“I mean it!” Sloane said to Teagan when nobody agreed with her. “I didn’t need it in the first place. Nobody goes to rehab just because they do a little coke at parties. I only stayed in Montana becauseyouneeded to stay.”
“Did you do coke tonight?” Teagan immediately demanded.
“No! I haven’t done anything since I got back! This is the shrimp. It was outside on the raw bar. I should’ve known. No outdoor shrimps,” Sloane fuzzily insisted. “I’m not drunk. I didn’t drink too much.”
“I know it feels that way. But we can’t do that in our family. Okay? I don’t know if it’s in our genes or... I don’t know. We don’t know when to quit. We’re not good at knowing when things are bad for us. So I don’t think you should drink. At all. Or anything else.”
“I don’t drink any more than anyone else does,” Sloane said stubbornly.
“It’s already affecting your life though,” Teagan said. “Not showing up to work? Being hungover at noon? Throwing up at the zoo? This isn’t going to work. You can’t be doing this back in California where I can’t help you. You need to make some changes. We can talk about it tomorrow, butyou need to decide you’re going to live your life differently from mom.”
Sloane glared in a bleary way at her brother. “You should talk.Youwere in the hospital for a week. You were afraid you were going todie. You’re still a mess. But the only thing that changed was you got a girlfriend. A girlfriend who’s leaving you!”
“That’s not true,” Darcy blurted. Teagan shot her a grateful look, his face suffused with relief, before he focused on Sloane again. Darcy wrapped a sheltering arm around Teagan’s hips and felt him automatically press back against her. “I’m not going anywhere. And it’s not true that Teagan isn’t doing anything to change his life. Teagan made the only big change he needs to be making for the next year—he stopped drinking. We’ll work on everything else once he’s past that. And I’ll help you too—”
Sloane groaned with aggravation. “Stop it! He doesn’t even drink! That’s not even why he went to the hospital! Okay? He’s not an alcoholic, I’m not an alcoholic, and neither of us are anything like our mom.”
“What?” Darcy asked, not understanding the thrust of this argument, even coming from an overtly drunk person. The unflushed toilet reeked of triple sec. She met them both at rehab. She was still getting a paycheck to serve as Teagan’s sober companion.
But Teagan’s body stiffened next to her, going rock still.
Darcy turned to Teagan. “What?” she asked again.
Sloane answered for him, her eyes angry and teary. “You know he has panic attacks. Like earlier tonight? He had one in the subway and thought he was dying. It took a whole week for the hospital to stabilize him. You know? You didn’t know. He didn’t even tell you.”
Darcy took a step back, eyes fixed on Teagan. She didn’t need to ask if it was true. Teagan’s face had drained of blood, leaving it gray around his round, scared eyes. His lips were parted, but he seemed to have lost his faculties of speech.
“You tried to kill yourself?” Darcy whispered, blood suddenly buzzing though her face and ears.
“No! No, I didn’t. I never did. I wasn’t suicidal. I thought I was dying,” Teagan said in a jumble of words, too fast, too soft.
“And that’s... different,” she said, fear blooming in her throat like mushrooms after a storm.
“I wasn’t dying. There wasn’t anything wrong with me, physically, it’s just a mental health thing—they said it’s manageable, sometimes it goes away, and you can take medication,” Teagan said, now tripping over himself to explain, even as he stared at her as though afraid to blink and lose eye contact.
“You aren’t on medication,” Darcy snapped. Then she startled in realization. “Oh my God, you stopped taking your medication. It was for this? Did you even talk to a doctor? You didn’t.”
Teagan didn’t have a response to that. His face was silently pleading.
“You stopped taking your medication?” Sloane demanded, wheeling on her brother.
Darcy held up a palm between the girl and Teagan. “Go stand outside with Adrian and the otters,” she growled at Sloane. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.” She was furious at Sloanetoo. Sloane had lied to hertoo.
Sloane jerked backward at the novelty of a command and, with a dark look at her brother, slunk out of the bathroom. Teagan sagged back against the wall as soon as shewas gone as though seeking support from the cinderblock walls of the building.
Darcy curled her hands into fists and locked her knees.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” Darcy asked. “When?”
Teagan finally looked down at the floor. “I’m not drinking. I’m really never going to. I meant what I said to Sloane. I don’t think we should.”
“But you never did? You’re really not an alcoholic—”
“I told you that. I told you thatseveraltimes, that I didn’t get drunk, that I’d never done drugs—”
“And then you told everyone else that you were an alcoholic. You said that tome. Youliedto me.”
Teagan swallowed hard, the muscles in his throat visibly clenching.
