We walked side by side back toward home. A mile from the house, I confessed what I had done. Shane stopped, his face a mixture of emotions that I couldn’t decipher in the moonlight. “Lana…”

I bit my lip. “I have to do this, Shane. I know it’s going to hurt him, but right now I have to do what is best for me. That must sound selfish, and I’m sorry.”

After a long pause he finally nodded. “Yeah, I understand.”

He walked with me to the patio and asked if I wanted to go for a run with him the next evening. I knew he was just being nice, but I really needed someone right then. My chin trembled and I nodded. Shane sighed and pulled me into his arms. “It’s going to be okay, Lana. Everything will work itself out.”

Our run Thursday night was almost relaxing, and it left me looking forward to Friday evening since he had asked me to run with him again. After the stress of the last week, the running helped me relax, and I ended up falling into a deep sleep for the first time Friday night.

Saturday wasn’t pretty. Layla was home earlier than I expected, and Jesse was already talking to Emmie about my college plans since she had left him a message that she needed to talk to him about it as soon as he got back. I wanted to be mad at her when Jesse stormed into the new house with rage in his eyes, but I couldn’t. She was just looking out for Jesse after all.

“Lana, why?” Layla demanded, tears in her eyes as she turned to confront me. “I don’t understand why you would do this.”

With Jesse shouting and Layla crying, I couldn’t handle the situation like I had wanted to. Unable to deal with it, I ran up to my new room. Of course Jesse followed me, wanting answers, and Layla joined the party, trying to diffuse the tension but wanting answers too. I could see that my sister suspected the truth; it was there in her eyes. She couldn’t possibly know all of it, but she could guess, and knowing her, she would guess right.

I wasn’t ready to face Drake when he stormed into my room. I wasn’t ready for any of it, actually. Confessing everything—that I loved him, that I had heard him having sex against the hotel room door—hadn’t been part of my plan, but I had to tell him. He deserved to know where I stood. That even though he had shattered my heart, I still loved him. Would always love him.

It nearly killed me when I saw his face as I told him I was leaving. Three thousand miles. I didn’t know if it was far enough away to get over him, but I knew it was hurting him. His best friend was abandoning him.

“I’m sorry, Drake,” I whispered.

He didn’t say a word as he turned and walked away. As the door shut quietly behind him, I crumbled to the floor, shattered all over again.

Chapter 9

Drake

Over the last three weeks, I had heard them all. Excuse after excuse, and they all ended with the same phrase: “…and then I hit rock bottom and ended up here.” Here was the best rehab in the country. The one place I hoped to find solace after the mess I had made of my life because I had hit rock bottom, and now I was free falling toward Hell.

In the three weeks, I had been here, I hadn’t had one drink. I was shaky, fingers trembling just at the thought of a bottle of any kind of alcohol. Depression was a painful thing. It made your entire body ache for no good reason. My chest constantly felt like there was someone standing on it. Sometimes at night I couldn’t sleep from the sheer pain of not having my angel close. There was nothing—not one damned thing—that I could do about it.

The staff, from the nurses to the psychiatrists, all said I was doing well. I thought they were full of shit. I was a mess. Without the alcohol I was haunted day and night, not only by nightmares of the day I had beaten my stepdad half to death, but now I had one more torment to add to all the others.

Lana’s face as she told me she loved me, but that I had ruined everything.

Emmie had called me the night before and asked if I was coming home next week, when my thirty days was up. I wanted to see her so badly. I had never spent this long away from her, but I knew that if I really wanted to get through this I needed to stay another thirty days…

Today, I was having a one-on-one session with my psychiatrist. It was the first time I had ever sought the guy out instead of him having to seek me out. He said that step alone was progress, but I thought he was delusional. I spent ten minutes just staring out his window at the lake off in the distance before I even started talking about what was on my mind, but he give me time and space.

Finally, I blew out a long breath and raked a hand through my hair in frustration. “I was sixteen when I opened the first bottle. The first swallow was like swallowing a mouthful of fire, but the burn was a good one. It took my mind off of what I wanted to forget. The second swallow was a little easier to get down, and by the third I was out of it.”

The doctor, a skinny man with long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail and eyes that looked like he had seen it all in his profession, simply nodded. “How did you feel later, after the effects wore off?”

“Worst headache of my life,” I assured him. “My mom…” I swallowed hard. I rarely talked about my mother. It was just too painful to think about her. “My mom thought I had the flu and stayed home from work to take care of me.”

“Do you want to talk about your mom, Drake?” Dr. Kent asked, having seen me flinch at the mention of my mother.

I sighed and locked my fingers together behind my head. “Not really,” I muttered.

Kent was quiet for a long moment, as if he were giving me time to rethink my answer. When he finally did speak, he surprised me. “Your brother has come to visit you a few times, but he never stays long. Why is that?”

Pain sliced through my chest thinking about Shane and his last visit, just the day before. Lana was gone. She was in New York now, three thousand miles away. I hadn’t gotten to tell her goodbye or that I loved her. She was just gone, off starting a new life that I had no place in.

“He just wants to see how I am,” I told the doctor, “but he knows that I will want to leave with him if he stays too long.” Yesterday had been one of those days when I had nearly begged my little brother to get me the hell out of this place. I wanted to get on a plane and follow Lana across the country!

The only thing stopping me was the knowledge that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be with Lana just now. First, I had to become a man that was deserving of my angel. The man I had been three weeks ago, when I had walked through the front doors of this place that was so private it didn’t even have a name, didn’t deserve Lana. I was working toward being one that did.