Page 116 of Wright Together

“I wasn’t trying to fool you,” she said as she stood between what had originally been our two rooms.

“Really?” I asked, raising my brows. “So, you left your phone on accident?”

“Yes.”

“And the burner phone I found on you? The one you used to text Trevor?”

She bit her bottom lip. “It’s a friend’s. I borrowed it since I’d forgotten mine.”

“Uh-huh. And Xavier?”

“I didn’t know he’d be there!”

I snorted. Likely story. By my estimation, it had been his party. Not that that line of reasoning would get through to her.Reasonwasn’t her strong suit.

“And the drugs I saw you sitting in front of?”

“I wasn’t using.”

My eyes rolled so far into the back of my head that I saw into the other room. “Right.”

“I wasn’t.”

“So, you’d pass a drug test.”

She fidgeted then. For the first time, her demeanor cracked. We both knew she’d fail with flying colors. The way she had failed her junior year of high school.

“Just let it go, Evie,” she said instead of answering.

She pushed past me into her room, but I wasn’t done. I followed her.

“I can’tjust let it go. Xavier told me you owe him two thousand dollars.”

Bailey whirled on me. “I don’t owe him shit.”

“He said that you were going to work it off with sex!”

She scoffed, “Like I’m a prostitute.”

“I don’t know what you’d do for your next fix. I didn’t know before, and with a relapse, I certainly don’t know now.”

“I haven’t relapsed!”

“Bailey, just stop! I was there. I saw you high as fuck, sitting on a balcony in front of enough drugs to OD.Again. Xavier offered for me to help pay off your debt, too. Do you know that?”

She winced at that. “He did?”

“YES! He did!” I shook my head in frustration. “Do you not see what’s happening? Do you not care?” I revealed my wrist tattoo of the two crescent moons, one full and one empty. I grasped her wrist and turned it over, revealing a matching set. “Does this mean nothing to you?”

“I’m not using again.” She yanked her wrist out of my grip and looked down at it. “I maybe had a little weed. That’s it.”

I closed my eyes in frustration. Same old, same old. A string of lines, couched in a tiny molecule of truth. But never thewholetruth.

The tattoos were supposed to help that. We’d gotten them after Bailey left rehab. They were a dedication to staying clean. We were only ever half unless we were together and whole. A reminder that she’d clearly forgotten.

It was then that I realized she’d never get it. Not alone. Not without me here.

She hated Dad with good reason. I didn’t blame her for that. It’d been a mistake to expect him to care about her like I did. He never had. And I couldn’t let her continue down this path because I knew if she did, she’d end up dead.