AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We looked at each other, and Nat looked down at her rings. “I guess we’ve just gotten used to them,” Nat said, “and each other.”
“I don’t mind the feeling of it,” I said, looking at her with a smile. “Or having her around. She’s pretty good company. Perhaps the whole fake marriage thing could become the real deal. We shall see.”
Nat bit down on her lip. “Why don’t you get real by completing our food order?”
Just like that, the warmth faded away, and I knew the dismissal for what it was. The icy curtain dropped back into place the way it had before this trip, and I fought hard against the frustration that began to set in as I stood from the ottoman.
“Of course,” I said, walking out of the room, feeling more distant than I should have. Just like I could sense something was up with Nat’s brother, I felt something was going on with Nat.
Chapter Twenty-Three
NAT
“I like him,” Shane said, watching as Spencer left and the door shut behind him. The two of us were quiet for a second before he finally turned back to look at me, grinning. “To be honest, you deciding to help him with his bitchy mom is easier to believe than you deciding a guy was worth spending more than one night with.”
“Hilarious,” I said as I scoured the medicine kit for Neosporin or any variation of it. Filtering through the tubes and packages with familiar objects but unfamiliar names, I finally pulled out a tube with a blue label that said Germolene. Comforted by the sight of the words anti-septic ointment, I unscrewed the top, smeared some on the end of one of the Q-tips in the box, and turned back to Shane.
“Now that Spencer is gone, I want the truth,” I said softly, touching the swab gently to his cuts and ignoring his wincing. “Tell me about what happened. Was this because of Dad?”
He clenched his lips together, avoided my gaze, and shook his head. I reached down, took his hand, and pressed my palm to his. I waited patiently, knowing that my brother wasn’t great in silence. Chaos had always been our norm, so loud noises and impatience were something that we both understood well. Perhaps he'd immediately give up the details if I were throwing shit, screaming, and demanding answers.
It’s what our family dynamic was. It’s how we learned to communicate when we were asked questions. Of course, it was a horrible excuse for avoiding me and the question, but I understood it at least.
He finally sighed and looked back at me, “I was going back and forth between your place and mine,” he said, biting his lip. “It was too much work to move my entire computer setup, so I’d go to your place to make sure everything was good at the condo, sleep for a bit, and shower with that nice-ass water pressure of yours.”
“Good,” I said. “And while you took advantage of that, I hope you got your work done simultaneously.”
“Definitely,” he said, nodding. “It was all going pretty well, too, until I had to go to the old house for something. I thought I’d timed it correctly so he wouldn’t be home, but you know my luck. He walked in while I was sitting in my old room.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I answered, setting the Q-tips on the bedside table. “Why the hell would you have gone to the house? Why would you even want to?”
Sometimes I could not understand how my brother’s brain worked.
Shane shrugged, moving his toes back and forth on the wooden floor next to his bed. His shoulders started twitching, and the jerky way that his body started moving made it clear that he was coming down from one of any number of drugs he was using again.
This time I wasn’t going to be gentle with my fucking approach. I wanted goddamn answers about what happened.
“Tell me the truth,” I said, getting down into his face. “What made you go to that fucking house again? Were you high?”
He blinked at me a few times, his eyelids taking on that frantic, mothlike movement that they always did when confronted by something he didn’t want to deal with. He did his best not to meet my eyes, but I wouldn’t allow him to avoid me.
“Answer me, bub,” I said, my voice pitched low and soft. It was the voice I always used when he was little, and I had to reassure him he wasn’t in trouble after our dad would unleash his fury on Shane for something that wasn’t even his fault. “You know I won’t be mad unless you lie to me. Just come out and tell me whatever it was you took. I want to know why you went back to that goddamn house.”
It was highly infuriating to talk to my brother like he was eight years old again, but I wanted answers about this stupid-ass decision he’d made.
My brother looked back at me. He blinked a few times and swallowed hard, “I took Ketamine.”
You’ve got to be fucking joking. I don’t know how this is our adult lives.
Instead of yelling that thought out loud, I nodded. “What made you take that? Were you looking at pictures of mom or watching old videos again?”
He nodded, looking down at his hands. God, how did people do this? It was pathetic, infuriating, exhausting, and heartbreaking all at once. But I knew no other way to handle him. How could I want to take his pain away while also wanting to punch him in the face? My heart sank while I tried to remain firm yet gentle, coaxing out more information from him.
“I was going through pictures and the videos again. I finished a job and came across an old video of mom with the two of us when I was a baby.” He stopped and sighed. He looked up at the ceiling, and my anger died immediately. He looked back at me with tears pooling in his eyes. “It got to me, Nat. There’s a reason I never look at that sentimental crap, you know? But I just decided to go through an old hard drive of mine, and it spun me out hard. Then I—” he shook his head, looking back down at his hands, “I just needed something to help me escape.”
“I never give you shit about how much you smoke pot,” I said. “You know that. But I will give you shit about always needing to turn it up a notch. First, it’s coke, then it’s Oxy and whatever other pills you can get your hands on, and now this? Ketamine? There has to be a time when you finally personally tell yourself that enough is fucking enough.”
“Trust me,” he said, “I know.”
