2. Gage
Gage
I 'd forgotten how suffocating love could feel.
That was my first conscious thought as I woke up in what used to be Booker's guest room, surrounded by the kind of careful attention that made my skin crawl.
Someone had left a glass of water on the nightstand, along with my pain medication and a note in Xander's handwriting.
Take these. Don't be a hero. We'll talk when you're ready.
Don't be a hero. Christ, if they only knew how far from heroic I actually was.
The clock on the wall read just past noon, which meant I'd slept for nearly fourteen hours.
The pain medication was doing its job. The sharp edge of agony in my leg had dulled to a manageable throb, and my shoulder felt more stiff than excruciating.
But nothing could touch the weight sitting on my chest, the certainty that I didn't belong in this room, in this house, in this family that had somehow convinced themselves they wanted me here.
Voices drifted up from downstairs. Booker's low rumble, Xander's occasional laugh, what sounded like Reece maybe talking to them both. Normal family sounds. The kind I'd given up the right to be part of the night I helped Regina destroy Trace's happiness.
Xander had told me in the hospital and again during the endless car ride from the hospital.
Told me that they knew the truth about what Regina had done, how she'd manipulated me into hiding Delaney's pregnancy and getting Trace out of the way so she could force Delaney out of town.
He said they didn't blame me, that they'd been looking for me for years to bring me home and explain that I'd been as much a victim as anyone.
I'd wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Victim. As if being a stupid fifteen-year-old so desperate for approval that I'd do something like that would somehow absolve me of the choice I'd made.
As if Regina holding the threat of my family's ruin over my head meant I hadn't chosen to betray my brother anyway.
They didn't understand. They couldn't. They saw what they wanted to see.
Their brother led astray by a master manipulator.
They couldn't see the truth. That somewhere deep down, I'd known exactly what I was doing when I lifted Trace’s mobile phone out of his bag, when I'd rushed into that room and pretended that I couldn't possibly believe that my baby brother wouldn't try something on with his girlfriend's best friend.
That he wouldn't take no for an answer. I'd known it would hurt Trace, and I'd done it anyway because I was weak and scared.
But most of all, I was selfish. Because if Regina was willing to hurt Trace in this way, then maybe that meant I wasn't the worse son.
Because I'd wanted Regina to finally see me as worthy of the Farrington name.
A soft knock on the door interrupted my self-recrimination. "Come in," I called, trying to push myself up to sitting without jarring my leg too much.
Xander appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with what looked like enough food to feed a small army.
His face was carefully neutral, but I could see the concern in his eyes.
The same concern that had been there when he'd found me in that Portland hospital, when he'd insisted on bringing me home despite my protests.
"Figured you might be hungry," he said, setting the tray on the bed beside me. "Reece made chicken soup, and Blake contributed approximately seventeen different types of bread. I think they're competing to see who can mother you more effectively."
The tray held soup, three different kinds of bread, fresh fruit, and what looked like homemade cookies. Enough food for three people, all of it prepared with the kind of care that made my throat tight.
"You didn't have to…" I started.
"Shut up," Xander said, but there was no heat in it.
He settled into the chair beside the bed, and I was struck by how much older he looked than when I'd left.
There were lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before, a gravity to his expression that spoke of hard-won wisdom.
"We're family. This is what family does. "
Family. The word sat between us like a loaded weapon.
I picked up the spoon and forced myself to take a bite of soup, partly because I was actually hungry and partly because it gave me something to do with my hands.
Who knows. If I'm lucky enough, maybe Reece poisoned it.
She'd seemed nice when I met her yesterday, but hopefully she was hiding a dark secret psychopathy that could be my ticket out of this.
"How's the pain?" Xander asked, slipping into his doctor voice. "Scale of one to ten."
"Three," I lied. It was closer to a six, but I'd lived with worse. Pain was familiar. Pain was what I deserved.
He raised an eyebrow, clearly not buying it. "The prescription is for a reason, Gage. There's no virtue in suffering unnecessarily."
Wasn't there? For eleven years, suffering had been my closest companion. It had kept me moving, kept me from getting too comfortable anywhere, and from forgetting what I'd done. Without it, who was I?
"I'm fine," I said, taking another spoonful of soup. "Really."
"Bullshit." The word came out flat, matter of fact.
"You've been carrying around guilt for a decade over something that wasn't your fault.
You disappeared without a word, leaving all of us wondering if you were alive or dead.
You've been living like a ghost, taking dangerous jobs and refusing to form connections because you've convinced yourself you don't deserve happiness.
And now you're here, broken and hurting, still trying to minimize your needs because you think you're not worth taking care of. "
The accuracy of his assessment hit me like a physical blow. I set down the spoon, my appetite suddenly gone.
"I know what that's like," Xander continued quietly. "The guilt. The self-punishment. The certainty that you're irredeemably broken and everyone would be better off without you."
I looked up at him then, really looked, and saw something in his expression I recognized. The haunted look of someone who'd been to hell and back, who'd learned things about himself he'd rather not know.
"Alcoholism," he said simply. "Lost my practice, my whole self-identity, nearly lost my family.
I was convinced for a year that I was poison to everyone I touched.
That I could never be enough. So I found my solace in the bottom of a bottle with a heavy side of denial that I didn't actually have a problem. "
I'd known Xander had struggled, but I hadn't known the extent of it. The brother I remembered had been brilliant, driven, destined for greatness. To learn that he'd fallen so far...
"What changed?" I asked.
"I was in an accident." He smiled at me ruefully then, his gaze flickering down to my busted leg.
"I could have really hurt someone. It all came out and I hit rock bottom.
Then I forced myself to pull my ass out of it.
Went to rehab, eventually ended up back here.
And then there was Blake." His face softened at the mention of her name.
"And Amelia. And realizing that punishing myself wasn't actually helping anyone.
That the people who loved me wanted me to heal, not suffer. "
He leaned forward, his expression intense.
"We all told you the truth yesterday about Regina, about what really happened.
But I don't think you heard it. Not really.
So I'm going to say it again. You were seventeen years old, being manipulated by someone who'd had decades of practice destroying people.
She threatened our family if you didn't cooperate.
You were a kid trying to protect the people you loved, and she used that against you. "
"I still made the choice," I said stubbornly. "I still…"
"You made the choice a scared teenager would make when backed into a corner by someone who held all the power." Xander's voice was firm but gentle. "That doesn't make you a villain, Gage. It makes you human."
The words hung in the air between us, and I so desperately wanted to believe them. But eleven years of self-hatred weren't easily dismantled by a single conversation, no matter how much I wanted them to be.
"Speaking of healing," Xander said, his tone shifting slightly, "how are you feeling about working with Billie? I know last night was... intense."
Last night. The memory hit me like a physical blow.
Her walking into that living room and seeing her for the first time in eleven years.
The way the whole family had melted away, leaving us alone in a bubble of tension so thick I could hardly breathe.
The way she'd looked at me like I was a stranger, like the boy she'd once loved had died the night I left.
Maybe he had.
"I don't know," I admitted, pushing my hands through my hair. "I mean, I know she's good at her job. The best, apparently. But Xander... seeing her again..."
I trailed off, not sure how to put into words what that moment had done to me.
How it had felt to look into those cornflower blue eyes and see walls where there had once been infinite trust. How it had felt to hear her voice, professional and careful, when the last time I'd seen her she'd whispered my name like a prayer.
"It's going to be torture," I said finally. "Being that close to her, having her touch me during therapy, pretending like we're just patient and therapist when we used to be..." I swallowed hard. "When I used to..."
"Used to?" Xander asked quietly.