Page 55 of When Stars Fall

He tips his chin at the door I’m leaning against. “You seem pretty attached to the exit. I thought maybe you were considering an escape plan.”

With my hands, I push off and stand behind the island, keeping it between us. “Sorry.”

“What’s going on?”

“Have you been completely honest with me?” There was the phone conversation the other day. If I’m going to tell him, I need to be certain about everything.

“Did someone tell you I hadn’t been?”

Evasive. There must be something. My phone pings. When I take it out of my pocket, there’s a text from my ex-boyfriend Matt. Whatever he needs, I can’t deal with it now, and I switch off my phone.

“What aren’t you telling me, Wyatt? There’s something.”

“Do you want to sit in the living room?”

I follow him with my hands shoved into my pockets. With a ball of anxiety lodged in my stomach, I brace myself for the worst. He sits on the couch, and I choose the couch opposite him.

Wyatt takes a deep breath. “It’s about my sister, Anna.”

My immediate reaction is to roll my eyes, but I stifle it. If there was trouble anywhere, Anna found it. She was a constant thorn in my side during my relationship with Wyatt, but he treated her with kid gloves. Part of me understood, given their terrible childhood, but no one ever gave Anna any boundaries or limits. Whatever she wanted, Wyatt gave her.

“Three years ago, she turned up at one of the drug addiction workshops Tanvi runs. She had a baby. Jamal.”

Jamal. That was the name on the phone the other night.

“Anna and I lost touch when I moved out of the house we shared. Too many memories for me to stay there. Anna was constantly pawning her stuff to get money, and I guess the phone I messaged her on she didn’t have access to anymore. The point is, we weren’t in contact for a few years.”

That tells me a lot about how out of control their addictions got. The two of them were thick as thieves when I lived with Wyatt. A constant source of tension between me and him. For them to lose touch, they both had to be spiraling badly.

He runs his hand down his face. “When she showed up at the workshop, she told Tanvi she wanted to get clean, to raise her son in a better environment than the one we grew up with.”

Tanvi has a soft spot for Wyatt and his sister. She used to have one for me too. “Okay,” I say. “Does she live with Tanvi?”

“She lives with me.” Wyatt grimaces. “She and Jamal share the house in LA with me.”

“With you?”

“Which is why I wanted to spend at least some time in LA. Anna isn’t overly stable. Sometimes for long stretches while she dries out, I take Jamal. Give him as much consistency as I can.”

I try to process the new information and what’s becoming clear. “You’ve been clean for two years?”

“Yes.”

“For Jamal?” My mind goes to Haven. “How old is he?”

“He’s three. Anna couldn’t keep it together. She tried. She tries. Sobriety is too much sometimes.”

“Where’s the father?” My body is caught in waves of hot and cold. This conversation is surreal.

“Anna isn’t sure who his father is. She was too high to remember. But she was hanging around a lot with Aman and that crew.” He twists his hands in his lap and then takes out the stress ball.

I absorb this information. Wyatt’s been preoccupied with Haven’s lack of a father because he’s been a father figure for Jamal. He understands the parental connection on a deeper level. I stare at my hands. If I’d told him about Haven years ago, would he have gotten clean then too? I search his face. He’s brimming with sincerity. This story is true.

“One of us had to be stable. She couldn’t do it, so I did.”

The pieces of my heart that have been shattered for years start to slot themselves into place. I can trust him. I’m sure of it. If he got clean for Anna’s child, what would he do to keep his own? “Wyatt,” I say, “there’s something—”

His phone rings, and he removes it from his pocket. “It’s Anna. Shit. Sorry. Hold that thought. I’ve got to take this. Sorry. I’m so sorry.” Before I can say another word, he stands and walks toward the kitchen.

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