Love on the Lake (Lakeside 2)

I don’t get much sleep after that. And I call John first thing in the morning and ask if it’s okay for me to come in a couple of hours later than usual, with a promise that I’ll make up the time. He tells me not to worry about it, since I routinely pull ten-hour days.

Before anyone else gets up, I take another look at her car and discover that there are more than a few scratches. There are a bunch of dents, and the undercarriage looks like it’s been dragged over rocks. Which means she definitely lied and was in an accident. Possibly as early as Wednesday.

Teagan’s alarm goes off at seven thirty and continues to beep for a full three minutes until she finally reaches for her phone, slapping blindly at it until she gets it to stop. I’m sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed for work, all the medication from her bathroom sitting in a pile on her comforter.

Yesterday’s conversation with my mom was hard, but I have a feeling that this is going to be a lot different. I don’t want this to be the problem that it is.

As upset as I am about the lie she fed me about what happened with her car, I’m more worried about how she’s going to react when I confront her about her stash of medication. Teagan is a pleaser. She thrives on being needed and winning people’s approval. She’s carefully crafted this reality and made the pills part of her everyday life. If I threaten to take that away from her, there are going to be consequences. Ones I might not like.

I stroke her cheek and bend to press my lips to her forehead. She makes a noise and rolls over, curling into my leg. The weight that lifted yesterday settles in my gut.

“Babe, you need to wake up. We need to talk.”

She blinks once, twice, and her eyes roll up and flutter shut again.

I swallow down the anxiety. An image of Devon pops like a bubble in my head. How his skin had turned gray blue. How his eyes had frozen open, staring blankly at the sky. How he hadn’t even realized that he was hypothermic, or maybe he had and it had been too late, muscles seized, unable to get up and come inside, voice lost in the cold night.

Because we drank too much.

Because I passed out on the couch.

Waking up one morning and finding Teagan like that from an overdose could be a real possibility if she’s combining the wrong things. It’s a reality that I don’t ever want to face. And it solidifies my resolve.

I give her shoulder a gentle shake, but all she does is groan. “Teagan, I need you to wake up.” I have no idea how much medication is floating around in her system. And that scares the hell out of me.

It takes me a full five minutes, and I finally resort to spritzing her with the spray bottle she uses to water her cactus to wake her up.

She scrubs a hand over her face. “What the hell?” She blinks a bunch of times and sits up. Her eyes are sunken. She looks exhausted and confused. “What are you doing? What time is it?”

“It’s seven forty.”

She frowns and glances at the clock. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“Yeah, but we need to talk.”

That seems to put her on alert. “Did something happen?”

I motion to the pile of boxes strewn all over her comforter. Some of the labels are from Chicago, but the majority are from the local pharmacy, or the one in the neighboring town.

Her frown is back in place. “What is this?”

“You tell me, Teagan.”

“Did you go through my medicine cabinet?”

“Yeah.” There’s no point in lying when the evidence is in front of us.

Teagan runs a hand roughly through her hair. “Why would you do that? Why is this stuff all over my bed?”

“Because I’m worried about you, and I think I have a right to be.”

“Why, because I’m stocked up on generic over-the-counter medication?” She scoffs but swallows thickly. “There’s nothing for you to be worried about, Aaron. I know you’ve got issues with alcohol, and I get it, but I don’t go around pushing my personal choices on you, so you can’t go putting yours on me.”

“This isn’t the same thing, Teagan. My brother died because we were both too drunk to recognize that him going back outside to find his phone wasn’t a good idea. And while I’m working on making peace with that, I’m not going to put myself in a position where that could happen again. And this”—I motion to the boxes and bottles littering her comforter—“isn’t about me pushing my choices on you; this is me worried because I think you have a problem.”