“Traitor,” Nick grumbled, but I could hear the smile in his voice.
I couldn’t help myself. “So… Bear? That’s… kinda close to ‘beer,’ isn’t it?”
Nick chuckled softly, eyes still on the dog. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Guess it’s a reminder that I’m not that guy anymore.”
Bear gave a happy wag of his tail, as if understanding the weight behind those words. Nick looked up at me, his smile fading just a little before he slapped it back on. “Come on,” he said quietly, motioning toward the living room. “Sit down.”
We stayed there longer than we probably should have. He made me sit on the couch, gave me water, and put on some music low in the background. At some point, Bear curled up next to me, his giant head in my lap. Nick sat across from me at first, leaning back in an old chair, just watching. Like he was trying to figure out why the hell he let this night go on so long.
“You look good with him,” he said eventually, his voice rough.
I shrugged, fingers combing through Bear’s fur. “I like dogs.”
He nodded slowly, looking like he was turning something over in his head. Then he stood, walked over, and pulled me up into his arms again.
“One night,” he murmured against my hair. “That’s what we said.”
“Yeah,” I whispered back, even though neither of us sounded like we believed it.
We ended up in his bed anyway. And when the sun started bleeding into the room hours later, it should have felt like the end. But it didn’t.
Six
Nick
I stood in the liquor aisle, begging myself not to grab the whiskey and drown myself in it. Some days I do just fine. Others, I want to say fuck my sobriety and flush it all down the toilet for a cheap bottle of whiskey that I’d throw up come morning. It’s been months since I stood here, wanting to do this and somehow always walking away, but I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to do that this time.
Three weeks ago I had the best night of my life, and like the coward I’d always been, I let it end with nothing. Not even a fucking phone number. I told Mya no strings, and I meant that. My life was messy. I couldn’t promise her I’d stay sober, and no one deserved that. So… one night. That was it. But now she was all I could think about. She was the one I looked for every time I walked into a room. One night wasn’t enough, and I was a selfish bastard.
I stood there staring at the bottle like it had something to say. Jack Daniels. Cheap, fast, and familiar. My fingers hovered just over the label, and I could already feel the burn down my throat,the slow numbness that would follow. The silence it would give me. The reminder of Mya gone from my head.
It wasn’t about the taste. Never was. It was about forgetting. About taking a wrecking ball to the part of my brain that still replayed that night with Mya like it meant something. When I knew, I’d made damn sure it didn’t. I had no business wanting more. But God, I did.
“Nick?”
I flinched, instinctively tensing, and turned slightly toward the sound. Lilly stood a few feet away, her expression unreadable but not unkind. For a split second, I braced myself for judgment.
Lilly was my brother Sean’s girlfriend, though “girlfriend” didn’t really cover it. She’d been in a car accident caused by a drunk driver that should’ve killed her. Slipped into a coma, unresponsive for weeks. Most people would’ve walked away, written her off as a lost cause. But Sean stayed. I knew she wasn’t just another patient to him. He sat by her bed every night like she could hear him. And maybe she could, because when she finally woke up, it was like she already knew him.
I hadn’t expected her to become such a fixture in our family. But she had. And the first night I met her? Well, Lilly was the only person there that understood me without a single word spoken. She understood my tiredness in a way the rest of them didn’t. Not just the physical kind, but the deeper stuff, too. The kind that lived in your bones.
She was standing at the edge of the aisle, holding a basket full of boring groceries: eggs, bananas, and oat milk. Her eyes dropped to the bottle I hadn’t picked up yet and then back to me. She didn’t say anything. Not at first. Just looked.
I cleared my throat and forced a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Didn’t think the ICU doctor would let his miracle out to the grocery store alone.”
She tilted her head, gave me a tired kind of smile. The kind you offer to someone who’s bleeding but pretending they’re fine. “Didn’t think you still came down this aisle.”
“Just looking,” I muttered.
“Right.” Her tone was soft, but not naïve. She took a few steps closer, stopping just beside me, close enough to read the label I wasn’t holding. “Rough day?”
“Something like that.”
She didn’t pry. She didn’t lecture me or act like she was above it. She just stood next to me, like she had every right to. If it had been one of my brothers who found me instead, it would’ve gone down differently.
Connor would’ve lost it. Thrown a punch first, asked questions later. And honestly, I would’ve deserved it. Ben would’ve panicked. Tried to crack a joke, then called Tyler like he always did when things got too heavy. Let someone else clean up the mess. And Sean… Sean would’ve looked at me with that same face as our dad. The one that said he was trying so hard to understand, to fix it, even if he didn’t know how.
I dragged a hand down my face, the shame hitting me harder than I expected. “It’s been months since I even thought about buying a bottle.”
