There with You (Adair Family 2)

Yet as much as I tried, I couldn’t hold back eighteen months’ worth of tears. Instead, I stumbled back, hitting the wall as my legs gave out and I slid to the floor. “I’m sorry,” I managed before I hid my face in my knees and cried. Robyn wasn’t the only one who’d bottled everything up. Easy-breezy Regan had fled the building.

Hyperaware of my sister’s movements, she slid down the wall, her shoulder touching mine as she settled beside me.

“Talk to me,” she whispered hoarsely. “I was always the one you talked to. I don’t understand what changed.”

Hearing her voice break forced me to pull myself together. I lifted my head out of my knees and swiped at my face, seeing the black mascara streaks across my fingers and not giving a shit. Meeting Robyn’s teary gaze, I repeated, “I’m so sorry.”

“I appreciate the apology.” She tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear, a gesture that was so heartbreakingly familiar, I struggled to hold back more tears. It had been so long since Robyn had been willingly affectionate with me. And it was all my fault. “But I want to know why. It’s never made sense to me, Ree. One minute we were as close as two sisters could be, and the next you were halfway around the world avoiding my calls. For eighteen months.”

I took a shuddering breath. “Have you ever done something? Something you regretted, but fear kept you stuck in the same cycle of repetition that you just didn’t know how to break?”

Robyn narrowed her eyes as she contemplated me.

I gave her a sad smirk. “No. You’d never let that happen. You’re not a coward, like me.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth.” I shrugged angrily and looked out the window, not wanting to see her expression as I finally explained myself. “You know when we were kids, I never thought it was weird that when I got hurt or upset, you were the person I wanted, not Mom or Dad. I wanted to spend all my time with you. As we got older, I realized other kids needed their parents more than their siblings. Not me.” I shook my head, smirking through watery tears. “I was the weirdo who depended on my big sister like everyone else depended on their mom and dad.”

I heard Robyn’s breathing change and turned to see the tears brighten her eyes.

That set me off again, so I looked away. “You know I love Mom and Dad. I’m not saying I don’t … but I needed you in a way I didn’t need them. Adored you. You were as much my hero as Dad was. Maybe more. Everything was always bright and shiny in my world as long as I had you.” Remembering the phone call from my dad, the one where he told me Robyn was in critical condition after being shot three times in the chest, I shuddered. I’d never experienced terror like it. Even after what I’d been through since, nothing had come close to the fear that paralyzed me when I thought Robyn might die.

“When you got shot … I … I saw you hooked up to those machines, tubes coming out of you, breathing for you, and the doctors said you’d died on the table and you might not wake up …” I met her anguished gaze. “Something switched off inside me. Like my mind couldn’t cope with the fear or something … I don’t know.” Shame swamped me. “I realized, I guess, that so much of my happiness depended on your existence. It freaked me out. I … I don’t know how to explain it. It just sounds pathetic and cowardly.”

“It’s not.” Robyn tugged my hand into hers and clasped it, her expression pleading. “Keep talking to me.”

“I needed to know I could survive alone,” I admitted hollowly. “That my happiness wasn’t dependent on you or other people. Even when you woke up and it was clear you were going to be fine, the fear didn’t go away. I thought for sure you would go back to the job, and I’d have this constant terror of something else happening to you hovering over me. So … I ran.”

“You went on the backpacking trip we’d planned together.”

I winced at her wounded tone. “Yes. Not to hurt you intentionally. It’s just that I met a bunch of people through this online group, and they were leaving so I decided to … run away. I had the inheritance from Dad’s mom.” I referred to the $5000 my grandmother had put in a bank account for me when I was born. I’d always planned to use it on my backpacking trip with Robyn. “It was enough to …” Self-recrimination oozed from every part of me. “Run away. Something you would never do.”