Page 86 of Shelter
Even now, I would still wake up at night with the taste of her kiss in my mouth. As if no time had passed. She would come to me in my dreams where I was powerless against her, unable to mount the defenses that I needed to keep my longing for her at bay. Guilt and Grief. My two best friends.
She’d be in my arms, making me laugh. Demanding that I kiss her. Demanding the very thing I wanted to give her. I would feel her palm on my belly again, a touch she’d stitched into my memory with titanium thread. I couldn’t snap it or wear it down. With that touch, she had sought and claimed me. I’d never felt so wanted.
And I’d wake up rock-hard and angry. Knowing I was alone. Knowing exactly what I’d lost because I hadn’t been able to control myself that night. To focus.
I’d lost my family. I’d lost my mother to my father. I’d lost Ava to her pain.
And I’d lost Elise.
We’d only had that night, but we’d also had the promise of what could have been. A promise I’d broken. Because how could I see her again after what happened? I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve anyone. I certainly couldn’t be trusted. Just look at my track record. I destroyed everyone close to me. If my mother’s end wasn’t proof of that, then my sister’s life surely was.
Light from the house pulled me back from this particular abyss, and I set my feet on the bottom of the pool.
Ava.
Her bedroom light. She was home.
Relief coursed through me. I hauled myself out of the water and made quick work with my towel. If she’d fallen off the wagon, she’d be more than just an hour late. She might not even come home at all.
I entered by bedroom and moved through the house.
“Ava?” Her room was on the other side of the kitchen and living room from mine, but I called her before I even reached the hallway.
“I’m back!” she yelled from the direction of her room. “And I’m glad to see you weren’t pacing a groove in the floor.”
At this, I actually grinned. I had been pacing before my swim, but she didn’t need to know that.
Still dripping and scrubbing my hair with the towel, I turned down the hall to hers and found her door closed.
Why was it closed? Did she score some drugs at the hospital? Was that what had taken her so long? How hard could it be to get your hands on some opioids in a hospital? And if she got them, would she save them for later when I wouldn’t be around? Like Monday when I had to go to the office?
“Are you standing outside my room?” she asked behind her door.
“Uh… I was just—”
The door whooshed open, and my sister stood before me, frowning.
“—I was just going to ask—”
“You’re checking up on me.” Her voice carried a hint of accusation, but her eyes looked resigned. “I get it.”
And then I realized that her eyes — though communicating her weary resentment — were clear. She met my gaze dead on. No nystagmus. No averting. She might have used her time at the hospital to score drugs, but she clearly hadn’t taken any. I’d never know for sure if she had any in her possession unless I searched every nook and cranny of her room. And I wasn’t going to do that.
Not because I didn’t want to. But because I knew it would hurt her.
I took a measured breath and reminded myself I had to try. I had to try to trust Ava. Trust the process. “How was the meeting?”
She held my gaze for a minute before crimping her lips and shrugging. “Not as good as the Hazelden group meetings, but okay.” She raised a brow at me, making her look somehow older, more jaded. “There were only seven of us, which sucked because it’s hard to disappear in such a small group, but I may have found a sponsor.”
A sponsor. Thank God.
“Oh? What’s she like?”
Ava’s brow climbed higher.“Hehas been clean and sober for six years.” Her words dripped with snark.“That’swho I was talking to.”
An armada of questions lined up in my mind. “What’s his name? How old is he?” The first two fired off before I could think better of them, and I knew by the way Ava cocked her jaw and regarded me with a sour glare they weren’t appreciated.
“This has got to stop,” she leveled.
