"You sure?"
I took one more deep breath even though it hurt, then answered, "I'm sure."
Nolen took his seat before asking, "What was that all about?"
"I don't know. I've never had it happen to me before."
In my head though, I was screaming for him not to ask me about my sister again. As it would have it, the begging didn't help.
"Are you ready to tell me about your sister?"
"And if I say no?"
Nolen looked at me with part disappointment and part hurt. It was a look I didn't want to see aimed at me.
"I thought you would've realized by now that you can trust me."
"This isn't about trust." Not entirely anyway.
"Then what is it about?"
How did I explain that most of my life had been spent taking care of my sister, and there was no one else I wanted to put that kind of pressure on?
"My sister has some problems…"
"Don't most people? I just told you about my brother and his issues."
He did, and while that information was given freely, I still felt the need to reciprocate.
That's likely why he did it.
"Yes, but your brother is nothing like my sister." Not even close. "At least he can hold down a job," I grumbled to myself.
"Why don't you let me make that decision?" He quirked his one brow as if he were challenging me.
I thought about it. I could easily tell him some things without giving it all away. One look at Nolen and I knew I had to give him something.
"I lost my mother when I was nine years old. She died while in labor with my sister. The doctors said she was lucky to survive. My father was heartbroken after that and didn't really know what to do with two girls, so he left dealing with my sister up to me."
Now that I was saying it out loud, I realized how unfair that was.
"I spent my life trying to overcompensate for the loss of our mother. So much so that I became a helicopter sister. I thought I was protecting her, but as it turned out, I was just giving her reason to rebel."
Nolen reached his hand across the table and linked our fingers together. "You don't have to continue if this is hard for you."
It wasn't until he said that, that I realized there was a tear running down my cheek. I quickly swiped it away. "No, it's okay. I need to at least tell you some of what's going on."
"Okay. Go on."
"It wasn't until she was in college that I realized something was wrong."
It was actually the first time I dug my head out of the sand and faced what I had secretly known all along. My sister was a drug addict.
I thought back to when I had found my sister in the bathroom with a needle hanging out of her arm. I had been so sure that she had overdosed and died on my watch. Thankfully that wasn't the case, but after that, things went downhill fast.
"How bad was it?"
I let out a humorless laugh. "As bad as it gets," I admitted honestly. "My sister has been in and out of rehab since she was twenty."
