Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 67973 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 67973 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
I stood as he approached, searching his eyes for any hint that he was high, but they were clear.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, brows furrowed as he stared at me. “Are you okay?”
His worry hit me hard. Classic Parker, always putting others first. We’d been so close for so long, how had I missed this? My heart ached as I pulled the baggie from my pocket for him to see.
“No, Parker. I’m not okay,” I said, my voice trembling with a mix of hurt and anger. “Are you?”
He blinked, his expression going blank for a split second. When his eyes met mine again, they were guarded, and I could feel my heart cracking in my chest.
“What is that?” he asked, no inflection in his tone.
Anger surged through me. How could he pretend not to know? “Seriously?” I asked in a sharp tone, realizing I was going to have to be brutal with him. “That’s how you’re going to play this? Are you going to deny the embezzling too? Liam told me everything. About the missing money, and how it all leads back to you.”
Parker paled. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Parker, talk to me,” I pleaded, doing my best to shove down the anger, my voice softening with desperation. “What the hell is going on? This isn’t you. I know it’s not. Just…explain, please.”
For moment, he said nothing, but then, his face crumpled.
My strong, confident stepbrother fell apart in front of my eyes, his shoulders shaking as he buried his face in his hands, the muffled sounds of his crying filling the room. I stared in shock as he sank down onto the couch, but the sound of a particularly harsh sob spilled from him, and I moved to his side as my chest squeezed tight. I placed a hand on his back as he told me everything without looking at me.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped, trying to wipe away his tears, but they fell too fast. “I’m so fucking sorry, Morgan. Oh God, it wasn’t supposed to come to this. I…I didn’t think I’d ever be an addict, but when I hurt my back a couple of years ago and had to have surgery, I was given Oxy. It was the only thing that helped, but only if I took it all the time. You know it took months for me to recover, and I took the pills constantly. I needed them to function.”
I thought back to that time in our lives. I was worried about him when he had the surgery and could barely walk or move without wincing in pain. It took a long time for him to recover, and ever since, he still had occasional pain in the area.
“I swear, I didn’t even realize I was addicted to the meds. I took them for the pain. I had to. But then, as the pain got better, the doctor stopped writing my prescriptions. He told me to wean myself off, as if it was so easy. And I tried, Morgan. I swear, I tried.”
He lifted his gaze to mine, and the shame in his eyes made me want to cry with him. “I thought I was strong enough, you know? I didn’t have the pain anymore, so it was just my mind working against me. I thought my willpower would be enough, but it just wasn’t. All I could think about were the pills. I couldn’t feel happy without them. I couldn’t function without them.”
“What happened next?” I asked, wondering how he went from prescription narcotics to whatever was in the baggie.
“I started buying pills when I could, but Oxy is hard to get, and I couldn’t consistently get it. So, I had to turn to something else.”
His eyes shifted to the baggie still in my hand, and there was a longing beneath the shame that truly horrified me. He was no longer crying, but he looked destroyed by his own story.
“What is this, Parker?”
He swallowed hard. “It’s…it’s heroin.”
I dropped it on the coffee table, unable to stand touching the thing.
“I’ve been using it for over a year now, sinking more and more money into it. I’ve neglected other things, and it’s all just snowballed. Now, I have massive debt. Credit cards, loans, the mortgage. We were about to lose the house the first time I took money from GalvaTech, and I was desperate. Then, there are the men I get the drugs from. These are bad people, Morgan, dangerous people. They threatened Becca and Gracie.”
My blood ran cold, fear gripping me as I imagined the danger to them.
“So, you understand, right? I had to take the money. I hated myself for it, but I had to protect Becca and Gracie. I couldn’t let them pay for my mistakes, my weakness.”
I nodded slowly, squeezing his hand. I understood, as much as someone who’d never gone through addiction could. He was drowning in it, buried under debt and fear, making panicked choices while facing the consequences of his bad decisions. But how had I missed this? We saw each other almost daily. Our family was tight. How did this slip by me?