“Why did this happen to us?” I ask. He grabs me and pulls me into his arms, letting me cry into his chest.

I can feel his awkwardness as he holds me. He’s not real big on affection and it makes me feel like crap that he has to console me again. But that’s what he does. He hates it, but he tries to make everything better. Mom couldn’t take care of stuff, so Maddox did. He’s still doing it.

“I don’t know,” is all he says. Honestly, I’m a little surprised I got that much out of him.

“We need to go see her.” I wipe my eyes with my sweatshirt.

Maddox nods at me, but before we can go in, a nurse stops us. As soon as I tell her who we are, she gets that small smile on her face that says she feels bad for us, but she’s trying not to let it show.

“Let me get the doctor first, okay? She wants to speak to you.” She disappears behind the sliding doors, the sound echoing through the halls. The emergency room is quiet tonight and I almost wish for more people around to distract us.

Right away, the door slides open again. A woman with graying hair, wearing the same smile as the nurse, comes out. “You’re Ms. Cross’s children?”

“Yes.” Of course it’s only me who answers.

She leads us over to a small room with a couch. Goose bumps blanket my skin the second we walk in. It reminds me of the place they take family members to let them know when someone has passed away.

She’s okay… she’s okay. They would have told me if she wasn’t.

“As I told you on the phone, your mom overdosed on pills. Some of them seem to be medications that have been prescribed to her, but we’re not sure if that’s all she took.”

Oh God. Has she been buying pills illegally? How did this happen? How did we go from a normal family—with a mom and dad who used to laugh together, a mom who used to love cooking dinner for her family, a brother who could have gotten a football scholarship, and me, who was just happy to have the people I loved close—to this? “Okay…”

“She’s sleeping right now, but she’s been in and out of it. You need to know that she’s still a threat to herself. She…” The doctor pauses for a second before sighing. “She’s continued to say she wants to die and she attacked one of the nurses. I just want you to be prepared when you go in. We had to strap her down for everyone’s safety.”

A cry climbs up my throat and I clamp my mouth closed, hoping it won’t be able to escape. Why aren’t we good enough to make her want to stay? I don’t understand her not wanting to be with me. With Maddox.

My brother’s hand comes down on my shoulder and he gives it a comforting squeeze. No matter how angry he is, he’s always here for me. I hate how all of this has scarred his soul.

“Where do we go from here?” Maddox asks her, but I want to be the one who’s angry now. I want to yell that we’ve been through enough. That I’m eighteen fucking years old and Maddox only twenty-one. We’re not supposed to be dealing with this. We’re supposed to be in college and going home for long weekends instead of being alone.

“We did a psych consult and we think it’s best that she be admitted to our inpatient ward. It’s a thirty-day stay. They’ll be able to help her better there. I would hate for her to be in a situation where she’s able to hurt herself further or, God forbid, someone else.”

It feels like a fist squeezing my chest so tight it shatters my ribs, shatters everything inside me, but I just want to be whole. Why can’t we all be whole again?

I look at Maddox and he’s emotionally gone again. His hand is still on me, but the rest of him looks as though he’s checked out, leaving me alone.

“Okay… I agree. Can we see her now?” Is it bad that part of me doesn’t want to? That I’m scared to death to walk in there and see her? To risk that her anger will come out at me like it always does.

“Of course. Follow me.”

I know before he stops me that Maddox isn’t going. His eyes that look so much like mine soften as though he’s trying to tell me he’s sorry—words he’ll never say out loud.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, but really it’s not. I need him and he knows it. Mom needs him. We both know she’d rather it be Maddox with her than me.

My legs tremble slightly as I walk into the room. She looks so small in the bed. Her blond hair, so different from my dark brown, is stringy and matted. I just saw her two days ago. Two days and she didn’t look like this.

“Hey, Mom,” I say. The doctor is gone, leaving me alone in the room with her. Gray cloth shackles keep her hands tied to the metal on her bed, almost covering the scars on her wrists from the first time. The time I held her while she bled.

Of course, she doesn’t answer.

I stand next to her bed and touch her hair, but then pull back, afraid to wake her. Instead, I stand there wishing I would wake up and we’d be the family we were four years ago before everything changed. Before my dad got drunk and, while his girlfriend went down on him, drove into a yard and killed a little boy. Before we found out about his gambling and the other women. I guess we were never the typical family I thought we were. That isn’t true either. I knew that even then, when Mom would get pissed at me for spending time with Dad and Maddox stopped playing ball with him.

Tears roll down my cheeks in synchronized wave after wave, like a crowd at a football game. Maybe one of Maddox’s old games.

I think of the woman, Angel, who I visited a few weeks ago.

The pain in her eyes when I told her who I was. But also the forgiveness she showed even though my father took away her little boy.

Maddox hates the idea bogging down my brain, but I don’t know what else to do. Maybe the only way to end our family’s suffering is to continue to make amends, the same way I did with Angel.

Chapter Three

~Adrian~

“Party at my house. Are you in this time or does Cheyenne have that collar too tight around your neck?” I ask my best friend, Colt, when I sit on the chair in his studio apartment. He hooked up with his girl Cheyenne not too long back. She’s good people. Loves his ass something fierce. She didn’t leave his side while he watched his mom die or when we almost lost Colt the same night.

A little flash of Colt on the ground jumps into my head, so I pull a pipe out of my pocket and fill my lungs with smoke, hoping the high will cloud it away. Too close to home, except unlike with Colt, when it was Ashton there was blood. So much fucking blood.

Colt falls onto the bed, on the other side of his place. “Don’t talk shit about her, fucker, or I’ll kick your ass.”

I smile at him because I expected him to say something like that. The cool thing about them is he loves her just as much as she loves him. She’s changed him and I don’t think he even realizes how much. I might give him hell, but I’m happy. One of us deserves that bullshit storybook ending.

“Don’t look at me like that. I hate it when you give me that dissecting look like you’re trying to pull out all my fucking secrets.”

I tap my head and play that stupid psychic game that he likes to give me hell about.

I don’t see the future; I just notice shit. When you’re seven years old and scared of your own fucking shadow, too scared to get close to anyone like I used to be, you learn to pay attention. To study people’s lives because it’s the only way to feel like you’re living and to think about how differently you’d be doing it if you had the balls to man up. Or, hell, if you hadn’t been given such a shitty hand to begin with.

“You know I’m just playin’ about Cheyenne. And I’d be more afraid of her than you,” I tease, putting the pipe to my mouth before taking another pull. I hold it out to Colt, knowing he’ll say no. He found his solace in Cheyenne and I have as close to it as I’ll ever get right here.

Colt shakes his head. “I have shit to do. I’ll talk to Chey about tonight. You act like having a party is something new. It’s just like every other night, right?”

Yeah, except for tonight I’m trying to forget watching my sister cry over Ash’s grave. Trying to forget I didn’t have the balls to go to her. That I watched him die.

“Just another night.” Inhale. Exhale. Then I stand, hardly feeling the tickle of my high, and follow him out the door. When we hit the bottom of the stairs, which lead to the parking lot, his girl shows up all dark skin and dark hair. She’s half Native American and has an exotic look about her.

“Hey, baby.” I wink at her, teasing both her and Colt. Cheyenne gives me a smile before Colt wraps his arms around her and kisses her.

“How are you?” She runs her hand through his hair, a dark look washing over her face that tells me she’s probably thinking about that night a couple months ago when he got his head injury.

“Better now,” he says before glancing at me. “So, Adrian’s having a party tonight that he wants us to go to.”

“No! Adrian having a party? I never would have guessed,” Cheyenne replies.

She steps away from Colt, so I grab her and throw an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t give me shit. I thought we were a team now?” When two people watch someone who means something to both of them almost die, it creates a bond. I know how fast someone can be taken from you, and I don’t take that shit lightly. People come in and out of my house all the time. They party with me and use me for whatever the hell they want, but Colt’s real. Cheyenne too. They’re the only people besides Angel I let myself give a shit about.

“Quit hitting on my girl.” Colt shakes his head, but he knows nothing’s going on. He might have turned over a new leaf by trying not to be such a bastard all the time, but he would have tried to take my ass out a long time ago if he thought I really wanted Cheyenne.

I think he likes that we’re cool.

“I wouldn’t have to try—” My words are cut off when I see a dark-haired girl get out of a car. She’s tall, wearing some kind of yoga pants or some shit with a big-ass sweater. I don’t even have to use my imagination to see how nice her legs are. She’s got these long curls in her hair that I want to weave my hands through and gently tug.

And I talk about people using me? It’s no secret I do the same fucking thing. I don’t know who this girl is, never seen her before in my life, but I know I want her. Want to use her to forget.

“Oh my God,” Cheyenne says, and I know she sees the girl too.

“Your boyfriend used to be just as bad,” I say without taking my eyes off the girl.

“What the fuck?” Colt says, but then Cheyenne starts talking.

“No, he wasn’t. I know he wasn’t an angel, but he didn’t go out looking for girls the way you do, Adrian. You’re like a lion or something, stalking your prey.”

Glancing at Cheyenne, I wink at her. She huffs and Colt starts laughing.

The brunette walks to the trunk of her car and starts to pull out a box. “Hold that thought. I’m about to go be a gentleman and help the lady out. We’ll argue later tonight.” I wink at her again. “If I’m not busy.”

Colt shakes his head and Cheyenne looks like she wants to punch me, but I’m already walking away. Looking at this girl—hell, any girl—I see a distraction. When I’m concentrating on a girl’s body, there’s not much room for the stuff from my past creeping in, like the way Ash used to try and sneak up on me. I’d pretend to jump and he’d laugh and laugh before covering his face and sitting on the couch, thinking I couldn’t see him.

She’s still fumbling with the box when I get to her. There are a few more of them in her trunk. “That looks like a lot of work. It’d go much quicker if you let me help you and then we’ll go somewhere and celebrate a job well done together.”