“I didn’t,” I agree with her. “By then, I was in too deep. You know how they talk about gateway drugs? Well, after I started on the steroids, and they seemed to be helping, I decided I needed some assistance with my classes too. I went back to that same teammate, and he gave me some Ritalin. It helped me stay alert and awake to study. But then I wasn’t sleeping, and was so exhausted at practice, so I moved on to Vicodin to chill out. Then Oxy. The next thing I knew, I was popping pills just to function and struggling to pay for them. So that same guy introduced me to another guy, and then …” I swallow thickly.
“And then you were dealing,” my mother supplies softly, her silver eyes, so similar to my own, wet with unshed tears.
“Then I was dealing,” I repeat. I drop my gaze to the table and trace a scratch in the wood with my finger that’s been there since I was a kid. The sight of it is soothing, somehow, for its familiarity. “I was crashing on that guy’s couch and then, later, on a mattress in a dingy, grimy basement after I got busted.”
My mother slaps a hand over her mouth at this revelation, but she’s unable to contain the sob that leaves her, and I watch as the tears that had been threatening finally spill over, shame and guilt warring in my chest. I’ve managed to surprise her with something after all.
“I wanted to go to you,” she says, her voice thick from the tears. “I wanted to be there for your arraignment. But I was soangry, Riley. So angry. And sad.Hurt. And then Jack found out you were pleading guilty. The next thing I knew, you were being sentenced.”
“Eight years,” I supply, taking another sip. Much longer than I’d been expecting as a first-time offender.
“Yeah.” My mother sighs. She bites her lip, again looking at my glass, then lets out another long breath. “I think … I need to go to bed. This has been a really long day.” She pushes to her feet slowly and rounds the table. “Thanks for talking to me tonight,” she says, tenderly resting a hand on my face. “I know it wasn’t easy.”
I nod, and she lets her hand drop.
“Good night, baby,” she murmurs.
I toss back the remains of my whiskey. “Good night.”
4
Riley
“Well,thislooksfamiliar,”I grunt, walking into the kitchen the following morning. My mother is seated at the table, in the same spot she had been last night, with two mugs of coffee in front of her.Again.
I wonder if there’s Baileys in there today.
She shrugs, meeting my gaze with tired eyes. “Did you think we were done?”
I sigh, rubbing a hand over my face. “Guess not.”
“Have a seat,” she says, sliding a mugtowards me.
I pull out the chair and lower myself into it, noting the creaking of the old wood under my weight.
“What do you want to know now?” The mug is warm in my hands, and I let the heat seep into me, soothing my frayed nerves.
“Where the hell have you been all this time, and why didn’t you come home sooner?”
“You mean you don’t know?” I ask wryly.
She shrugs again. “I know you did four of your eight years and were paroled for good behavior. I know you stayed in the city for another two years until the parole board released you from their supervision.” She pauses, eyeing me sadly. “That still leaves a decade unaccounted for.”
Now that I’m home, it truly is wild to think I’ve been gone that long. I’ve been away almost as long as I lived here.
But I had more than one reason to stay away.
Steph.
Thinking of her now brings that familiar ache back to my chest, and I absently rub at the spot over my heart. It’s a feeling I’ve struggled against for almost half my life. The longing.The regret.
At times, I thought I’d managed to leave her in the past, to relegate her to a sweet memory from another time. But despite my best efforts, she never strayed far from my mind for very long. And I’ve damn well never been successful in pushing her from my heart.
She owns that and always will.
Seeing her last night, for the first time since I broke her—
It brought everything rushing back to the surface. All the feelings I’ve tried in vain to bury. And I’m dying to know about her, but also afraid to ask. Despite how she’s hovered on the edges of my consciousness all these years, I’ve refrained from looking her up. All but the one time, but once was enough. Call it self-preservation. Call it whatever you want, but it was too painful to let myself go there. It was hard enough imagining the life she’d built without me; I didn’t want to—couldn’t—know the reality of it.
