“I had a brother too,” I said, trying my best to keep my throat from closing. “A younger one. His name was Reese.”
“Reese.”
“Yes.”
Camden nodded. “Cool name.”
“He was a cool brother,” I allowed. “Growing up less than a year apart, we were pretty inseparable. We went to school together, shared the same friends. He dated some of my girlfriends, actually. It was all I could do to keep him out of my personal life.”
“Little brothers can be like that I guess,” said Camden.
“So you have them too?”
He shook his head, and his stubble made a scratching noise on the pillow. “No. No siblings at all.” He cleared his throat and looked down. “Just me.”
My heart fluttered, probably in sympathy for him. I knew what it was like to be alone. But I also knew what it was like to have someone, and that made things even worse.
“As I was saying it was great to have a little brother,” I continued on. “And Reese was cool. Very cool, actually.” My chest grew heavy. “Up until the moment he wasn’t.”
The silence between us was almost deafening. After an extraordinarily long pause, Camden reached out gently and took my hand.
“So what happened?”
“Oh you know the story,” I joked, as if it could help. “Kid grows up. Kid falls in with the wrong crowd. Kid gets addicted to pills first and then heroin, because heroin’s so much fucking cheaper, only—”
“Karissa I’m sorry.”
I nodded perfunctorily. “Yeah. Everyone is.”
More silence, more pain. I pushed it down. I had to continue.
“Anyway, we did everything we could for him. Tough love. Soft love. Rehab, four different times, inpatient and outpatient. But those fucking friends, man. They did him in. And then he started taking on too much product from a dealer named Spence, because it makes perfect logical sense to extend product to an addict, mind you.”
I shook my head, examining my feelings. The anger and rage hadn’t subsided at all. If anything, they were worse.
“He did the drugs he was supposed to sell,” Camden guessed. “Didn’t he?”
“No,” I grumbled. “Even worse.”
Across from me, my lover’s brow furrowed. I went on before I chickened out.
“So yeah, I went to Reese’s apartment one day and found him totally passed out. I got angry. I went through his stuff and trashed everything. I flushed every last bit of it — apparently even the stuff that wasn’t his.”
“And let me guess. Spence went nuts?”
“To put it mildly, yes,” I answered. “This rat fuck shows up the next day, and his guys beat my little brother to within an inch of his life. Blunt force trauma. Lots of it. Reese ended up in a three-day coma, bleeding from both ears. I stayed beside his bed the whole time, and so did my parents.”
“And… he died?” Camden asked hesitantly.
“No,” I laughed bitterly. “The tough little bastard lived through that. But he woke up angry. Not at the guys who’d been ordered to beat him up, or even at Spence himself. Oh no. The asshole was mad at me. All pissed off I’d flushed the drugs. Totally enraged I’d ‘wasted’ them and gotten him in all sorts of trouble.”
Camden did the only thing he could do: he shook his head. “Wow.”
“Oh, but it gets better. Because hey, guess what? All of a sudden my parents are pissed at me too. They one-hundred percent blamed me for what happened to Reese. Said it was all my fault, and I should mind my own business. Stay out of things that don’t have anything to do with me.”
“But you didn’t. Did you?”
“Fuck no.”
Camden swore under his breath. “Like I even had to ask.”
“You should know me by now,” I shrugged. “Tell me what happened next?”
He stared back at me, pausing for only a second. “You went after him. Spence.”
“Uh huh.”
“And you beat him to within an inch of his life.”
I sighed wistfully. “I wish. More like I happened across him, then ran into him on the highway. I mean literally ran into him, as in rammed his fancy little sports car over and over again with my cruiser.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah.”
“The Concord police didn’t like that very much, did they?”
“No they did not,” I laughed, still trying to hold it together. The laugh was needed. A tiny bit of merriment in a horrific story.
“So did your brother eventually recover?”
“Yes,” I said sadly. “And he went right back to drugs. And I took off south, after just narrowly escaping vehicular manslaughter charges. They were never so eager to get someone out of town, believe me.”
“Who?”
“Everyone,” I shrugged. “My brother, my parents, that scumbag drug dealer. But especially the CPD, who nearly got sued into oblivion by my ‘reckless actions.’ I left with nothing. No family, no job. No direction. No friends…”
The pain reached the point where it was too much to continue. Camden knew it right away.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” he said softly. His embrace tightened, his arms and legs sliding that much further around me. “But now you’ve got us.”
I sniffled, trying to keep myself from crying. But the tears were hellbent on coming anyway.
“Maybe one day your brother will get clean,” he said. “He’ll forgive you — maybe even admire you for trying to—”
“No he won’t. He’s dead.”
Camden’s head lolled slowly forward, until it rested against mine. I felt his body go limp with disappointment.
“He overdosed a few months after I left,” I said. “I didn’t find out until after the funeral. I would’ve gone back. I would’ve… I would’ve tried to—”
I broke down mid-sentence, sobbing into his chest. Camden pulled me in and held me there. He let me go on crying, not saying anything. Not moving a single muscle except to hold and envelop me, and make me feel safe.
Reese…
No matter how many times I went over the story, it always ended the same. I’d failed my brother. I’d failed my parents. And instead of staying to help, I’d allowed myself to be driven off.
I cried and cried, until
