Chapter 2 – Kev
CHAPTER TWO
KEV
“Do you feel ready?”
Kev’s right knee bounced. It always bounced when he was nervous. Or excited. Or just…breathing. But he didn’t want to look nervous, so he leaned forward, pressing his elbows into his knees, and said, “I think so. Yeah.”
When Rick’s bushy brows floated up, Kev flashed him a grin. “I mean, totally. I’m totally ready.”
“Kev,” Rick said. “You don’t need to set me at ease right now.”
“I’m not?—”
“That’s your I’m setting everyone else at ease so they don’t see how not at ease I am smile.” Rick, his calm, soft-spoken, sixty-something counselor, peered at him over his wire-rimmed glasses. “I know it pretty well by now.”
Kev liked Rick. He had round cheeks, a bushy gray beard, and a demeanor Kev could only describe as jolly. He was basically the Black Santa Claus of rehab—if Santa wore corduroy pants and sweater vests.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” Rick continued. “It’s okay to worry more about yourself than anyone else right now. It’s okay to not be okay.”
Worry? Worry didn’t even cover it. But Kev let his smile flatten into something less enthusiastic, wondering if even that was just another way he tried to please everyone around him. Smile. Don’t smile. Laugh. Don’t laugh. Be happy. Be quiet. Be invisible.
He’d learned a lot here at Willow Creek over the last month. About his abandonment issues, his newly diagnosed depression and anxiety— thank fuck for Lexapro —even that he actually liked yoga, and not just in the snow. But he still hadn’t been able to figure out this one thing. This emotions thing. This letting himself feel however he needed to feel thing. This idea that he was allowed to take up space. That he was safe. Because he’d never felt safe a day in his life. And he certainly didn’t now.
How does someone feel safe ? he thought just as Rick asked, “What are you thinking about right now?”
He wouldn’t tell him, wouldn’t ask the question. It was too big, so much bigger than those five words. Bigger than the hour they had left together.
“Um.” Kev twisted his lips. What would a person leaving rehab say to their counselor? “I just… I don’t want to mess up again.”
Rick nodded sagely. But Kev sagged in his chair, recognizing all the things he’d kept hidden behind the weak, flimsy admission. All the things he’d kept hidden from everyone here. From the kind people trying so hard to help him get back on his feet. Even though he still wasn’t sure he’d ever been on his feet to begin with. His counselors, the other patients here, his psychiatrist, his nurse practitioner, even the weird guy in housekeeping. They all knew about his addiction, his relapse. Hell, they even knew a little about his parents, his grandparents, his years in foster care, his time in juvie, in jail. They knew as much about him as anyone else did. But they still didn’t know him. And they sure as hell didn’t know about her.
They didn’t know about her soft hair or her infectious laughter. They didn’t know the way she smelled after she’d taken a shower: sweet, herbal, minty. They didn’t know how he’d never in his entire life been as happy as he’d been when he was with her. They didn’t know how badly he’d let her down. How badly he’d ruined everything. How he’d never be able to trust himself again. Because he loved her. God , he loved her. And he’d chosen the drugs anyway.
He couldn’t even bring himself to say her name anymore, not out loud. Fear and guilt kept her locked up tight inside his chest, kept his mouth clamped shut. So they didn’t know her.
But Madigan did.
He knew what Kev had done. He knew everything. And he’d be here soon to pick him up. When that happened, all of Kev’s hard work to keep her hidden over the last thirty days wouldn’t matter for shit.
His knee bounced harder. He should have found another sober living home to go to. He should have made better choices. He should have let her go. He should let her go now.
“I can feel you spiraling,” Rick said, sliding his glasses up his nose. “It’s okay, Kev. It’s normal to spiral when you discharge from rehab. It won’t be easy. Nothing about recovery is easy. But you will get through this. If you’re open, honest, and patient, and you trust yourself and the good people around you. You will get through this, one?—”
“—day at a time,” Kev finished.
“I was going to say minute. Maybe even second.”
Despite himself, despite the way the phrase grated with how many times he’d heard it in the last four weeks, Kev laughed. “Fair.”
Rick pointed at him. “You are a different man today than you were yesterday. You’ll be a different man tomorrow. We’ve all done things we’ve regretted, but that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to continue to grow. Regret doesn’t mean that you’re stuck. Guilt doesn’t mean that what you’ve done is unforgivable.” Rick leaned forward, spreading his corduroy-clad legs wide, interlacing his fingers between them. “Even if nobody else ever forgives you, you’re still allowed to forgive yourself. You’re still allowed to give yourself grace.”
Kev nodded, but only because it was what he was supposed to do. Not because he believed it. Why would he believe something that would never happen? Even if everyone he’d ever hurt forgave him, he’d never forgive himself.
“You don’t agree,” Rick said, eyes narrowed, seeing straight through him. “But you will. One day, you will.”
Watching Madigan and Rick talk about him—both occasionally glancing over to where he sat, eventually shaking hands like they were passing the baton in the world’s most tragic relay race—was a special kind of fucked up. But even though Kev was definitely the elephant in this room, the relief of having them both here, of seeing Madigan again, was bone deep. He knew in some philosophical way that it made sense, his tendency to cling. Clay. Madigan. Rick. They were father figures, the kind he’d always wanted. And he collected them like baseball cards.
“Ready?” Madigan asked, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, his brow deeply furrowed. He looked worried, tired, sad. Which made Kev feel even worse.
“Yep.” The word barely made any sound. So he cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m ready.”
“Keep in touch, Kev,” Rick said with an outstretched hand. “You have my email and my number.”
Clasping Rick’s hand, Kev shook it while giving him a careful smile. Not so bright that Rick would call him out for faking again, but not dim enough to be honest either. Rick was a busy man who treated hundreds of Kevs every year. They wouldn’t keep in touch. He knew it better than anyone. Even so, he said, “You bet.”
Hoisting his bag over his shoulder, Kev trailed behind Madigan through the automatic doors. A shiver ghosted over his skin when they whoosh ed closed behind him. Under the sky stretching out above the parking lot, the world seemed suddenly too big, too open. His palms started to itch, his chest drawing tight, ice trickling through his veins.
“Kev?” Madigan asked, staring back at him because he’d stopped walking. Because he stood still on hot concrete with his eyes wide and his hand pressed over his thundering heart. “You good?”
It’s just panic, he told himself, searching for his coping strategies. Focus on the ground under your feet, the scent of smoke in the air, the muted sunlight reflecting off Lydia’s rear windshield.
This last one calmed him more than anything. Lydia, Madigan’s Suburban. Familiarity, comfort, consistency. He knew how soft her velvety upholstered seats would feel beneath him. How her air conditioner would blow just enough barely cool air to keep them from breaking into a sweat. How good Madigan’s cassette tapes would sound even through Lydia’s ancient speakers.
Taking a breath, then blowing it out slowly, Kev said, “Getting there.”
“It’s…a lot.” Madigan glanced down at his boots. When he raised his head again, meeting Kev’s stare, Kev thought he might say something else, toss out some empty encouragement, some poignant words of wisdom he really wasn’t ready to hear. But Madigan only turned around and started walking toward Lydia again.
Forest fires raged through Idaho, and a hazy blanket of smoke had settled over the trees along the highway, turning the sky gray and the sun red. Even though the smoke was smothering, it didn’t hold a candle to the heavy silence inside Madigan’s truck. Kev should probably say something. Thanks for saving my life. Thanks for putting me in there. Thanks for letting me come back. How is she? Is she okay? Did she miss me? Does she hate me?
Unable to make himself say any of those things, Kev settled on “Lydia looks good.”
Madigan turned his head slightly while a gruff and scraggly voice singing about a girl with the sun in her eyes filled the ensuing quiet. And then he said, “Actually, now that you mention it, she does look good. Better than she has in a while.”
Kev’s attention funneled, narrowing in on the change in Madigan’s tone, the tight pull in the corner of his mouth.
Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, Madigan said, “It was pretty bad there for a while. She went through a rough patch where she just wouldn’t start. We tried everything, but none of it seemed to help. And then something changed. Like maybe she just needed some time off the road. I think she’s turned a corner now. Almost back to her old self.”
With his knee bouncing and his throat burning, Kev said, so quietly he barely heard it himself, “That’s good.”
“She’s still got a light out somewhere, though,” Madigan added. “She’s still…dim.”
Even though his voice was soft, Madigan’s words roared between Kev’s ears. Because they weren’t talking about Lydia. They were talking about Davis. He was the rough patch. He was the corner she had to turn away from. He was the reason her light had dimmed. And it was a knife twisting in his heart.
He still had no idea why he’d done it. He still couldn’t find a reason. Why did I give her up so easily? Why did I run? How will I ever stay clean if I couldn’t stay clean for her?
“You’ll never have all the answers,” Madigan said to the road in front of them, making Kev wonder why everyone always seemed to know his mind better than he did. “Doesn’t mean you won’t come out the other side.”
Turning his face to the window, Kev watched the trees slip by, thinking that if the next words out of Madigan’s mouth had anything to do with taking things one day at a time, he might open the door and jump.
Instead of reciting platitudes, Madigan asked, “Have you spoken to Thom or Trisha?”
“No,” Kev said. And he didn’t think he ever would. Thom, his old drug buddy and Little Timber roommate. And Thom’s sister Trisha, his one-time girlfriend, a relationship that had defined the word toxic. He thought they’d become his past, another life. Until Thom had followed him, found him. And then, they’d only had to ask, to offer, and he’d willingly followed them off the mountain, back to their house, the house where he used to live with them, use with them. The house where he’d descended into addiction. Where he’d turned his back on everything good and sweet and perfect in his life. “I haven’t heard from either of them. Not since…”
Sensing his struggle to finish the sentence, Madigan asked, “Do you want to know how they’re doing? It seemed like you and Trisha might have been…close.”
Kev’s head whipped around at the implication in Madigan’s tone. “No,” he insisted. “We aren’t close. We were once, years ago. But no. Not now.”
With a slow nod that Kev hated, because it seemed so unconvinced, Madigan flexed his fingers around the steering wheel and said, “Okay.”
Kev wanted to say more, to make sure Madigan knew that while he might have fucked up with drugs, he hadn’t fucked around on Davis. But it would require so many words, spark so many other conversations he wasn’t up to having. So he only said, “But sure. Are they okay?”
“I offered to find rehab placements for both of them,” Madigan said. “Thom declined. But Trisha is in a facility in eastern Montana. Last I heard, she’s doing well.”
Kev wasn’t surprised about Thom. But Trisha, who’d never once expressed a desire to stop using, shocked him. “That’s good.” He turned to look out the window again. “Thank you for doing that.”
“We all deserve second chances,” Madigan said. “All of us.”
It was obvious, the way he’d meant that Kev deserved them too. Luckily, instead of talking about how Madigan was wrong, they spent the rest of the drive in the same silent, smothering haze that choked the mountains around them. The haze that only lifted once they reached Bluebird.
“You’ll be alone in here for now,” Madigan said while Kev set his bag down on the couch. “We have an opening since Sam went home, but I’m sure we’ll fill it soon.”
Sitting on his old bed, Kev glanced around at the log walls, the vaulted ceiling, the dressers and bookshelves and old-timey skiing posters on the walls, feeling the familiarity of the place like a ghost of someone he used to know hovering over his shoulder.
This was his cabin. The one he’d shared with Clay, and then with Thom. The one where his life had finally started to feel whole and then had unraveled so quickly he couldn’t even find where the thread had snagged.
When his roving attention landed on the Little Timber House Rules listed on the far wall, the code of conduct all the men agreed to live by, the rules he’d need to agree to live by again, he bit his cheek.
With a grim resignation, he read rule number one: We Don’t Use.
Broke that one.
Rule number two: We Don’t Swear.
Broke that one too .
When he scanned down to rule number five—We Don’t Have Guests or Overnight Visitors Without Approval—his jaw clenched in a painful, involuntary spasm. He’d nearly broken that rule with Davis once. That time in his life when he’d been lucky enough to have her in his arms, surrounded by her, so close they shared breaths, felt like a dream now. Something that happened to someone else. Someone who had no idea how good he’d had it. Someone he wished he could go back in time and scream at, grab by the shoulders and shake until he figured it out. Until he decided not to blow up his entire life.
“Sounds good,” Kev replied flatly, turning away from the rules until his gaze landed on the romance book he’d been reading before he’d left, still splayed out on his nightstand, frozen in time. He remembered it was about a cowboy with a secret, tragic past who’d moved onto a rich woman’s ranch for the summer and turned her quiet world upside down. He huffed a dark laugh at the irony.
“I know the other guys are excited to see you again,” Madigan said. “But I’ve asked them to hold off until you come to visit them or until work starts tomorrow.” He ruffled his salt-and-pepper curls. Curls that seemed a lot saltier since Kev had last seen him. “I figured you might want some time to yourself to process being back. I wanted to leave it up to you.”
In that moment, Kev sensed the weight pressing down on Madigan’s shoulders, noticed the permanent furrow between his brows, the way he kept his hands buried in his pockets.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kev said, wondering with a sharp, painful twinge if Madigan felt responsible for what he’d done. “I’m sure you didn’t think it was. But just in case you did—it wasn’t.”
Since Kev couldn’t look up, didn’t dare, the bed sinking under his hips was his only warning that Madigan had sat down next to him.
“We don’t have to talk about it now,” Madigan said. “I’m sure you talked about it enough in rehab.”
He hadn’t, actually. He’d talked at Willow Creek. He’d had to. But he’d only revealed enough to convince everyone that he was diving deep. Even though the things he’d admitted to—that the cravings had gotten the better of him; that his roommate had convinced him to leave and he hadn’t had the strength to say no; that he’d just had a really bad day—had barely scratched the surface of the truth. The truth, the reason , was still there, hiding inside him. Lurking in a place so dark even he couldn’t see it.
“But I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I don’t feel guilty,” Madigan said. “Your relapse wasn’t my fault. I know better than that. But I wish I would have been here for you. I wish I hadn’t left.” He shrugged. “That’s all.”
Kev’s heart sank. Madigan and Ashley had been out of the country on their honeymoon when he’d decided to take off in the middle of the night. They’d had to cut their trip short. Kev had known that much. But hearing Madigan’s regret, the guilt in his voice because of him, his choices, his actions? He could barely breathe through the pressure in his chest, the acid burn in his throat.
“I didn’t know you and Thom knew each other,” Madigan went on. “I didn’t know you had a history with him and his sister.”
“Because I didn’t tell you,” Kev admitted, still not sure why he’d kept his past with Thom, his relationship with Trish, to himself. Maybe because they were a door some small part of him had wanted to keep open, some escape hatch he’d convinced himself was harmless to have. “I didn’t tell anyone. I’m so stupid,” he whispered harshly, balling his hands into tight fists.
Madigan’s palm was a heavy weight on his knee, his fingers squeezing gently until the bouncing stopped. “Not gonna argue with you on that one.”
Kev laughed miserably.
“We’re all stupid, Kev. We all make bad choices. Some worse than others. But rarely do we choose to do something that doesn’t make some sort of sense to us at the time.” He squeezed his knee again, and Kev’s mind reeled.
What sense did it make to leave you? he wanted to shout. To leave this place? To throw nine months of sobriety down the drain? To leave her?
“But we can work through all of that later,” Madigan said, and when he stood from the bed, all Kev wanted to do was curl up on his side, pull a pillow over his head, and sleep until the sun came up.
Unfortunately, Madigan had other plans. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got some paperwork to deal with in the lodge.”
Fear gripped him, its claws long and sharp. “The lodge? Really?” Ashley, Maude Alice, Davis. The lodge was their space. He couldn’t go there, not yet. “You can’t bring it here? The paperwork?” He swallowed down a fraction of his nerves, leveling his voice out as much as he could. “I, um, I’m pretty tired.”
“She’s not here,” Madigan told him, and Kev’s shoulders curled inward. Whether in relief or disappointment, he wasn’t sure. “And Ashley and Maude Alice are in town shopping. In case you’re worried about seeing them too.”
“Oh.” Kev clasped his hands in his lap, stared down at them, scowled at the evidence of the fingernail biting habit he’d developed around the same time everything had gone to shit. “I didn’t mean… I mean, I wasn’t worried they’d be there. Or, I wouldn’t have minded if they were. They live here. They’ll be around.” She’ll be around . “I know that. It’s fine. I’m fine.”
“Clearly,” Madigan said, his lips twisting to the side in an amused grin when Kev looked back up at him. “Get up. Let’s get this over with, and then you can sleep.”