Chapter 26
Chris
On top of sitting next to my unconscious brother wondering if he’d ever wake up, Melinda wasn't answering my calls. I felt bad. I missed her. I missed her more than my next breath, and I had no idea what to do to make it right. I fucked up. And I felt like a class act idiot. Scrap that. Iwasa class act idiot. She didn't deserve the way I had treated her. When I’d returned home from my snowboarding trip, I should have gone straight to her and confided in her; instead, I went to a bar to have a drink and ended up being assaulted by Bess’ friend. And when Melinda confronted me over text about kissing other women (she must have seen us, or Mary spilled the beans), I shouldn’t have run off in a drunken stupor to the airport, but gone to her chalet and had it out with her. I guessed the bachelor life had turned me into someone who didn’t consider others. Not in that way. I was used to going to Ben’s bar for a drink when I was down, not calling a girlfriend. Damn it!
I could have prevented all the misunderstandings, just like my brother could have prevented this. It was a wake-up call. I’d always felt ashamed of my father and, later, brother. But did their lives have anything to do with me? No, not beyond how they’d influenced me. If anything, my father had positively influenced me, because I never wanted to become him. Yet, like him, I’d had a drink the other day because I was upset. And because that drink (or those drinks should I say) Melinda now hated my guts, thinking I’d kissed someone else. I hadn’t. Some woman had attacked me, and it had taken my faculties several seconds to catch on because I was drunk.
The truth was, I’d wanted to escape Melinda since the day we met. I’d wanted to escape her because I felt inferior to her. To her perfect life. I’d always just felt like the poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks, no matter how successful I’d gone onto become. And I’d always assumed she wouldn’t like that guy. Maybe I was wrong. I mean, I must be. Because she knew about my dad and my brother, and she still liked me. Well, she had before I made a fool out of myself.
I’d never trusted Melinda because I thought, like my mother, she’d one day waltz off. And she had. But that was because of what I’d done.
Talk about becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Speaking of prophecies…I looked down at my brother. For the first time, I could sort of grasp why he was an addict. Just like I had thoughts and feelings that propelled me to do stupid things, he had the same. He was caught in his own delusions.
“I need you to wake up, okay?” I told Charlie, taking his cold, slender hand in mine. He looked awful. He was skin and bone, like the only thing he had been eating was pills. I hadn't slept properly in days. The sound of his heart monitor kept me awake as I waited for a change, but day after day, he laid there still with no progress.
“You can go home, Mr. Bates. We will call you if there are any changes,” a nurse who had just come to check his vitals said, giving me a worried look—no doubt seeing the exhaustion written all over my face.
I shook my head. “No. I don't want him to wake up and be alone. I want to be here.” Even if it meant missing Valentine's Day gala, my brother was more important than the resort. I decided right then and there that not only was I going to make Charlie my focus, but I was going to take a step back from snowboarding, while I took care of my family. I didn’t need to prove myself anymore. I was successful and, in the position, to hang up one dream to make another soar.
Or more like it: it was time to move on from one dream to the next. I would keep snowboarding, but I’d compete for fun, when I felt like it, not to prove something to the world, or win prize money. I’d pick and choose what competitions I wanted to do.
And I’d get real with my fanbase on Instagram. I’d tell them about my father and my brother. Because they weren’t a reflection of me, but I had learned from them, and I loved Charlie. There was no reason for me to be ashamed of him. He was just a kid with a shitty childhood who didn’t have someone there to guide him. Hell, I’d been away competing all the time just when our father died. And our sister had already been to college.
Charlie’s finger twitched, and I stood up, hovering over him to see if he would wake up. “Come on.” Another dream I was adding to the list? My brother beating his addiction. Tears burned my eyes when his eyes didn’t move. I ran my hand through my dirty hair and grabbed his shoulders. “Wake up, Charlie. Wake. Up!”
Nothing.
“I need you to wake up. I need my brother, okay? I need to talk to you about life, and I need us to be okay again. I need you to be okay; I'm begging you just to wake up because I can't handle losing you too.”
“Hey,” my sister’s voice came from the doorway.
“Alicia,” I ran over to her and pulled her into a tight hug. “When did you get here?”
“I had finals, or I would have come sooner. I’m so sorry. My professors were assholes and wouldn't let me do them later.” Alicia peeked over my shoulder and held a hand over her mouth. “It's different this time, isn't it?” she walked toward out brother, in a trance of disbelief.
“Yeah, Alicia. It’s different this time.”
“You were yelling at him,” she said, brushing Charlie’s out of his face. “That never worked before. It won’t now.”
“I know. I just need our baby brother to wake up, Alicia. I don’t know how successful I could be in life if he died, knowing I didn’t do more for him.”
“You did everything for him, Chris. He knows that. He has to figure this out, and when he fully wants help, he will fight to beat this.”
“What do we do if he doesn’t?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that he’s the one who needs to want to be in recovery. We can’t just want it for him.”
My phone rang—it was standing on the nightstand next to the bed—and I saw Ben's name flashing across the screen. “Hello?”
“I know you have a lot going on, and I know it isn't the time, but when are you coming back? You realize the gala is tomorrow.”
“What? No, it is the fourteenth. That’s in two days.”
“No, it’s tomorrow, and I'm telling you this friend to friend if you don't show, you and Melinda will be done. She’s put her heart and soul into this thing. Not just for the kids’ sake, but for you.”
“But Ben, my brother…he could die when I’m not here.”
