They don’t say anything for a long while, each of them with a hand on me as they rub my leg, my back, my hair. It makes me cry harder.
“Baby, please talk to us. You’re starting to scare us.” Alaric says, brushing some of my hair away from my face.
Whimpering, I crawl until my head is in his lap and I’m looking up at the three of them.
I know I need to tell them. But how much? I mentally can’t handle telling them about my past with Ralph. I can’t. I just. Fuck. I can’t.
But I can tell them everything else.
“I moved back home for a reason” I tell them.
“Wasn’t it to join your family business?” Jamie asks.
I snort out a laugh. “No. At first, that's what I planned on letting my father believe, but I ended up getting so caught up with my new life and teaching at the school that I forgot all about the family business. And the real reason I came home.”
“And what reason was that?” Tatum asks, his hand rubbing comfortably up my calf. Fuck, I love his touch. All of their touches soothe my broken soul.
“At my old job, a good chunk of students died of drug overdoses. It all happened in a short amount of time so they expected something more was at play. I felt horrible, sick to my stomach because these are kids I knew, kids I taught. Even one…” I get choked up thinking about Chad. “Even a student who I was a sort of mentor to. It broke me. The police weren't doing anything about it. I didn’t understand why. Nothing was being done, so I thought I’d try my hand at helping. I overheard talk about a local gang that could be the cause of it, so I paid them a visit."
“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Tatum growls. “Because we’ll fucking kill them.”
“No.” I shake my head. “But their leader did kick me out of town.”
“What, why?” Jamie asks.
“Because they were getting the heat, when in reality I guess the talk was, my family was behind it.”
“What?” Alaric frowns. “No. That's not possible. Your father hates anything to do with drugs. It’s something he and our fathers clashed over because he refused to do any business with Jamie’s dad.”
“I know.” I close my eyes seeing my sister’s smiling face. “My dad has nothing to do with drugs since my sister passed away.” I open my eyes again. “That’s why I knew I had to get to the bottom of this. I had to find out who was spreading that rumorand why they believed it was my family. When I got back, I hinted the subject to my dad and he shot it down fast. I knew he didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“So what did you do?” Tatum asks.
“My plan was to join the family business, giving myself the opening I needed to dig deeper. But not long after I moved, all deaths stopped. No more students were dying because of drug overdoses. At least not any similar to the cases beforehand. Then work got busy, and I got distracted by life. I thought if the deaths stopped, everything was okay. I was wrong. So fucking wrong.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “It’s happening again.” My voice breaks. “So many kids died already and I could have stopped it. I could have found out who was doing this sooner and stopped those kids from dying.”
“Hey. Stop that.” Alaric growls before cupping my face. “Do not blame yourself. Do you understand me? This isn’t your job to handle. You did not give them dirty drugs. You did not force those kids to take anything. You did not kill those kids. It was a very fucked up tragedy, but you are not the cause of it.”
I close my eyes, my body jerking as I start to sob. I roll over, burying my face into Alaric’s stomach, breathing in his ocean scent calming me into sleep.
“He’s sleeping,” I hear Alaric’s voice say as I start to wake up. “What's this about?”
Rolling over, I rub at my eyes. “Hey,” Jamie murmurs. I look over to see that I’m cuddled into his side.
“Hi.” I rasp.
“Let’s go to your place,” Alaric says.
“Who’s on the phone?” I murmur as I move into a seated position.
“Alaric’s dad,” Tatum says, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“My head hurts. My body is tired. I want to sleep for the rest of my life,” I say softly.
“Not happening,” Jamie says. “But you are going to eat.”
I shake my head. “Not hungry."
“What’s going on?” Tatum asks when Alaric hangs up the phone.
