Page 110 of Wright Together

If Bailey was with Xavier again, we were fucked. Xavier dealt to half the town. So much for the tens of thousands of dollars I’d spent on her rehab.

I found the stairs at the front of the house and climbed them. The first few doors I opened were full of random hookups. One even had a full-on orgy. I didn’t want to ask questions. I just shut each door and moved on.

“Bailey?” I called into the house.

Literally how many bedrooms could it have?

On the fifth, I found the one that the guys must have been talking about. It was the only one with a balcony. But instead of Xavierrailingmy seventeen-year-old sister, she was huddled in the corner of the balcony. Her head lolled against the balcony door. Cocaine was cut into lines on the glass table in front of her. A rolled dollar bill sat next to it. Pills were in a mess of little bottles. A few had opened and spilled out onto the table. A discarded bong was on the wood floor. No Xavier in sight.

“Bailey!” I gasped, sprinting to her side. I lifted her up and forced her to look at me. “Bailey. Bails, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

She laughed. Her pupils were blasted out, as wide as saucers. “Evie!”

“Bailey, we need to get you out of here.”

“No, Evie, stay!” She tugged on my arm. All the strength from her athletic training evaporated in the wake of the drugs. “Stay! We’re having such a good time.”

I recoiled from that assessment. She wasn’t in her right mind. She needed help.

“Sorry, kiddo, it’s time to go home.”

“No! I’m not going home. I’m never going home again. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.” She slurred the last word and tugged out of my arms. “I’m going to stay here, where it’s quiet.”

Quiet. Yes, a rager was so quiet.

I knew she meant in her mind. It was one of the things she’d confessed to me after rehab with all her many hours of therapy. The problem when Gram had died was that her grief was so severe that she couldn’t quiet the anxiety in her mind, that loud voice that yelled at her constantly day and night. Medicine helped to an extent. If she had stayed the course, I was sure antidepressants and anxiety pills could have done the trick, but too late. She’d found something that worked a lot faster.

“You don’t have to go back with him, but you can’t stay here either.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Xavier asked from the bedroom. He was in a grungy white tank top and distressed jeans. He’d grown a curly mullet since I’d last seen him, and it did him no favors.

“We’re leaving.”

“Fuck no, you’re not.”

“Try to stop us,” I snarled.

He tipped his chin at her. “She owes me two thousand dollars.”

I nearly screamed. “What the fuck did she take for two thousand dollars?”

He shrugged. “She was going to work it off with me. I don’t mind if you want to help.”

Then, he winked, and I considered punching him in the face.

This was the first moment that I’d wished Whitt were here. That guy would have never fucking said that to me with him at my side.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” I said, tugging Bailey to her feet.

“Look, baby—”

“I already called the cops,” I lied. His eyes narrowed. “I know who your daddy is, but even you can’t escape what’s all over this house.”

“You wouldn’t do that while she’s here.”

“You sure?”

But he wasn’t. I could see it on his stoned face.