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“I’m going to try ringing him again,” I declared, knowing it was pointless, but it was the only thing I could do. I just needed to know he was safe. My fear of something terrible happening to him was all consuming. I needed him to be alright because no matter how hard I had fought my thoughts on the subject and tried to deny the feelings, I loved him very much.
CHAPTER 20
GREY
I was a total idiot and I knew it as I walked down the street from my rideshare, which I had been forced to get out of two blocks away from where Leah wanted to meet me. The driver of the car had refused to drive any further into the heart of the crappy neighbourhood, which should have been warning enough that I was walking into a very bad situation, but still it didn’t stop me.
Nothing would stop me from going to my sister when she reached out to me, even though I knew the odds that I was walking into a setup, that would end up with me getting my ass handed to me, were very high. Nothing would ever stop me hoping this time would be different, every single time she reached out to me though. Nothing would stop me trying to get her back home where she belonged so she could get the help she needed.
I missed her so fucking much. Growing up we’d been so close. Even though she was six years older than me, she’d always been happy to spend time with me, playing in our huge yard on warm, sunny days, or huddling in a fort she’d made for us to hide out in somewhere in the house. Even as we got older, we learned we had similar interests, and hung out together whenever she was home. Of course, my interests mirrored hers because I idolised her, and was always determined to be into whatever she was.
Then the accident happened. I hadn’t been in the car, since I was spending the night with Nan at her house. My parents had been driving Leah to a concert in the city, where she had planned to meet up with her friends. They never got as far as the city though, their car having been taken out by a semi-truck on the highway. Both of my parents were dead before help ever came, but Leah survived – physically anyway. Mentally the sister I knew never came back out of that car. The guilt that our parents had been out that night because of her, would never leave her, no matter how much Nan and I tried to tell her it wasn’t her fault.
When she came out of the hospital two weeks after the accident with pins in several parts of her body and in agony, she had been taking prescription pain meds. From there the drug use never ended. Instead she spiralled faster than Nan and I could ever have anticipated.
We missed the signs, too caught up in our own grief, me of losing my parents and Nan from losing her daughter and a man she considered a son. By the time we realized Leah was using illegal drugs, we’d already lost her. She left Nan’s house a year after the loss of our parents and that was that.
Nan and I had both tracked her down repeatedly in the years since, and tried, with every single plan we could concoct, to have Leah return home, but it never worked.
I put a stop to Nan trying again four years ago, when she found Leah in some dive bar downtown and had her purse snatched by some thug as she tried to plead with Leah to go home with her. Nan had escaped the situation unharmed, but she was badly shaken. I never wanted her in a position like that again, knowing it could have ended up much worse, so I had made her promise she would never go to Leah alone again, no matter what, and she had agreed.
So now it was down to me to try to help my sister, no matter how much my brain was telling me to turn the fuck around and get out of there. I knew the chances were I was walking into a trap my own sister had set me up for, but there was a flare of hope within me that if I did or said the right thing this time I could get through to Leah and get my sister back in my life.
That was what kept me walking down the dilapidated street Leah had brought me to. That was what made me ignore my body’s instinctual response, to the danger I knew was around me in a place like that, and keep moving.
As I bypassed a burned out old car which sat on the side of the road, three guys walked out of one of the abandoned looking houses to my right and glared at me as if they knew I didn’t belong there, which I clearly did not. They were covered in tattoos that I knew were linked to gangs and I was pretty sure I could see the bulge of guns under the loose shirts they each wore.
Finally, when I drew almost to the end of the street I saw the address Leah had asked me to come to, another abandoned looking house with the numbers to identify it painted onto the front door in streaked white paint. I paused before the property as I took it in. The windows were all boarded over and out front sat a mountain of old furniture and garbage bags filled with who knew what. The place was a complete dump and the thought my sister was living there almost had me losing my breakfast. I had to find a way to get her out. I had to bring her home where she would be safe and loved. I needed her as much as she needed Nan and I.
I may be a complete idiot for going there, but I wasn’t stupid enough to walk in without telling anyone where I was. I knew if anything happened and I was left injured in that building, I would never be found again. I needed someone to know where I was, just in case. I prayed to God things with Leah would go differently this time, but if they didn’t, I needed someone who cared about me to know where to come for me. So I powered on my cell and sent a quick text to Declan with the address, knowing of all of my brothers, he was the most equipped to face whatever may be on the other side of this door if he was forced to come after me.
Turning my cell off had been cowardly, but I knew Blake had seen Leah’s name pop up on my call, and so it would only be a matter of time before she told the guys and they tried to stop me from doing this. I just couldn’t allow them to do that. I couldn’t be talked out of going to my sister when she needed me.
After shutting my cell back off once the text had sent, I climbed the three crumbling steps to the door of the house and reached out to knock, unsure if touching the filth covered door was my wisest move. My decision was taken from me when the door swung open and there opposite me stood my sister.
“Hello little brother,” she greeted. She forced a smile that looked more like a grimace and I couldn’t help but gasp at how unlike the Leah I remembered, she looked. This wasn’t my sister. This was the shell the drugs were leaving behind in their wake.
She was a few inches shorter than me, and so thin I could see her ribs protruding below the cropped t-shirt she wore. Her skin was almost as pale as the skin tight white jeans she was wearing, and her eyes had huge dark smudges beneath them. Her face was so emaciated I was sure I could make out the shape of her skull beneath her sallow skin. Her once thick and wild, dark brown hair was now thin and dull, scraped up into some crazy pile on top of her head.
“Leah.” It was more of a gasp of horror as I took in just how much more of the sister I loved, I had lost since the last time I saw her. If I couldn’t get her to listen to me and accept some help, I knew there wouldn’t be many more meetings like this in the future. I had seen enough D.O.A. addicts in my career so far to know Leah was losing her battle with the drugs that had become her only love in life.
“You look good. Come in,” she opened the door wider and stepped aside so I could walk in. I hesitated for a moment, but my fear of losing her won out, as it always would, and I powered through the door, once again pushing back my instincts for self-preservation.
“I’m glad you called me,” I told her as I made my way into the house that was as filthy and dilapidated inside as it had been outside, only inside I didn’t have the benefit of fresh air. The smell, as we moved further through the dump, was nauseating - a mix of stale urine, mold, and the accumulation of the unwashed bodies laid out around the entire place, most of whom were too out of it to even notice me walking past them.
“I can’t believe you actually came.” Leah was walking ahead of me, and not once did she turn and meet my eyes.
“I’ll always come. You’re my sister,” I sighed as I dropped my gaze to the floor to prevent me from stepping on any of the used needles that littered the place. “Please tell me you’re not staying here, Leah,” I pleaded when we rounded a corner into another hallway and were blocked by a couple, almost completely naked, going at it right there against the wall.
“None of your business where I’m staying,” Leah replied as she shoved past the couple, almost knocking them over in the process. Thankfully, they remained upright and hurried off into a room to get out of the way before I had to pass them.
“I want it to be my business. I’m worried about you. So is Nan. We love you, Leah.”
“I don’t need you and Nan worrying about me. I’m doing just fine on my own,” she told me as she led me further and further into the rabbit’s warren of a dump.
“Yeah, looks like it,” I scoffed.
“Fuck you, Grey. You don’t know shit about my life!” she snapped.
