I thought back to my last summer with Nina when I turned eighteen, and a chill broke down my spine. The gold-digging bitch. The mere thought of what she did had my fists itching for a bloody fight.

“At some point in her train wreck life, Nina got married to a dude named Donald Whittaker. People called him Owl because he used to deal drugs from two a.m. to six a.m. on street corners. Real catch, as you can imagine. Whittaker got locked up, was released, and decided to move to the outskirts. Bought a piece of land—a farm—and lived the farmer’s dream. Nina kicked her crack habit, so as far as my parents were concerned, she was clean. She looked clean, because she was no longer shoving needles with poison into her veins. She moved to more dignified mommy drugs. Adderall, Xanax, oxy. The fun stuff that makes your addiction fairly invisible. And I never bothered to correct them because I was a pathetic little bastard who hoped to shit that one day the woman who gave birth to him would realize that he is worthy and love him.”

“Dean.” she shook her head, her tears flying from her cheeks. “Oh, Dean.”

“Every summer when I came to see them, she made me bike the twenty miles from the farm to the city to get her her housewife drugs.”

“Why did you agree to do it?”

“Because I wanted to make her happy?” I laughed, a bitter lump twisting in the back of my throat. “Because I sought her acceptance? I mean, how fucking worthless can you be when your goddamn mom wants to flush you down a toilet before you even open your eyes. At seventeen, I finally opened my eyes and said no to spending the summer with them. Told my parents I was tired of doing labor work for two months. They agreed, but then I fucked it up at a party and they decided to send me anyway as punishment. It turned out to be the worst summer of my life, because it was then that I realized not only Nina didn’t love me…she fucking hated me.”

Rosie was crying. I didn’t dare look at her, but I felt her shoulder vibrating against mine. And I hated myself for making her cry, and I hated Nina for making me have this conversation in the first place. “To make a long story short, Nina did some deplorable things to me when I was a kid. I was a pawn in a very fucked-up game. A means to an end. She used me as an errand boy and made me do some stupid, illegal shit, then bribed my ass with alcohol and weed to make sure I shut up and didn’t rat her out to my parents. I was twelve when I had my first bottle of whiskey and hit from a blunt. I thought it was cool that Nina and Owl gave me stuff like that. That it meant that they saw me as a grown-up.”

Rosie gulped and looked away. “That’s why you do it,” she said. “That’s why you’re an addict.”

My nose twitched. “That’s how it started. It made me feel good. Weed and alcohol made my summers move faster. They put a smokescreen on my reality—a thin shell that no one had managed to crack through. And so I carried the habit, even when I came back to a place I did love, back with my parents and sisters.”

“Nina never told me who my dad was. That bothered me. I knew she was a fuck-up, but I always wanted to know if I was a full-blown fuck-up from both sides, or if maybe I had some redeeming genes in me. And after shit reached a boiling point eleven years ago during my last visit on the farm, I decided to drop the subject and walk away. Cut her out of my life. It worked through college, because I had nothing to my name but a trust fund and a dorm room. But when we founded Fiscal Heights Holdings and started rolling in the dough, she agreed to tell me who he was.”

“And?” Rosie asked, a little breathlessly. I slowed down my steps.

“And she wants six hundred thousand dollars to give me his name.”

“That’s insane!” Rosie protested, stomping her leg on the ground. I halted and turned around to look at her. Her face was red, streaked with pain. My pain. I put it there. And even though it was never my goal to hurt her feelings, I enjoyed her warmth, because she burned for me.

“So? Did you ever pay her?” She kicked some mud around.

“Nope.” I ran a hand over her braid, tugging at it. “But that’s why she’s acting like a deranged stalker and keeps calling me every half hour. Whittaker’s farm is losing money, and she has an expensive coke habit to keep up. Prescription drugs just don’t cut it anymore. She hates her husband. Wants out. And she wants me to help her. That’s out of the fucking question.”