She started to smile, but felt a sob coming on, so she turned away.
Cam slowly pulled her back around. And then into him.
“Careful,” she said. “I’m covered in—”
He didn’t stop until she was plastered up against him and he was hugging her. He held her like that until she stopped vibrating with pent-up emotion and devastation. Then and only then did he slide his fingers along her jaw and tilt her face up to his, lowering his head to give her a sweet kiss that she felt all the way to her toes. It seemed to infuse her with a strength she’d forgotten she had, and when he pulled away, she drew a deep breath.
“Thanks,” she whispered, and eyed his shirt. She’d mashed some mac and cheese into him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Let me guess. You’ve had worse?”
“Yes. And you’re stalling.”
She drew another deep breath and nodded. “I am. Talking’s never really worked out for us as a family.”
“Maybe it’s not about talking. Maybe it’s about listening.”
She looked at him.
He looked at her right back.
“You . . . think I don’t listen,” she said.
“I think you’re smart as hell. Which means you almost always have the right answers. But sometimes people need to find those answers on their own. They need to make their own mistakes. They need to know that when they admit those mistakes, they’re going to be loved and accepted anyway. And before you think I’m smarter than I am, you should know I only learned all that when it was too late. Don’t be too late.”
His smile was kind and tinged with pain, and her heart ached for him. And he was right. She didn’t listen very well. Or at all.
“I do accept them,” she said softly. “I mean, Winnie’s . . . amazing. Resilient. She’ll always come out on top, I know it. And as for Gavin, he’s smart, resourceful, charismatic . . . He’s got so much potential. Addiction’s a disease, he didn’t do it on purpose.”
Cam gave her a small smile. “And here you thought you had nothing to say.”
SHE WENT LOOKING for Gavin first. She found him in the very kitchen she’d just abandoned. He’d cleaned up the mess and was surrounded by what looked like all the ingredients she’d had in the pantry. “What are you doing?”
“Cleaning and organizing our pantry.” He hadn’t looked at her, but his voice dared her to contradict the our part.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t listen before, but I’m listening now. Please talk to me.”
“I’m busy right now.”
Racked with guilt, she got between him and the pantry and met his gaze, which was both hollow and haunted. “Gavin,” she whispered, and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve known. I hate that I didn’t. You needed me and I wasn’t there for you.”
“It’s not your fault.” He stood still for a moment, and then sighed and hugged her back. “We’re not big on sharing our feelings. There’s no way you could’ve known.”
And the dagger just slid in deeper, because Cam was right. She didn’t listen enough. “Gavin.” He pulled back, seeming tense again. Braced for a fight, she realized. “You’re my brother,” she said quietly. “And your life choices are yours to make, and I’ll support you no matter what.”
He looked at her for a long beat. “I doubt that would still be true if I told you that I fell into my job because I just happened to be good at it, but it got stressful. And then more stressful. And to deal with that stress, my roommate—a pot dealer, by the way—helped me out now and then. But it got a little out of control, because I was already using illegal prescription meds to relax and cope. And then I got the DUI and everything snowballed.”
“I hate how that all happened to you.”
“It didn’t happen to me. I did it to myself.” He looked her right in the eyes, not shying away. “I used up all my money for lawyers and rehab. Ran credit cards up too. By the time I got out, my world had imploded, leaving me jobless and just about penniless. And if it helps, Winnie didn’t know any of this either, not until I got out of rehab.” He lifted his hands. “Anyway, so here I am.”
She drew a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re my brother. You’re home, and being home will help. You’ll get through this, but you won’t be alone.”
Gavin looked at her, disbelieving.
“I mean it,” she said.
“You’re not mad?”
“Not at you.”
“We need more flour.” Then he wrapped his arms around her and buried his head against her shoulder. She felt his emotional shudder run through him.
She hugged him close. “We’ll get more flour.”
“We need more sugar too,” he said, or at least that’s what she thought he said, muffled against her shirt.
She swallowed hard. “Whatever you need.”
“Then I really need a new KitchenAid food processor in candy apple.”
She snorted through her thick throat.
“Piper?”
“Yeah?”
“What if what I really need is to be here with you and Win for a little bit?” He lifted his head and met her gaze.
She drew a deep breath as she realized her own hopes and dreams of going off to school were getting further and further away. “Then we’ll all live together again for a little bit.”
“And if we want to kill each other?”
“We already do,” she said. “Wanting to kill each other is sort of the definition of being siblings.”
He hugged her again. “Love you, Pea.”
His old nickname for her, from the early days when he hadn’t been able to say Piper. He hadn’t used it in so long that just the sound of it was like coming home. It’s enough, she told herself. This life’s enough.
“Love you more,” she whispered.
Chapter 14
“Sorry not sorry.”
Gavin waited until late that night when the house was dark and silent to sneak out. Back in the days of his wild and crazy and very confused teen years, he’d snuck out a lot. That had involved escaping through his second-story bedroom window, climbing along the ledge to the corner of the house, and shimmying down a tree.
On those nights, he’d rarely had an agenda. All he’d known was that he’d grown up in a world so far from this one, a wanderlustful, amazing, crazy world in which he’d seen every continent and more cultures than most people knew existed. He’d not known anything different until he’d been sent here after hell had broken loose.
A hell of his own making that had started and ended in the DRC. There’d been strict rules for him and his sisters there, and a “yard” they’d had to stay within. Going past that into the jungle had been forbidden. In fact, that had been Winnie’s first full sentence when she’d been three years old: “Don’t leave yard.”
So of course Gavin and his BFF, Arik, had gone into the jungle in the midst of a storm. And they’d walked right into a gang of local drug runners. In the ensuing fight to get away, they’d been separated. Gavin had heard the shots and run until his side hurt. He’d tumbled into the yard. Alone. It’d been hours later, when the storm had been gaining steam by the minute, that Arik’s body had been found.