Trouble Brewing

by Selena Kitt

  Fuck.

  How in the hell had he found me?

  And why wasn’t I dead?

  He pounded on the window again, calling my name. He tried to pull open the door, but it was locked, so he pounded again. I’d never seen him so mad before. And I’d seen him pretty mad.

  I tried to roll down the window, but there was no power. So, I unlocked the door and opened it, nearly tumbling onto the pavement. Tyler caught me, swearing under his breath as he pulled me to standing—although I wasn’t really standing on my own two feet, because he was holding me up.

  “Goddamnit, Katie,” he growled into my ear, and I mumbled an apology, but my words were unintelligible, even to me. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  I tried to answer him, but words weren’t really an option. I was fading again. I could feel my body sliding into darkness, blissful, sweet nothing, and that’s exactly where I wanted to go. But the weight of Tyler’s arms around me, crushing me, were a distraction. I wanted him to let me go.

  Just let me go…

  “No!” It was like he read my mind. Or maybe I’d spoken the words out loud? “I’m not letting you do this to yourself! Do you hear me? Katie!”

  I tried again to answer him. I don’t know what I said.

  He lifted me into his arms, picking me up and carrying me around to the other side of the car, depositing me onto the passenger seat. He buckled me in before slamming the door and jogging around, getting into the driver’s side.

  “What did you take? How much?” He pawed through what I’d left on the console. “Where did you get it? Who did you get it from?”

  So many questions.

  “It’s my fault,” I croaked. My voice sounded like I hadn’t spoken in a century. My throat hurt. I shivered, suddenly cold, and glanced down, realizing the horrible smell was coming from me. I’d thrown up all over myself. And Sarah’s car.

  Clearly my overdose attempt had failed.

  “Katie, no.” Tyler shook his head as he started the car. He rolled down the window at the same time, letting in the night air—and diluting the smell of vomit, at least a little. “It wasn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.”

  I didn’t believe him for a minute.

  I gulped big lungfuls of air, eyes closed, drifting in and out. I don’t know how long it took to get back, or how Tyler managed to slip past the gate without alerting the whole house. But when he opened the passenger door, undid my buckle, and picked me up out of the seat, I saw Sarah standing nearby.

  “I’ll pay to get your car cleaned,” Tyler told her as he carried me over the footbridge.

  “I don’t care about my fucking car.” Sarah stopped him, so she could look at me, putting a cool hand to my forehead. “She threw up?”

  “I think she threw up a lot of it.” He sighed, carrying me toward the door. “Can you run a bath?”

  “In your room?” Sarah was already hurrying ahead. “I have Narcan. We can—”

  “Only if she passes out. I don’t want to subject her to that if we don’t’ have to.” Tyler was carrying me up the stairs. The motion made me dizzy and I turned my face into his shoulder, squeezing my eyes shut. I felt him press his lips against the top of my head as he carried me down the hall.

  “Get her undressed.” Tyler put me on the bed. “Did anyone see you?”

  “No,” Sarah said. I felt her unbuttoning my blouse, but I didn’t open my eyes. She’d seen me naked before. She’d seen me covered in vomit before, too, after the last time this happened. “Rob’s still at the hospital with Sabrina. Jesse took Daisy out for groceries. There’s no one else here.”

  “Good.” I felt a hand on my forehead. Tyler’s. More hands undressed me, moving me around like a doll. I was only peripherally aware of it. “God, she’s so cold.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to give her Narcan?”

  “I think she’ll come out of it on her own.”

  I shivered, my skin now exposed to the air. Someone carried me to a warm tub. I shivered there, too. More hands, washing me, washing my hair. I felt myself drifting off again, slipping lower into the water, and strong hands lifted me. I heard voices. Sarah talking softly, Tyler answering her. I couldn’t focus long enough to pay attention to the words.

  I floated on a fuzzy cloud. I opened my eyes to see Tyler beside me, propped up on an elbow. I was back in his bed, like it had all been a bad dream. I would have thought it was, if the pain hadn’t started seeping back in around the edges of my consciousness. If I hadn’t remembered seeing my best friend, her body broken and bloody, on the lawn. If I hadn’t remembered holding her dying baby, so small she fit into one of my hands.

  I would have thought that it had been a dream.

  “Katie.” Tyler’s hand, stroking my hair. “My Katie.”

  “How did you find me?” The question I really wanted to ask was why. “I turned off my phone.”

  I had made a point of it.

  I hadn’t wanted to be found.

  Stopped.

  Saved.

  “My car has a tracker on it.” Sarah sat on the edge of the bed on the other side of me.

  “Fuck.” I closed my eyes.

  My head was still swimming. But at least I felt a little warmer. My thoughts were becoming more coherent. The flashes of my recent memory clearer. And painful. I gave a little moan, trying to turn away from them, to escape, but there was nowhere to go.

  The fucking heroin was wearing off, and it hadn’t killed me after all.

  It hadn’t done anything except ease the pain, ever so briefly.

  Now all I wanted was more. Something more to stop this ache. There was a bottomless hole inside of me that I needed to fill until whatever I was filling it with buried me alive. And then… then I’d be free.

  “She wanted to die.” Sarah’s voice, sounding far away, although she hadn’t gotten off the bed.

  “I know the feeling.” Tyler’s hand moving in my hair. The softness of it made me want to cry.

  “Guess we all do.” Sarah again. A sigh. “Want me to have Daisy bring up a tray when she gets back?”

  “Yeah, later,” Tyler agreed. “Tell her to leave it outside, though.”

  “I’ll tell her you two want to be alone.” Sarah’s voice, getting further away. “But text me, if you need me. I’ll be right downstairs.”

  “You won’t tell Rob?” Tyler asked.

  “No.” Sarah sighed. “I left an empty wastebasket by the bed. In case she needs to throw up again.”

  “Thanks, Sarah.”

  “Love you, Ty.”

  I heard a door shut.

  It was quiet. I didn’t open my eyes, but I felt Tyler tracing something on my hip. Letters. Spelling out the words—I love you—over and over. It made me want to cry, but I didn’t.

  “I’m sorry…” It was all I could think of to say, although I wasn’t sure what I was sorry for. Relapsing? Taking enough heroin to try and overdose? Not succeeding?

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” I reached for the covers, trying to pull them over my head, but he wouldn’t let me.

  “We have to talk about it,” he insisted. “You have to talk about it.”

  “Not now,” I protested. The world was currently upside down and I was glad there was a wastebasket beside the bed, because I just might need it to throw up in.

  “You can’t hide forever,” he whispered, brushing the hair out of my eyes. “Besides, baby… I see you.”

  “No,” I groaned, peeking out from underneath my lashes to see his gaze on me. I covered my face with my hands. “Don’t look.”

  “I see you,” he said again, pulling my hands away from my face, forcing me to meet his eyes. “And I love you, Katie Scarlett Monroe. All of you. Every. Single. Part. Even the parts you think are horrible or ugly.”

  “Stop it,” I whispered, feeling tears stinging my eyes.

  “You can’t keep me out, Katie.” He leaned closer, trapping my arms between us
, not letting me escape, even a little bit. “I won’t let you.”

  “I fucked up again,” I cried. “I always do. Every single time. I can’t do anything right.”

  “Listen to me.” He shook me a little bit, just to get his point across. “You couldn’t have known it was her. If you’re going to blame anyone, blame me. I should’ve gone with you.”

  “You would’ve recognized her,” I agreed woefully. “How did she know it would be me? And not you, or Sarah, or even Celeste?”

  “She thought it was going to be Rob,” Tyler said softly. “That’s what she told the cops.”

  “What?” I gaped at him, aghast.

  “She wanted to kill Rob,” he told me. “She thought he’d be the one who came to get the puppy for his new girlfriend. So, she made sure their mutual friend Vanessa had an important meeting she couldn’t miss.”

  “She wanted to kill Rob?” I couldn’t get over that part. If Catherine still loved him, why had she been intent on killing him?

  “I told you, she’s crazy.”

  “She came to the house to kill him?” I whispered. “But she shot Sabrina instead…”

  “Next best thing, I guess.” Tyler shrugged. “Maybe she meant to kill them both. Maybe she would have killed all of us if she got the chance.”

  “I gave her that chance,” I said bitterly, wincing at the thought. “Rob paid all that money for better security, and I just… I brought her right in…”

  “You didn’t know.” Tyler’s lips fell to my forehead, giving me three quick kisses in succession.

  “But I should’ve known!” I wailed. “How many times have I seen pictures of her? Heard interviews?”

  “Rob shouldn’t have asked you to go,” Tyler countered, holding me even closer, so I was snugged up right against him. “And I shouldn’t have let you.”

  “What did Rob want to talk to you about?” It seemed like a million years ago, now, but him saying that made me remember how Rob had called both of his siblings aside to speak to them. “You and Sarah?”

  “Catherine.” Tyler sighed. “Apparently, she lost in court—a judge basically said she couldn’t have our songs. And she, uh… she wasn’t happy. So, Rob said he’d beefed up security. Jesse told him she’d been trying to get in the week before we came home. She showed up drunk and was trying to punch in codes. That’s why they installed the cameras, the code at the gate, the new security guys.”

  “He was telling you all that while I was on my way over there?” I choked.

  “Ironic, huh?” Tyler snorted. “He just wanted us to know we needed to keep our eyes open.”

  I buried my face against his chest. “She’s gonna hate me forever.”

  “Who?”

  “Bree.”

  “No. Sabrina doesn’t blame you,” he insisted. “No one blames you, Katie—except you.”

  “I’m such a fuck up.” I fought tears, but it was a losing battle. “My whole life, my mother compared me to Sabrina. She was the smart one, the responsible one, the perfect one. I never understood why she kept on being friends with me. I always got her into trouble.”

  “Katie…”

  “I’m used to fucking up,” I admitted. “I mean, I just am. But this… Ty… I can’t…”

  I couldn’t even finish the sentence, I can’t live with this, let alone contemplate it. It was like a weight on my chest, something that would never go away. And I couldn’t even imagine the grief I’d caused Rob and Sabrina. Esther wasn’t even my own, and I felt like something had been ripped out of me.

  “Shhh.” Tyler soothed. But there was no comfort I could take, even in his touch, his presence.

  “I can’t live with this,” I cried against his neck, wet with my tears. “I can’t…”

  Tyler pulled back to look at me, taking my tear-stained face in his hands, frowning at my expression.

  “Katie…” He sighed, hesitated, and then said, “I killed my father.”

  My eyes widened in disbelief. “Wh…what?”

  “It was me,” Tyler confessed, his expression pained. “It wasn’t Rob. I was the one who picked up the gun off the table. I was the one who pulled the trigger. I shot him.”

  “Ty… wait… you said…” My breath hitched, my mind whirling. I couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Actually, I didn’t.” He swallowed. “But the truth is, it was me. I was ten years old. I thought he was going to kill my mother. Hell, he probably would’ve. I don’t know. But it was me. I did that. And I live with that fact every single day of my life.”

  “Ty… oh God, Ty,” I breathed, his confession shattering me all over again. He’d been living with that secret, too, all these years?

  “And I’m telling you this…” He paused, biting his lip, looking thoughtful. “I’m telling you because you need to know… that you can live with this thing.”

  I shook my head, but he went on.

  “I know you feel sorry, and guilty, and you feel like it’s all your fault. But you didn’t do anything on purpose, baby. You didn’t put a gun to anyone’s head and pull the trigger,” he reminded me. “But I did.”

  “It wasn’t an accident?”

  “Well, that’s what we told the cops.” Ty’s mouth pressed into a thin line at the memory. “Rob… he was the oldest. He told them he did it. He… he did it to protect me. I was… I didn’t talk. For a long time afterward, I didn’t say anything at all.”

  “Oh Ty…” I tried to imagine a ten-year-old Tyler, devastated, alone. Mute, at the realization of what he’d done. “You must’ve been in shock.”

  “Rob went to juvy, you know. He’s got a juvenile record because of me,” he said. “I was the one who should’ve gone to juvy. But instead, it was him. He took all the blame. And I… I let him.”

  “You were just a little kid.”

  “Yeah. But I still blame myself,” he told me. “Because I was the one who did it. It’s my fault our father’s dead, and our mother’s in jail, and the three of us were separated.”

  “But Ty…” I protested, shaking my head. How could he possibly think that he was responsible, given the situation, his age, all of the other mitigating factors…?

  “And, baby, I’m telling you…” He looked me dead in the eyes, making sure I was listening. “If I can live with that? You can live with this.”

  I couldn’t help the tiny smile that rose on my lips. “Your demons are bigger than mine, huh?”

  “I just want you to know that as much as it hurts now… there will come a time when you’ll feel better than this,” he assured me. “When it won’t hurt… quite so much. When you’ll find something… someone… to help ease the pain.”

  “That’s what the heroin was for.”

  “We’ve both been down that road, baby.” A sad little smile touched his face. “It’s a dead end.”

  I nodded. “I guess that’s what I was looking for.”

  “I’ve been there, too.” He met my eyes and I knew he had been. More than once. And knowing what I knew now? It was no wonder. “You know when I realized there was something better than heroin? Better than escaping, running away, trying to numb myself to it?”

  “No,” I replied. “When?”

  “When I lost you.”

  I thought, for a minute, that my heart had stopped beating. It had been so hard, walking away from him, from us. It had felt like I was doing nothing more than stabbing myself in the chest. I’d wanted to die then, too.

  “It was when I lost you that I knew how much I loved you,” he confessed hoarsely, his fingers brushing my cheek, my collarbone. “How much I needed you.”

  “That’s not love,” I joked. “That’s called co-dependence.”

  “Yeah. Or love.” He grinned back, looking delighted that I was actually being my usual sarcastic self. “You say tomato… I say potato.”

  “Two totally different things,” I argued.

  “They’re both vegetables.”

  “Technically, a tomato’s a fruit…�
�

  “There’s my Katie.” He laughed and leaned in to kiss me quiet. My lower lip quivered as tears slipped down my cheeks again and I tasted salt.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, wiping my tears with his thumbs as we parted.

  “Awful.” There just wasn’t any other word for it. I felt awful, inside and out.

  “I’ll kiss the boo-boos all away.” He pressed his lips to my forehead, warm and soft and still wet from catching my tears. “Better?”

  “You make everything better, Ty.” I put my arms around his neck with a sob. “Thank you for coming to get me.”

  “You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.”

  Chapter Seven

  Sabrina and Rob went into a sort of cocoon after they lost the baby. Not that I could blame either of them. They needed each other. Just like I needed Ty, and he needed me. We clung to each other, naked, raw, and completely open to each other now. There were no secrets between us anymore.

  I didn’t avoid Sabrina, exactly. I felt awful and I still blamed myself, but she never blamed me, never voiced anything like it, and for that, I was grateful. But the truth is, I’d never kept secrets from Sabrina before, and it was hard for me to bite my tongue, because it became clear to me very quickly that Tyler was right. Rob hadn’t told Sabrina anything.

  In fact, everything Catherine had cryptically revealed when she confronted Rob with a gun that day—Sabrina thought she’d dreamed it, or imagined it, that it was somehow part of the trauma of being shot. She’d asked about it only once, when she got home from the hospital a few days later, and then laughingly dismissed it as crazy.

  Apparently, denial wasn’t just a river in Egypt.

  But I knew everything. Tyler had laid himself bare before me, to save me, and to save himself, too. And it had worked. When I woke up later that day in Tyler’s arms to the smell of something delicious waiting for us on a tray outside our door, and the phone ringing on the night stand, I didn’t want to die anymore.

  In fact, I couldn’t remember a time I’d been gladder to be alive.

  It was a strange paradox. A little like what people who had near-death experiences must feel like, I thought, sitting cross-legged on the bed with a tray between me and Tyler while I nibbled the crust off the most delicious Monte Crisco sandwich I’d ever eaten.