Page 41 of Every Heartbeat After

“Hey, Kit. How’s it going?”

The keypad on my door blinks green, and I turn the knob to enter my room. “Oh, you know, just shooting the shit. What’s up with you, bro? I imagine you’re having an amazing day, considering you’re calling from the county jail.”

He mutters a curse, and I shove a clammy palm to my forehead. He doesn’t need me to get snarky with him, but my God is it hard not to when we keep finding ourselves in these positions. I want to reach through the phone and shake some sense into him, but I’ve lost all hope that it would help.

“What happened, Gage?”

“Man, I swear it wasn’t my fault. Zack and Easton were fucking around with some speed, and I was just in the room. But we all got arrested.”

I sink onto my mattress just as my stomach plummets to the floor. “Meth? You have got to be fucking kidding me. What were you thinking?”

Before he even speaks, I already know the answer. He wasn’t. He never is. Since the first time he got busted with drugs in the eighth grade, he’s continued on this endless cycle of acting without considering the consequences. So much so that my junior year of college, when he was still in high school, I got the call that he’d overdosed on some pills he’d gotten from a friend that were unknowingly laced with something much more potent. He got his stomach pumped, then our terrified parents dumped their life’s savings into a rehab facility that they really thought would work. Took out a loan when he had to go a second time while I was away on a deployment.

By the third go-‘round, he called me first because he was terrified of their reaction. I’m not sure mine was much better. But I made him swear right then and there that he’d never bother our parents again. It was killing them to watch him struggle, and it was killing me to watch them give up everything for a kid who couldn’t see how his addiction issues were hurting everyone around him. Or if he could see it, he simply didn’t care.

Every time, it’s the same excuse. His friends. Some stranger at a party. Not him. Never him. He was just a victim of the circumstances, and could I please bail him out yet again?

“It’s the last time. I swear, Kit. I’m not gonna talk to those guys no more. I’ll get a job. Get clean. Just please don’t let me rot here.” His voice is as frayed as my nerves. And despite the rage boiling in my veins, it cuts me to the quick. At the end of the day, he’s my little brother. When he calls, no matter how much trouble he’s gotten himself into, I can still hear Mama the day they brought him home from the hospital and placed him in the pillow nest on my lap.

“He’s your responsibility now, Christopher. You’re his big brother. You gotta show him the ropes. Make sure you look out for him. Always. You promise?”

I’ve been keeping that promise all twenty-six years of his life. At this point, I can’t even tell if it’s helping or hurting him that I’m always there to catch him when he falls. Only that it’s killing me.

I scrape a hand through my hair, focusing on the flickering red glow of the clock on the bedside table. It’s late in the afternoon, and a weekend no less. I can get a bondsman, but it’d be no use. The earliest Judge Carson will set bail is Monday. Ask me how I know. “What are your charges?”

“Possession.”

I grind my molars to the precipice of breaking. “How much?”

The line goes dead for so long I pull the phone back to be sure I haven’t dropped the call. The seconds are still ticking past on my phone screen, so I return it to my ear. “Gage, how much were you caught with?”

“Hardly any, man, but they’re also accusing me of intent to sell.” His voice is smaller than it’s ever been.

I’m off the couch and pacing, the only thing that helps temper my racing heart. “That’s afelony.Do you realize that? How could you be so stupid?”

“It wasn’t mine!” he whines. “You have to believe me.”

“I wish I could.” Except experience is a hell of a teacher, and everything we’ve been through to this point tells me he would, in fact, do this. Working in law enforcement, especially in a town as sleepy as Loveless, where drugs are the entertainment of choice among the less savory crowd, I can see it all play out. The dollar signs rack up behind my eyes, like the world’s worst lottery. This is bad. The worst it’s ever been.

And it’s never going to get better. Not for so long as I keep saving him when he’s headed up shit creek at breakneck speed without so much as a plastic spoon for a paddle.

“I’m not paying it. Not this time.” I pause at the glass door to my balcony, gazing out over the swaying palm trees around the pool to try and steady my swimming head. “If you keep going in this direction, you’ll be dead by the time you’re thirty. I’m doing you no favors by saving you from the consequences of your actions, and quite frankly, there’s not much I can do to save you from these. You’ll go to jail, Gage. Might as well aim for time served.”

“Fuck you,” he seethes. The wounded-puppy act drops instantly, and I’m reminded of the time he blackened my eye when I caught him stealing pills from our parent’s medicine cabinet after Dad’s back surgery. The day I truly realized this was not just a young kid messing around, but a man with a serious problem. “If you don’t post bail, I’m calling Dad. He’ll come get me. He’s not a self-righteous asshole like you.”

I hook a hand on the back of my neck, suddenly feeling half my age. I want to volley this problem to our parents. Let them fix it for once, when I’m so weary from doing it for years. But then I think of our mother crying softly while we sat in court for his first misdemeanor, and I blow out a resigned breath.

My baby brother. My responsibility.

“The earliest we can do anything is Monday. You know that.”

Just like that, we’re friends again. In his mind, at least. “So you’ll get me out first thing?”

“It doesn’t work like that. You’ll have to see the judge for your bail hearing. Only then can I get you out.” My gaze drifts to the rooftop bar on the opposite end of the building, where I can just make out the faraway shimmer of Tess’s blonde hair. “Do you have a place to go after? That isn’t with those guys?”

He hesitates, and my heart sinks.

“You can’t go to Mom and Dad’s. That’s an absolute hell no, do you understand?”

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