“I don’t either, but I think it will be for the best.” She wrapped her arms around herself, her next words striking deep. “I need you to focus on you right now. Enough with the drinking, Chase. Enough with the drugs.”
I nodded, head hung. It was either her or my addictions—the bottle, the powder, the constant need to numb everything.
Could I live without the high?
Chapter Twenty-Five
CHASE
Now, December 2024
“Morning.”I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and dropped into a seat at the kitchen table across from my dad, the familiar scent of his black coffee mixed with newsprint filling my nose. His reading glasses—the magnetic kind that hung around his neck until he snapped them into place—perched low on his nose as he read the paper. It was a morning ritual I’d missed during those sterile months at Harbor Hall.
“Morning, son,” he said, looking up and over the lenses. “Coffee’s fresh.”
I nodded, stretched, and yawned before moving to the counter to pour myself a mug. The ceramic was warm against my palms, grounding me as memories of Elena’s tear-stained face from last night threatened to overwhelm me.
“You got in late last night,” Dad said as I leaned against the counter and gulped my caffeine. “Everything okay?”
“Does everyone know?” The words came out sharp, bitter. “About the baby?”
Dad carefully folded his paper and set it aside. The sound seemed too loud in the quiet kitchen. “Kinda hard to miss these days.” He arced his hand over his stomach, miming a very pregnant belly.
“Funny, she doesn’t look much bigger than you.”
“Ouch.” Dad clutched his chest dramatically. “You wound me, son.”
Despite both our attempts to lighten the mood, I couldn’t let it go.
“No one thought to tell me? Three months, and not one fucking person?—”
“We all agreed it was best for your recovery,” Dad cut in, his voice gentle but firm. “Elena needed to be the one to tell you, when you were both ready. We just...didn’t expect you to run into her so soon.”
I moved to sink back into the chair across from him, running trembling hands through my hair. “When did everyone find out?”
Dad’s expression softened. “Elena told Tessa shortly after the accident.”
The words punched right through the flimsy, paper-thin walls around my heart. “She knew? Even then?”
While I was spiraling, drunk and high and throwing my life away, Elena had been... had been...
“It was a tough time for her,” Dad said quietly.
My fingers dug into my palms until they threatened to draw blood.
“But you know Everton women. Tessa, Nat, your mom—even Charlie, when she woke up”—I flinched at the mention of my sister—“brought her right into the fold. She’s family now, whether she forgives your dumb ass or not.”
“It might not be mine,” I whispered, tracing the wood grain in the table with eyes that stung from the threat of tears I refused to let spill. I didn’t deserve to cry; I did this to myself.
“Like that matters. You know your mother.”
Despite everything, that pulled a weak smile from me. Mom had a way of making anyone feel like part of the family in an instant, blood or not.
“I assume you know about... all the other stuff?” My voice cracked on the last word. The kitchen suddenly felt too small, too confined. I pushed back from the table and started pacing, unable to sit still with the weight of everything pressing down on me.
“Most of it.” Dad watched me wear a path in the wood floors, his expression carefully neutral. “Elena sat down with us—after some coercion from Tessa, of course. Not sure exactly how things went so bad between the two of you, though. That’s one story she refused to share.”
The memory of that night hit me like a freight train—Elena’s frightened eyes, my drunken rage, the way she’d flinched when my fist hit the pillow. Bile rose in my throat. I gripped the back of my chair until my knuckles went white, trying to steady myself.
