The rest refuses to come out.
The eternity between blacking out and blinking awake under fluorescent white lights, piercing my brain to the point of pain. I can still taste the nausea rolling in my stomach at the smell of bleach and hand sanitizer. Everything around me was too white. Too bright. Too sharp.
Carter’s eyes narrow, the wheels turning in his head. He knows me too well. “What happened?”
I drag in a breath, letting it out slowly. “Ended up in the ER. I blacked out that night … after you dropped by.”
The memories are mostly foggy, but the doctors’ words hit harder than I expected. The severity of the situation pressed on my lungs, dense and suffocating. One stilted breath away from going into full-blown panic.
All I could think about was my parents. About how my stupidity could’ve destroyed them.
What if I hadn’t woken up? And the last thing people remembered about me was that I collapsed in a bar? The shame pulls at my insides, making me feel even worse.
Carter stops short in the hallway, spinning on his heels. “Why didn’t you call me?”
The edge in his voice echoes, bouncing off the large windows and hardwood floors, landing heavily in my chest.
“Not my proudest moment,” I say, straightening a crooked frame on the wall.
Carter stares. Neither of us speaks, the silence pulsing around us.
“You wanted to play nurse?” I try, forcing a joke, but Carter’s expression remains stone cold.
“You could’ve…” He scrubs a hand over his face, rubbing his chin roughly. “I can’t keep watching you hurting yourself. If you’re planning on pulling that shit here—”
“I know.” I don’t let him finish. “It was stupid. I’m too old to be barhopping anyway…”
“Adam,” Carter grunts in warning.
All the adrenaline that carried me through a red-eye and the drive here is finally wearing off. I lean against the nearest wall, the chill seeping through my shirt. “I’ll behave,” I promise. “I won’t cause you or Eliza any problems.”
“My door —our door,” he corrects himself, “is always open to you. But I’m curious.” He pierces me with that look again. “There are rehab centers.”
“I don’t need rehab,” I say, holding his stare. “I need space. Clarity. To stop wasting my time. Pretending the partying did something for me.”
Even if the reason I unraveled is somewhere in this house. A force I can’t escape.
A woman I don’t know how to let go.
I’m here only for Carter. Maybe if I keep telling myself that, I’ll actually believe it. He’s never been one to ask for help, but after so many years, he doesn’t have to. Unlike many of my friends back home, I grew up an only child. But I imagine this is what having a brother feels like. And I want to be here for him and his family, even if it weren’t for the sense of debt I feel I could never repay.
For his trust in me. All the support building me up when I was a fresh graduate without connections or a trust fund.
Since we’re having such a manly heart-to-heart, the other half-truth slips out. “I also want to make sure you’re all safe. I’m worried.”
Carter’s easy smile lessens my anxiety. “Hmm. Is that so?”
“What? I can be useful,” I say defensively. “I’m no Logan special forces type shit…but I can hold my own.”
Carter slings an arm around my shoulders, steering me deeper into the chalet, which they keep calling a ‘larger cabin’. “Stay as long as you need.” Then the motherfucker cracks an ominous smile. “This should be entertaining.”
We head up the stairs, and he lets out an honest-to-God cackle. “Jackie’s in the other guest room. Try not to get on her nerves too much.”
As if she were summoned, his sister swings open her door, scanning me and the bags in my hand with the scrutiny of a TSA agent.
Jackie whirls toward Carter, phone clenched in one hand like a weapon, fire in her eyes.
“What the fu—” Jackie rushes past us, muttering under her breath. “Is this a hotel now?” The rest of her words get swallowed by the thundering stomps of her boots down the stairs.
