”
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