Following the meal, Annie left to go back to her place, and Benji went to the rec center to shoot some hoops.
“I want to grab a few things from my room,” Julian said, then hesitated, lifting a hand to rub his chin. “Would you mind coming upstairs with me?”
“Uh, sure,” Kiara said, wondering why he’d need her help if he was just getting a few things.
She got to her feet, then walked with Julian out of the breakfast room. The stairs were getting more challenging as her pregnancy progressed, and she was sure there would come a time when she outright refused to climb them.
When they reached his room, Kiara looked around curiously. She’d never been inside it, but from what she could see, she hadn’t missed anything. The room was basically the same setup as the rooms she and Angie had used.
“Why don’t you sit over here?” Julian said, gesturing to the perfectly made bed.
Since he had a sitting area, just like she and Angie had in their rooms, Kiara wasn’t sure why he wanted her to sit on the bed. However, she didn’t question him, curious about what was to come.
She moved over to the bed and sat down, wiggling a bit to move back from the edge, since it was a little higher than the bed she was used to.
Julian came to stand in front of her, his expression serious. “I need to show you something. Just wait a minute.”
Kiara watched as he walked to what she assumed was the walk-in closet. He disappeared inside, leaving her to wait in uneasy anticipation.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Julian pressed his sweaty palms against his jeans. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked Kiara to come to his room to watch him do what he needed to do. However, he wanted the accountability that came with having someone there to witness it.
With trembling hands, he reached for the large chest that sat at the back of the walk-in closet. Going down on one knee, he punched in the code on the lock of the chest. He lifted the lid, then stared at the bottles of alcohol that sat lined up on the bottom of the chest.
Nine of them. There had been twelve there at one point, but he hadn’t had a chance to restock before leaving for the treatment center.
He’d been determined never to run out. If Duncan had removed all alcohol from the house, he’d planned to still be able to drink from his own stash.
Reaching inside, he picked up one bottle and tucked it into his elbow. Then he picked up two more, one in each hand. Straightening, he left the closet.
Kiara was watching the closet, so as he walked out, she saw him right away, her eyes widening when she spotted what he carried.
“It isn’t my intention to put the weight of my sobriety on you,” Julian said, “but I want to be accountable to you, starting with this.”
“What is that?” she asked.
“This is my stash. The one I kept in case Duncan removed all the alcohol from the house. And sometimes, it was what I drankwhen I decided that I still needed more alcohol after coming upstairs to my room.”
“That’s a lot of alcohol.”
“It is,” he agreed. “And this isn’t all of it.”
Kiara’s brows rose. “How much do you have?”
“Six more bottles. Nine in total.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to get rid of it,” he said. “I’m going to pour it all down the drain.”
Turning, he moved in the direction of the open bathroom door. Stepping up to the sink, he set the three bottles on the sink counter, then cracked the seal of one of them.
He exhaled heavily before he tipped the bottle over. The golden liquid glugged out of the bottle, into the sink, and down the drain.
As the bottle emptied, he felt a rising panic. These bottles were his lifeline. They were his ability to deal with the difficult parts of his life. What if something came up and he couldn’t cope with it without the alcohol? Maybe he should keep just one bottle.
When he felt a soft touch on his arm, Julian set the empty bottle down, then glanced at Kiara. She was gazing at him with an understanding expression.
