“That’s what I’ve been smelling!” He crossed the kitchen to peer over her shoulder into the oven. “You made the ones with the chocolate chunks and caramel in them?”
“I did.” She hip-checked him to get him to back up. “But they aren’t for you. They’re for some other guy who is actually nice to me.”
“I am nice to you.” He waited for her to put the hot pan down on the stove before he grabbed her and waltzed her around the kitchen. “You’re just pissed because you want to pump me for information and I’m not playing.”
She sniffed in mock annoyance. “Please. Like Ryder doesn’t tell me everything. I just wanted your perspective.”
He whirled her around, then dipped her with a big flourish, right in front of the refrigerator. She laughed, holding on tight.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispered as he carefully brought them back up to standing.
There was a little too much emotion running through those three words for him to be comfortable, so he eased back, shot her a cocky grin. “Don’t get sappy. I didn’t come back from the dead. I was just in rehab, and you visited me there at least once a week.”
“I didn’t mean that. I just…” She made a helpless little gesture that he thought was supposed to encompass their impromptu dance around the kitchen. “I’ve really missed you. It’s good to have you back.” There were tears in her eyes as she said it.
Emotion twisted sickly in his stomach, and he tried to tamp it down like he always did. Tried to ignore it, just like he tried to ignore the guilt that burned right under his skin. It didn’t work, though, especially not when he saw tears blooming in Jamison’s eyes.
“Fuck,” he muttered, even as he pulled her back in for a hug. “I’m right here, you know. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere this time.”
She clung to him like a limpet, the little sister he’d never had. “Promise?”
“I promise.” The words had a peculiar taste, felt heavy on his tongue. It was the second promise he’d made today, the second promise he had every intention of keeping. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry for everything I put you guys through.”
She pulled away, and the look on her face was as fierce as he had ever seen it. “You don’t need to apologize to me, Wyatt Jennings. You don’t need to apologize to any of us—”
“Yeah, I do—”
“No, you don’t. I don’t give a shit what that program says. We’re family. We love you just the way you are, fucked up addiction and everything. You don’t have to say you’re sorry because you were hurting and trying to find a way to deal with that hurt. All you have to do is promise me that if the pain gets bad again you’ll come to me. Or Ryder. Or Jared or Quinn or this pretty little girl you’re dating. I don’t care which of us you talk to,” she told him as she pulled him in for another hug. “I only care that you talk to one of us.”
This whole conversation was getting more uncomfortable by the second, and he couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take the naked affection in her eyes any more than he could take the plea she was making.
“I’m okay, Jamison,” he said as he eased away. “Poppy confronted me this morning, forced a lot of stuff out of me. Then she got in my face about the past and—I’m not going to lie. It was rough. And I’m not fixed. I’m not…good. I don’t know if I’ll ever be good. But right now, I’m solid. And that feels like enough.”
He expected her to call him on it, to tell him to stop being a fraud. But she didn’t do that. Instead, she cupped his face in her hands, smooshing his cheeks a little with the deliberate pressure she was applying. “I know you’re solid. And I know you’ve got this, this time. I can see it in your eyes. You’re not going back to drugs. I’m just saying—I’m just asking—that if that resolve ever wavers, if there comes a time when the past gets too hard or the cravings get too bad, you call me.”
“Jamison—”
“You call me,” she said fiercely, her hands pressing even more firmly into his cheeks, “no matter what time it is, and we’ll get you through it. Promise me.”
“I’m fine,” he told her as best he could, considering she was smooshing half his face.
“Promise me!” she barked at him.
“Okay, okay, I promise. Can I have my face back yet?”
“Yes. You can.” She let go of his cheeks, then pulled him into a hug and held on tight. So tight. “I missed my best friend,” she whispered into his shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
“You’re not going to lose me.”
Her arms tightened around his shoulders. “Promise me.”
He thought of the drugs in his pocket, thought of the promise he’d made himself while standing in the middle of his bathroom just a few hours before. Thought of Poppy and the fact that he wanted to be clean for her because she deserved it. And because, for the first time in a long, long time, he felt like he had something to stay clean for. Someone who drowned out all the ugliness, all the pain, all the voices in his head telling him that he wasn’t good enough, that he didn’t deserve to be happy, that he was the one who should have died all those years ago.
“I promise,” he told Jamison, his voice stronger and more unwavering than it had been in forever. “I’m not going to use again.”
She pulled back then, and studied his face in the way only an old friend could. “Okay,” she said after a second. “Okay. That’s that, then.”
She let him go, crossing back to the stove to cut two huge brownies from the pan before handing him