3. Weston

Being back in my condo doesn’t do shit to soothe my black rage. All I see is the shit that isn’t here. The shit Renee stole. The shit Eva stole.

But that’s not even what hurts the most. That shit is just shit. Replaceable. What’s even harder to look at is the spaces where she isn’t anymore.

The space where Renee ought to be.

I glance around the penthouse, remembering her lying on the sofa beside me while she watched scary movies she insisted she wasn’t scared of. I’m going to have to get a new sofa now.

I remember her feeding me whipped cream straight from the bottle while she sat on my dining room table. Fuck, gonna have to get a new one of those.

It’s like that for everything in here. I need new sheets for my bed, new light fixtures for the ceiling, new chairs for the porch. Everything about this place reminds me of her.

The walls are closing in.

I find myself staring in a mirror. I wonder what she saw in me that made her think she could do this. Do I look like a mark? Like a fucking fool?

Or the worse option: what if she didn’t see anything? What if all she saw was the emptiness, the void where the man I used to be lived?

And then, like fucking clockwork, that final thought arrives, same as it has every day for these last few weeks: What if I’m wrong about her? There’s a chance she’s not the one who robbed me. No one saw her do it. Maybe I jumped to that conclusion too quickly.

Oh, God. If I did…

No. I didn’t. She lied to me. She did this to me. To us. I’m sure of it.

I’m equally sure I can’t stay here right now. She’s everywhere. She’s suffocating me.

Hunter got a place in Malibu because he loves the beach, so that’s where I go. I roll down the windows and leave the music off as I drive. It’s an hour away, but the time passes in the blink of an eye.

I whip the car into his driveway and shut it off. For all I know, Hunter isn’t even home. But he hides the key in the fake rock on his porch, so I grab it out of there and let myself in…

Which turns out to be a fucking disastrous choice.

This place is trashed. There are three empty whiskey bottles on the table beside a half-spilled bottle of pills. Hunter is sitting on the floor near the French doors that lead to his deck that overlooks the beach below and the ocean.

“Dude, what the hell are you doing?” I ask in disbelief.

He turns to look at me. “Oh hey, Westie! It’s you, man!” His pupils are so big, I can’t tell what color his eyes are. And when he tries to stand, his body crumbles and he falls over, smacking his face hard on the floor. When I move toward him, he rolls to his back and blood pours out of his nose.

“Fuck, Hunter!” I go into the kitchen, which is more of the same shitshow continued. A line of broken dishes on the island leads to a pool of dried blood.

I yank open a couple drawers, thinking he might have some sort of towel in one of them, but instead, I find empty pill bottles, prescription meds with his name on the label, and more booze, most of it already consumed.

My gut churns. He’s been drinking a lot more than I knew about. When I don’t find a towel, I bring the almost-finished roll of paper towels from under the sink to him. His head tilts and his face narrows as he tries to focus on what I’m handing him. It’s as if he’s never seen anything like them before.

Snarling, I unroll a few sheets and wad them up, then press them against his nose. He recoils and moans. “Why you tryna s-suffocate me? Are you m-mad?”

Fuck yeah, I’m mad. More than fucking mad. But right now, I have to stop the bleeding before his dumb ass passes out from blood loss.

“Hold this.” I take his hand and clamp it over the paper towel. “I think you broke your nose. We should get you to the ER.”

He nods and hums under his breath with a dopey, stupid smile on his face. I stare at him, trying to gauge how I got this so fucking wrong, how I missed the clues, the signs.

There were more than clues, though, weren’t there? She said it right to my damn face. Hunter has an addiction. He needs your help.

And what’d I do? Told her to mind her own damn business.

“How long have you been using, Hunter?” When he ignores the question, I give him a shove. “How long?”

He twists his head to look at me. Up close, his blown-out pupils are even more haunting. “Hmff?”

“Are you an addict, man?”

“No!” Great. So he’s an addict and a liar. “No. Of course not.”

But he is. The evidence is all here. The pill bottles. The whiskey. Jesus, fuck. How did I not know? I should’ve seen it. Should’ve understood what he was going through.

That dirty shot that broke his knee took the thing he loved most from him: hockey. His dream. Our dream. So of course he’s been in pain. They might have fixed his knee enough to walk, but he was never going to skate again.

He had to deal with it all somehow. Pain doesn’t just go away if you ignore it—I know that as well as anyone.

That I didn’t notice how bad he was hurting says a hell of a lot about how self-centered I am.

It also says something even more troubling.

If I was wrong about him…

Could I be wrong about her, too?

He sleeps for a while. When he wakes up, he looks at me, his face burning with shame. At least his pupils look somewhat normal again.

“I’ve woken up next to some hags before,” he jokes lamely, “but you might be the ugliest one yet.”

I don’t laugh. “We need to talk.”

He scrubs a hand up and down his face, reaches for a beer bottle on the table, and then, when he feels me glaring, sets it back down without sipping.

“About what?” His voice is raspy and deep with sleep, and the bags under his eyes are dark and purple.

I don’t know where to start. “What happened to you, man?”

“Life happened to me.” When I tilt my head, he holds up his hand. “I know, but it’s true. I had everything planned, West. Play hockey in college with you, get drafted again with you, work my way up with you. Score a thousand goals. Then I got hurt. It all went to shit.”

Jesus. That means he’s been sinking for years. Falling apart. And I’ve been celebrating every victory, every triumph, right in his fucking face.

I’m a prick.

“It’s not all shit.”

“Oh, but it is. I lost every dream I ever had. It was supposed to be you and me. Winning together. Playing until they booted us off the ice.” He shakes his head. “Now, it’s just you. I’m in the stands or at a bar. You score and I look at people and say, ‘I know that guy; that’s my best friend’ because it’s all I can fucking say.” He swipes at his eyes and his fingertip comes away soaked with unshed tears. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

He doesn’t need to say more. I get it.

“I can kick this, man,” he insists hoarsely. “I swear I can.”

“I know. And I’m going to help you. You can stay here as long as you want. Forever. Hell, we can be the old dudes pushing each other around at the nursing home.” He smiles a little. “And I’ll clean my place up. Make it a sober space. We can go to meetings and find you a good doc.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “Hiding this from you has been… Shit, man, it’s been really fucking hard.”

“I’m here now, brother.” I clap him on the shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere, either. You can travel with the team if you want or I can set up nanny cams when I’m gone.”

“I don’t deserve all of this, Weston.” For a second, I think he might say more, but he shakes his head, then drops his forehead to his hands, shoulders shaking. “I…” He wipes his face up and down with both hands and when he lifts his head, his eyes are red and wet. “Thanks, man.”

“We’re brothers, Hunter. I’m always here for you. Now, let’s pack your shit up and move you in with me.”

It takes him a minute to nod but when he does, he smiles and for just a second, I can see us the way we were when we were kids. Happy. Ready to take on the world. Ready to fly together. He’s been my best friend since we were kids and I let him fall.

But no more. I’m here now. And I’m paying attention.

“Alright. Let’s go.”

I’m an asshole for letting him get this bad, for not noticing what it took Renee only a couple meetings with him to figure out. I know Hunter better than anyone and yet it was her who’s really saving him now. Without Renee pointing out what I should’ve already seen for myself, I would probably still not know.

I sigh. I slipped, but that shit isn’t going to happen again. The people in my life that I love are going to know it. And I don’t give a fuck what I have to do to prove that I’m solid and worthy.

I’m not giving up on any of them.