But he could. He could, and did, and even now, alone in the dark with the nightmare of that time ringing in his head, playing like a movie he couldn’t pause, he could feel the shudder of horror and grief go through him.
“Survivor’s guilt,” a therapist had told him and Piper a long time ago.
No shit . . .
Hearing a sound in the den, he headed that way, not all that surprised to find Winnie curled up in the window seat in the living room, head bent, reading something on her phone.
“Hey,” he said.
Winnie jerked and her phone went flying. “Hey yourself, creeper. You nearly scared the Bean right out of me.”
He moved close and sat with her, looking out into the night and seeing nothing, because there were no city lights out here, no billboards or traffic. Nothing. “The Bean’s okay.” He slid her a crooked grin. “Its mama, though . . .”
Winnie rolled her eyes.
Gavin bent and scooped up her phone for her, which had a YouTube video playing on how to become a handyman. He glanced at her in surprise. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” She snatched the phone from his fingers.
“It looks like you’re trying to learn how to be useful.”
“And?”
“And . . . that seems unlike you.”
“Shows how much you know. I want to help. Piper’s working so hard, and she’s trying to fix this place up all on her own. That’s not fair.”
“Never bothered you before.”
“Yeah, well, I was a child.” She sighed. “And now I’m having a child. Need to get my shit together. I’m glad you decided to come home to do the same, but you were late. You were supposed to beat me here and soften her up for me.”
He shrugged. “I nearly decided against coming home at all.”
“Glad you didn’t.” She paused. “And just out of curiosity, what does seem like me?”
Even he recognized a trick question, but this was Winnie. They didn’t pull their punches with each other. “You’re covert. Sneaky. Like”—he raised a brow—“pretending to be in college this whole past semester when you’re really hostessing at Chili’s.”
She grimaced.
“Or getting pregnant and then hiding it.”
“I never should have told you. It was a weak moment, I’d just peed on a stick and freaked.”
“Understandable. But it’s a long time to be keeping these secrets from Piper. It’s your superpower.”
She flipped him off.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got the same superpower.”
“Yeah, you do.” Winnie lost her animosity and reached for his hand. “Only your secret shouldn’t be a secret, Gav. It’s not good for your recovery.”
“Yeah.” Feeling claustrophobic, he rose, hating the feeling that he was trying to climb out of his own skin. “But I’m not who you should be worried about.”
“Then who?”
“Your sister, when she finds out how little you trust her not to freak out.”
“You mean we,” Winnie said. “How little we trust her not to freak out.”
But it wasn’t about trust for Gavin. Not with Piper. It was about how much of her life she’d already given up for him and Winnie. All she’d ever wanted was for them to turn out okay. Instead, she had a baby sister having a baby and a brother with an addiction problem.
And she didn’t know about either.
“So you’re going to tell her?” he asked. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Anytime soon? Cuz he’s been gone a little over three months now.”
Winnie didn’t respond to this.
On the one hand, he got why she wouldn’t readily open up to their older sister. Piper had liked Rowan okay. She’d thought him sweet and affable, and good for his dad. But she’d also thought he’d been lazy and trouble, and not a great influence on Winnie, and as usual, she was right on the money there. Rowan had been all those things as well. But Gavin liked to think that in the end, he’d have changed for Winnie.
But now they’d never know.
He ended up in the middle of the kitchen, hands fisted at his sides, eyes tightly closed as he breathed through a desperate need.
For a pill.
Six months. He’d been out of rehab for six months, and after being secretly hooked on pills for three years, he’d told himself he was doing great. But it turned out great was relative. Yes, compared to the Category 5 hurricane he’d turned his life into last year, he was great. But compared to where he wanted to be—a whole person, which he had no idea how to make happen—he suspected he had a long way to go to get to great.
For shits and giggles, and to torture himself, he went through the cabinets. The place was a disorganized mess as always. Piper could find anything she wanted in here, but he had absolutely no idea how. She was a great sister, but a complete slob.
He looked around, shook his head, and began to clean up. He couldn’t help himself. He apparently had been the only Manning born with the neat gene. Above the toaster that wasn’t working, the one he’d promised to fix but hadn’t, nestled between the sugar and the flour, sat aspirin, Tums, and . . . bingo, an old prescription of OxyContin from when Piper had sprained her ankle on the job a few years back. Because his sister was anal and a control freak, it appeared not a single pill had been taken.
He ran a finger over the bottle with a shocking, bone-deep yearning. It’d be so easy. So damn easy. For a painfully long moment, he stood there, during which time he’d have paid any amount of money to have his mom or dad appear to tell him that he had this. To tell him they believed in him. To hug him, just one more time.
But because wishes, like lightsabers, butter beer, and Prince Charming, weren’t real, he remained alone. Swallowing hard, he shut the cabinet. But he was shaking when he took out his phone and sent a text to his sponsor.
He got an immediate response: You need me?
Did he? All he wanted was to be of value, but everything he touched turned to shit. And God, he hated a self-pity party. So he forced in a deep breath and shook his head. He was stronger than this. He was. So he texted back: No, I’m okay now, thanks.
He received another text that read: Anytime, you know that . . .
And he did. He was shoving his phone into a pocket when he heard something, a crinkling sound, like maybe there was a rodent riffling around in the pantry. After that last storm, he wouldn’t be surprised if an entire colony had moved in. Moving silently to the pantry door, he accessed the flashlight on his phone and . . . yanked it open.
Not a rodent.
Piper. She was sitting on a five-gallon container of cat food, inhaling a family-sized bag of cheese puffs and—shock—writing in her journal. Not as jumpy as Winnie, not even close, his badass sister merely lifted her gaze, casual as you please, and her brows went up.
“My alone time is for your safety,” she said around a mouthful of cheese puffs.
How well he knew. Growing up, she’d hidden in this very closet whenever she’d needed a moment from him and Winnie, which with hindsight he totally understood. They’d been a couple of wild, feral kids, and she’d been saddled with them. As they’d all gotten older, she’d continued to hide whenever she’d had a problem, especially if she’d gotten broken up with, something that tended to happen once a guy got to know her.