Chapter 24
Fai
“Why are you glaring at me?” I asked around a spoonful of cereal.
I had gotten home and immediately fallen asleep on the couch.
I hadn’t expected to sleep well, anticipating that my wandering mind would keep me awake.
My thoughts were cycling between the brother I thought I had, the truth about Gabriel, my time with Sarah, and what would come next for the two of us.
There were too many choices, too many options…
too many trains of thought. It felt as though a weight in my stomach pulled at my focus with every other thought.
I never imagined I could become this overwhelmed by my own mind… yet here I was.
I had expected my swirling thoughts to keep me awake, or at least grant me a fretful sleep. Yet the moment my head hit the pillow on the couch that I was still calling my bed, I was out.
I woke to Goldie glaring at me from her spot at the kitchen counter. In the fifteen minutes since I’d woken up, she hadn’t spoken a word, but her eyes hadn't left me once.
“Hello?” I asked with a wave, drips of milk from my spoon flying through the air. She just continued to glare and took a sip of her coffee.
Well… fine then.
I wasn’t sure what had her in such a tizzy, but I knew her well enough to know she would eventually break and let me know what I’d done to piss her off. Maybe it was because I hadn’t waited up for her after I got home?
I went back to my cereal, ravenous. In the chaos of the last few days, I had barely eaten.
When I was at the height of my addiction, I didn’t eat nearly enough; I used to joke that I drank all my calories.
Now, with running helping me stay sober and having a normal appetite again, I was eating like a teenager.
I stopped, my spoon midway to my mouth. I hadn’t thought about drinking once today. It used to be my first thought in the morning. Today—well, today it was of Sarah.
For some, that would feel stupid. For me, I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
Well, shit. I laughed lightly, feeling proud of myself, and took another bite.
Goldie just glared harder but finally moved, picking a piece of cereal out of my bowl and flicking it at my forehead, hitting it square on target.
“What the hell?” I murmured as the cereal fell onto the table. “What was that for?”
“For smiling, you jerk,” she mumbled.
I raised my brows. “Seriously? I can’t smile? Will you just let me know what the hell I did so I can apologize and we can move on?”
Goldie had always been unpredictable. It was why I adored her. She was a spitfire, ready to ignite at any moment—you just hoped and prayed the fire wasn’t directed at you. She could bring any man to his knees.
While she had always been unexpected, she had never shocked me to my core—not until today. Her glare slowly morphed; her face dropped, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Whoa,” I muttered, standing and wrapping my arms around her while she sat. She grabbed onto my arm, leaning into me and sobbing.
“You almost died, Fai,” she choked out through the tears. “You can’t do that. You can’t leave me.”
“Hey.” I dropped to a crouch in front of her, pushing the hair out of her face and framing her cheeks with my hands. “I’m okay. I’m here. I’m not going to die, okay? I’m here.”
“But you almost did! Your brother… that man—he could have killed you,” she argued.
“But he didn’t,” I said in a soft voice.
She shook her head. “Yeah, but what about the drinking? What if you relapse and do something stupid, like driving? What if your liver gives out and—poof—you’re gone? You can’t die, Fai.”
“Goldie… is that why you moved me in here?” I asked, the pieces finally clicking into place.
When I’d gone to her all those months ago, I half-expected her to show me the door.
I had been a crappy friend and a worse boss for years; I deserved it.
Instead, she took me in, kept an eye on me, drove me to meetings, and helped me put my life back together.
“You’re the only family I have,” she mumbled, wiping at her tears. “You took me in when I had nothing. You cared for me, gave me something to care about, and people to care about. You’re all I have.”
I smiled sadly, wrapping her in a hug again.
“He does that a lot.”
I looked up to see Jackie leaning in the front doorway. She was watching the two of us, smiling softly.
“Jackie?” I asked, surprised to see her.
Goldie pulled away, an apologetic grimace on her face. “She called this morning. She wanted to see you.”
“And I’m just hearing about this now because…?” I asked with a smirk and a raised brow.
Goldie glared again, though with a small smile this time. “I was mad at you. You almost died. It was rude.”
I laughed, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “You’re something else, you know that?”
“Go talk to Jackie. I’ll be here,” she directed, nodding toward the door.
I squeezed her shoulder and walked toward Jackie. I wasn’t sure how to talk to her after all these years. I rocked back on my heels, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “I don’t know where to start.”
She smiled slightly, glancing at Goldie and then back to me. “I want to take you somewhere.”
Jackie seemed more alive in the woods in a way I hadn’t noticed before we fell apart. She breathed easier, her shoulders losing a weight I hadn’t realized she perpetually held. She had found safety and solace in the trees.
I had assumed we would go to her house, or maybe to the office. Instead, we sat in almost comfortable silence as she drove us to a trailhead. We were now a mile into a walk through the dense woods. We still hadn’t spoken, neither of us knowing where to start… or what to say.
“Just up ahead,” she called over her shoulder as we approached a fork in the trail. She motioned toward the right.
I nodded in acknowledgment and followed her. We were walking slowly; she set the pace while taking my sore body into account. My feet were banged up, still bandaged inside my hiking boots. While they hurt like a bitch as we walked, I was grateful to have shoes this time.
After another fifteen minutes—the only sound being the forest around us—I heard the familiar crashing of water cascading nearby. The waterfall came into view quickly, whitecaps forming as the water crashed into the river below, rushing fast and out of view.
The view opened up into something I would have once found impossible.
Lush, vibrant dark greens of the trees stretching endlessly into the sky, stirred gently by the wind.
Below, the water lay cool and impossibly blue, its surface catching the light in soft, shifting glimmers.
The contrast was striking, almost too perfect to be real, as if the world had paused here just long enough to show off its most breathtaking colors.
Jackie came to a stop at the end of the trail where an overlook sat by the waterfall. There was a wooden bench and a matching railing to keep anyone from falling toward an unlucky fate in the river.
She rounded the bench, taking a seat and kicking her feet out. She looked over her shoulder, those familiar brown eyes meeting mine, and gestured to the spot next to her.
I complied, taking a seat and feeling grateful for the break.
“I’m sorry about Gabriel,” she said, finally breaking the silence.
I shrugged, unsure of how to respond. What do you even say when a man has pretended to be your brother?
“It seems like everyone is forgetting you lost the only family you had,” she continued. “The mad dash into the woods took precedence.”
“He was only my brother for a week. It’s not like I have years to mourn.”
She nodded. “Maybe, but it was still a week where you finally had what you always wanted.”
I raised a brow.
“A family,” she explained.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees and scrubbing my hands down my face.
“He was never family… even if he was truly my brother, he wouldn't have been family like…” I sighed and looked at her. Really looked at her. “Not like you, not like Sarah, not like Goldie. You three—you’re my family. Or… you were.”
“Why do you think that family we built is past tense?” she asked quizzically.
“I blew it up in epic proportions.”
Jackie smiled. It was soft, barely noticeable, but it was the first true smile she had directed at me in years.
When people looked at us, they were always confused.
She wasn’t just a friend, and she wasn't biological family, but in so many ways…
she was me. She was all the best parts of me—the sunshine on a rainy day.
She had been like a daughter to me for so many years.
“You tried, but we’re all still here,” she mused. “We’ve been here waiting for you.”
I shook my head, unable to accept her words. “Jackie, I treated you horrendously.”
She nodded. “That’s true. But I get why. I think I’m the only person on this planet who fully understands.”
“I put alcohol above our friendship,” I argued, but she wouldn’t let me finish.
“When I was in active addiction, I abandoned my sister and her newborn daughter. I moved in the middle of the night without telling them, all because I didn’t want her to see me drink myself to death.
” She watched the waterfall as she spoke, her mind traveling to a different time.
“I refused to talk to my oldest brother for years, ashamed of my actions and terrified he would be disappointed in me. I pushed everyone away… or I tried to. I tried to isolate myself to make it easier for everyone. I believed if they weren’t close by—if they didn’t have to watch me drink—it wouldn't affect them. I see now that was a load of shit and an excuse to keep drinking without their judgment. I put my drinking above everyone in my life, above myself. I understand why you did what you did, Fai.”
“I hate what I did…” I mumbled, holding back tears as I listened to the one person who truly understood.