He bit down on the side of that full lower lip, face hurt and conflicted.
“You can’t think that anything is going to be different when you get back to New York,” Darcy said, internally alarmed by how thick her voice had gotten. He was wandering off into the woods without bear spray again, and Darcy wasn’t going to be there to save his ass this time. “We hadn’t even gotten through all of the third step on the podcast.”
“I have to go anyway,” he said. He gave a little twitch of his shoulders like half a shrug. “I’m sorry, Darcy,” he said again. “I didn’t find out about this until last night. I wish the timing had been different, obviously.”
Darcy didn’t know whether he was wishing yesterday away or just saying that his worthless meeting shouldn’t be next week, but she opened her mouth to yell at him regardless.
“You should come with us,” Sloane said from behind her, her voice that of a woman who had finally had a good idea.
“What?” Teagan asked.
“What?” said Darcy.
Sloane licked her lips, glancing between Darcy and her brother. “Teagan should stay here. In the program. But if hedoesn’t, you could, you know, come along and keep doing whatever you’re doing—”
“Didn’t work,” Darcy said bitterly. “Look, he’s going.”
“No, no, but you’ve been great! He’s doing a lot better. It has to be because of all the stuff he’s doing for you. You could do all that tree programming you’ve done for Teagan, but, like, in New York instead of here—” Sloane said, eyes wide and insistent.
Darcy frowned at her. “But I don’t know if the wilderness education would work if we’re not actually in the woods,” she said. “And we only just started getting into his alcohol abuse yesterday.”
Sloane stared back, face going blank. “You’ve been treating Teagan like he’s an alcoholic,” she said slowly.
“Well, of course I have,” Darcy said. “That’s why he’s here, right? But we’re only on episode three ofSober Sam’s Sobriety Podcast.”
The girl blinked several times. “And you think he needs to finish that.”
“I don’t,” Teagan said, ignored by both Darcy and Sloane.
“He’s feeling better because he’s eating well, exercising, and not drinking. But he needs to think about his sober lifestyle before he goes back to his real life,” Darcy said, shooting Teagan another insistent look.
“Okay. Yes. That’s it. You should come with us and make him,” Sloane said, nodding emphatically.
“Like a sober companion?” Darcy asked, finally catching on.
“A what?” Teagan asked but was again ignored by the two women.
Some of the guests who came through the wellness retreatleft with sober companions provided by their employers. The idea, as best Darcy understood it, was that someone had to follow the recovering addicts around and make sure they didn’t fall back into bad habits when they went home. Easy work, Darcy had thought, client depending.
Sloane’s attitude was nervous, as she was obviously thinking very hard under pressure. “Yes,” she said. “Like a sober companion.”
“I don’t need a sober companion,” Teagan said. “I’m not—”
“Shh, be quiet, Step One,” Darcy said, sticking her hand out behind her, palm out. This was something to be negotiated with Sloane, apparently. Heneededto stay in rehab. But if he wouldn’t stay in rehab, could rehab go home with him?
Darcy licked her lips, thinking hard and fast herself. She’d quit this terrible job for half a bag of stale Takis. And the only part of the job she’d everlikedwas the wilderness education angle, the sole beneficiary of which was folding his arms across his chest in misery behind her.
She just had to remain alert to pitfalls. Run the traps on this. This situation wasn’t Teagan’s fault, not really—he’d come here for help. It was Darcy’s fault for forgetting that he needed her help first and foremost, for getting her expectations up, for losing track of how this would inevitably end.
Maybe it didn’t have to end just yet though.
“For how long are we talking about?” Darcy asked Sloane.
Sloane rubbed the back of her neck. “Whatever’s typical, I guess?”
Darcy had no idea what was typical. “Ninety days after rehab, I think?” That would get her to the winter season in Yellowstone, if she could swing this. The winds of hermood had begun to shift again. Ninety days sounded perfect. She’d never even had a relationship last ninety days, so the odds were she’d be ready for a new job by then.
“You can’t just drop everything for me,” Teagan said, but he’d been making so little sense that morning that Darcy lifted her hand a little further and plopped it right over his mouth. Darcy would have immediately stuck out her tongue in his position, but he just went shocked and still.
