Page 81 of Relapse

“Go upstairs and get some sleep.”

I blinked. “What?”

“You’re exhausted. You’re not thinking straight, and I’m not having this conversation while you’re like this.”

“I’m—”

“You’re not,” he interjected, firmly. I hadn’t even finished my sentence and he already knew what I was going to say. “And I don’t need you passing out on me on top of everything else. We have to head back to the hospital in a while.”

I hesitated. “Damian…”

His expression softened just a fraction.

“We’ll talk later,” he said. “Properly.”

That wasn’t a promise of forgiveness, or any confirmation that rehab was off the table, but at least, for the moment, it was a reprieve.

He stepped back, already shifting his focus away from me, back toward the hospital—the place where the bigger burden resided.

“Go get some rest,” he added. “I’m going to handle a few things at the office before heading back to check on Father.”

I lingered for half a second too long.

He noticed, of course.

“I mean it,” he said, tilting his head to the stairs. “Go.”

There wasn’t anything left to argue with.

So I nodded, even though part of me wanted to stay, to spill my guts, to release the hell I had created for myself. I didn’t know why I couldn’t just bring myself to tell Damian everything.

Maybe it was the fear. The fear that he’d look back into my eyes and dismiss me, like everyone had my entire life.

My feelings were drowning me. I wanted to cut them loose.

I stood up, and Damian watched me turn to go, his expression unreadable again. Even without looking though, I could feel him watching my every move.

He didn’t believe me. Not even a little.

Even with me gone, he’d carry that doubt with him as he tried to figure out how to manage me—his liability of a brother.

DELANE

My thighs were aching by the time I returned from Noah’s. I hoped he hadn’t noticed, but there was some blood on my underwear—just a little, brown now, not red. Maybe he was too caught up to care. I hoped he didn’t ask me about it.

I trudged through my house towards the bathroom. I didn’t even recognize it anymore. The paintings on the wall, the untouched dining table, the wall phone that my mom never wanted to throw away—this place felt like a stranger’s house.

“Home” didn’t exist anymore for me.

Until the sale went through, however, I was stuck here. Living in between packing boxes and masking tape. Loading up clothes to take to Chelsea’s. Crashing there when I was able to. Coming back to clean. Going through my parents’ stuff. Resisting the urge to throw it all away into the first black trash bag I could find. Wipe the slate clean.

My mother would have wanted me to save the expensive china. I could still hear her voice in my head talking about how the Norataki was a rare find, and how we needed to keep all the pieces together in order to get maximum value. “One day, you’ll be able to sell this for top dollar,” she would say.

I wished I could hear her voice again, even if it was to nag about those fancy plates and gravy boats. Maybe even listen to her sing in that awful, out-of-tune way to my dad. I smiled to myself at the thought. He always sang back.

The weight I carried felt like stones in my stomach, dragging me down to the floor. I became something small, so small, like a child. I guessed this is who I was now. A girl who carried weight quietly. A girl who said she was fine and that she didn’t want to think about the loss anymore.

Not a girl. A woman. I was a woman now, I supposed. I had lost my virginity and my family in the same week and no one in my life knew that.