Page 76 of Golden Goal

I sink down onto the closed toilet seat and drop my head into my hands. I don’t move until Holt comes back into the bathroom. He shuts the door and hands me a shirt, one of his.

“I’m sorry.” I take my vomit covered shirt off and put on his, all the while avoiding his gaze.

“For what?”

“All of this. You trusted me to take care of Hazel, and she got sick while I was taking care of her.”

“It’s not your fault, Becca. She’s fine. It happens to me too. She works herself up for whatever reason and is inconsolable. Hadley just took her temperature, and she doesn’t have a fever.” He wraps his arms around me, and I sink into his embrace. “It wasn’t your fault,” he repeats, rubbing a hand down my back. “Talk to me. What’s really going on?”

“Bad things happen to the people I care about . . .”

He sucks in a breath. “What do you mean?”

“My brother is an addict, and it’s all my fault. My father got hit by a drunk driver—my mother—when I was in high school. And it was all my fault. Everyone I care about gets hurt. Just like Hazel did tonight.”

“I’m sorry you went through all of that, but I find it hard to believe that any of it was your fault.”

I scoff, pulling out of his embrace.

Chapter twenty-nine

Holt

Becca pulls away from me, and I let her go. I don’t want to, but I do it anyway. It hurts to hear her say she’s the cause of her family’s problems. That it’s her fault Hazel got sick tonight.

“Mason was a freshman in high school the year I was a senior. He didn’t have a lot of friends at the beginning of the year, so I introduced him to my then-boyfriend’s younger brother, who was in his year. They hit it off. The brother, Mo, had a band, and Mason joined it. Little did I know Mo and his bandmates were doing drugs. At one of the parties they played at, my brother got high with them. That was the beginning of the end.

“He barely graduated high school. He’s been in and out of rehab so many times over the years. It’s all my fault.” She shakes her head, blinking rapidly before meeting my eyes. “If I hadn’t introduced him to those guys or encouraged him to join their band and hang out with them.” She wrings her hands. “I should have known. I’m his big sister, and I failed him.” She gulps in a breath. “I failed at protecting my little brother. I failed at being a big sister. How the hell am I supposed to be a parent? I’ll probably fail at that, too.”

“Rebecca. It’s not your fault. You were a kid, too. You didn’t know what was going to happen. You wouldn’t have introduced him if you had. You can’t blame yourself. You weren’t the parent.”

“He blames me,” she says quietly. “The last time I talked to him, he said it was all my fault that he is who he is today. That his life hasn’t amounted to anything because of me.”

My heart cracks in two for this woman I’m falling for. I open my mouth to tell her again that it’s not her fault, but she starts speaking.

“It was the same time our mom got arrested for driving while intoxicated. One day I was pissed because all she did was drink and sleep. I decided to take matters into my own hands and dumped all her alcohol down the drain. I thought maybe not having it in the house would mean she wouldn’t drink. That she would go back to being the mom I remembered from when I was younger.

“Except she had a bottle she kept hidden in the back of her closet. She drank that. Got drunk but not enough to pass out. She wanted more. I refused to drive her. Dad was working—he worked any and all overtime he could to keep us afloat. Mason wasn’t home from band practice, ironically.

“She grabbed her car keys and stormed out of the house. I should have stopped her. She shouldn’t have been driving. But I was so angry. I let her go. I think part of me hoped maybe she wouldn’t come back and we’d be better off without her. Dad was coming home from a shift early.” She lets out a sob, and I pull her into my arms. “He got lucky the injuries weren’t life threatening. Mom never came home after they arrested her. I don’t really know what happened. Dad wouldn’t tell us. Aunt Jen, Dad’s younger sister, came to stay with us while he was in the hospital, and she wouldn’t tell us either. My family is such a fucked-up mess, and it’s all my fault.”

“Becca. It’s. Not. Your. Fault.”

She shakes her head against my chest as if she doesn’t believe me.

“I should have known that’s how it would turn out. I should have driven her to the store. Or not thrown out her alcohol. The same way I shouldn’t have introduced Mason to those guys. I suspected my boyfriend was doing drugs, too, but didn’t have proof. I’m sure he was.”

“You couldn’t have known. You were a kid yourself.”

She pulls away from me, staring at the floor. “Yes, I should have. And now Hazel got sick while I was taking care of her.”

A knock sounds at the door, and we both startle. “Sorry to interrupt whatever is going on in there, but are you almost done? I gotta use the bathroom,” Hadley calls.

“Sorry.” I grab Becca’s hand as we walk out. My sister darts around us and all but slams the door behind her. “Come on, let’s go to the living room.”

I take a seat and gesture for her to sit next to me, but she shakes her head and begins pacing. I sit silently, watching her. It was cathartic telling her about Kat and how she made me feel—like a little bit of the weight that’d been sitting on my shoulders had been lifted off. I hope Becca feels the same after sharing her story with me.

She finally comes to a halt in front of me. “The last thing I want is for something bad to happen to you or Hazel. Or Hadley.”