Next to Never (Fall Away #4.5)

I swallowed the knot in my throat, both of us finishing his sentence in our heads.

“Tate was that for him,” James pointed out, “but they don’t talk anymore, and Jared has only gotten worse. He needs help.”

I nodded, staring out at the linoleum floor. And what had I said to him tonight?

My world doesn’t revolve around you?

Did it ever?

His words washed over me, and I was fucking paralyzed. All these years I knew what I was doing. To myself and to him. This wasn’t some goddamn epiphany, but for the first time I realized that I was more to blame for how he saw the world and how he behaved than his father. He was angry before I let Thomas see him. He hated me before that summer. He’d been pulling away his entire life.

No one should’ve come before him, and it wasn’t that he didn’t care that I’d always put myself first . . . No, he didn’t even wonder why anymore. This was his life. I was his horrible reality, not his father.

I chewed my bottom lip, shaking my head. “I was his for so long that I didn’t know who I was without him.” Of course I referred to Jase, hoping James understood. “Why was I so weak?”

“Because we all eat lies when our hearts are hungry,” he quoted.

I closed my eyes and allowed the quiet tears to spill over. Yeah. Jase didn’t take anything I didn’t freely give. And if it wasn’t him or Thomas, it would’ve been someone else.

“I need to get well,” I finally said.

“That’s easy to say, isn’t it?” he retorted. “The truth is, you have two choices here. Jared can stay with me while you’re in rehab. Or Jared can stay with me for good.”

I darted my eyes up to him.

“And you can leave him for his own well-being while you go off to drink for however long your body allows you stay alive to do so,” he concluded.

I covered my eyes with my hands, breaking down once again as I shook with sobs and sank to rock bottom, feeling naked, cold, worthless, and empty.

Oh, my God.

I didn’t want that. Of course, I didn’t want that! I never wanted to stop being his mom.

But James was right. Jared would be worlds better off with him than he was with me.

While I cried and cried and cried, James remained quiet and let me come to terms with what had to be done.

“I love my son,” I told him, wiping the tears from my face.

“Then prove it to him.”

Chapter 11

Kat . . .

I stood in the next-door neighbor’s garage, leaning down and affixing the wires to the new taillight, locking them in place, and popping the new cover back into position. I had no idea what had happened to this car, but when I left for rehab, James had a mint-condition Chevy Nova sitting in his garage. Now the car was nearly totaled, and Jared was over here working on it nonstop.

When I asked, James simply assured me Jared wasn’t responsible for the damage.

I had to hand it to James. In the month I’d been away, he’d straightened Jared out and gotten him on track. His schoolwork was done, his grades were slowly improving, and he was making an effort to be civil with me, even if we still rarely spoke.

I did what I could do to bridge the gap. Nothing would fix all the wrongs I’d committed, but I wasn’t going to stop trying. One day when Jared went next door in his spare time to work on restoring the car, I inched my way in and asked James if I could help, as well. And now, after a few weeks, Jared and I still weren’t friendly, but he accepted my presence and I got to be close to him, so I took what I could get.

Soon, though, I feared the car would be done and he’d find more trouble to get into. Especially when Tate came back from her year abroad next summer. I wasn’t sure what happened between them when they were fourteen and suddenly stopped being friends, but maybe this distance would be good for him.

I just hoped that shit wouldn’t hit the fan again when she finally came home.

“All righty, that’s done,” I said, straightening and dusting off my hands on my jeans.

“Here, hold this,” Jared requested, his tone clipped.

I walked around the front of the car and took the hose he handed me, the black, grainy grease staining my fingers.

He worked the wrench, tightening a notch.

“Don’t make it too tight,” I warned him.

“I know what I’m doing.”

And so do I. You’re making it too tight.

But I wouldn’t say that.

Just then, as I knew would happen, the notch snapped, and I heard metal pieces fall down into the engine.

“Damn it,” he growled in a low voice before standing up and snatching the hose away from me as if it was my fault.

I remained silent, like I hadn’t noticed. “Okay,” I said, realizing this was my cue. “I’m going to run and get us all some burgers and stop by Miller’s for the bulbs for the dash. I’ll be back soon.”

He ignored me as usual, and I grabbed the shop cloth, wiping off my hands and sticking it in my back pocket as I left the garage. The weather was turning chilly, but we could still get away with T-shirts and no jackets.

I didn’t want to admit it to Jared, because he would think I was trying to suck up to him, but getting under the hood of a car again felt really good. It felt like the old me, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d tried to be someone else for too long. I was sober, I had a good job that had waited for me to get clean, and my son was safe and healthy.

I might still feel the loneliness, and Jase may still cross my mind every day, several times a day, but I had to be thankful for what was good and keep moving forward. I was still young, after all. I still wanted to do things.