“But once we were gone… Everything changed.Spain was literally a foreign country in every meaning of the word, along with the money and lifestyle.My career took off faster than I expected.”
He scrubs a hand over his jaw.“She fell in with the wrong crowd.Partying.Drugs.People who didn’t care about her, only who she was, her connection to me and that world.”
His shoulders round slightly, the posture of someone replaying moments he wishes he’d caught sooner.“And I was busy.Always gone.I told myself she was just finding her footing, that it was normal and she would adjust.She’d been in worse situations before.The move was a good thing.”
Raw wires of steel thread his voice.“By the time I realized something was wrong, it was already bad.”
I can see it—a younger him, driven, fraught, trying to keep everything upright.Family.Career.Love.All of it balanced on his back.
“I tried to help her with rehab and doctors.”His gaze drops to the fire.“Sometimes she wanted it.Sometimes she didn’t.And I kept thinking if I just did more—earned more, was around more, fixed more—she’d come back to herself.”
He pauses, and the silence stretches, thick but unbroken.
“Everyone told me to walk away.My agent.Guys on the team.People who didn’t know her like I did.”
“But you didn’t.”
He shakes his head once.“Not at first.Then things got worse.She started sleeping around.Stealing from me after I changed her access to the money—cut it back to something small, reasonable.I ended things with her, urged her to go back home.That’s when she moved out.But then she’d break into my place when I wasn’t there even though I’d changed the locks.She threw parties that went on for days.Left it trashed.”
The words land flat, stripped of drama, but his expression shifts to strain and distance, like he’s right back there, reliving each awful, disorienting moment.
“It wasn’t about the money.If I’m being honest, if I’d been able to help her, I might’ve forgiven all of it.”He rakes his hand roughly through his hair.“But it was everything together.The lying.The chaos.”
As much as it’s difficult to listen to this, I try to imagine how much this would’ve hurt him, and a big part of me isn’t surprised.From the second I clocked Erica, though I didn’t name it at the time, I knew she was using.
“What did your mom say?Katie and friends?”The question is gentle.I can’t imagine Meri telling him to abandon Erica—but I also can’t imagine her wanting her son to sacrifice himself.
“She didn’t know until the other night.That’s what I wanted to talk to her and Katie about.Erica said she wanted to come home, and I didn’t want any of them, my friends included, to not know what they’d be facing.”
He stares into the fire, jaw set.“She became someone else.Conniving.Mean.Reckless in ways that scared me.”His voice dips.“I still believe the real Erica is in there somewhere.I do.But I couldn’t reach her.No matter what I tried.”
He quiets again, and I stay with him in the silence, sensing he isn’t finished.
“I care about her, but I’m not in love with her.We’re done.There’s no room for her in my life.Before tonight, the last time we spoke was when I left Spain, and I told her then not to contact me unless she was sober.”
The fire shifts, logs settling.
“And tonight?She was high.”I shift in my chair.“What happened?”
Then he turns to me, fully.“I don’t know how she got the money to come back.I meant what I told her.And I know what tonight looked like, but I left with her because I didn’t know what she’d do to you.”
“I can handle myself.”
“I know… It may not have looked like it, but I was choosing you.”
My chest cracks open enough to let in the words I didn’t know I needed to hear.Blinking back tears, I nod.“And where is she now?”
“She’s staying with Reggie.”
“Reggie?”
“Her foster mom.”
The quiet that follows feels intentional, and when I reach for him, he takes my hand in his large, warm palm and interlaces our fingers.“It sounds like you know this, but just in case, you didn’t fail her.You cared and you tried.”
More words rise in my chest that I don’t say yet.About my brother, about the guilt of being the one still standing when someone you loved isn’t—the what-ifs that circle no matter how many times you’ve already answered them.
I know that weight.