Page 101 of Rope Me In

My Adam’s apple bobs as I clench my jaw so hard I think my molars might crack. Presley’s soothing voice enters my mind, and I try to list off words again to calm myself, but the anger inside me is too much now.

“About what, then?” I manage to bite out. “Make it quick.”

Gavin puffs out a breath of air. “We’re concerned, Kade.”

My eyes snap to his as more anger bubbles at his words. “So your solution was to lie to me again so you could get me here?”

“Like Blake said, we didn’t lie to you.” He sighs.

I sit back and throw the napkin from my lap onto the table. “But you omitted part of the truth. You’ll never change, will you, Gav?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but Momma beats him to it. “Don’t blame your brother. I asked him to get you here, and he said you wouldn’t come if we just wanted to talk.”

“I would have.”

“You know that’s not true,” Gavin says.

I shake my head. I would have if they’d come to me and told me they were ready to listen and hear me out. That’s why I came here tonight, because I thought they would include me. I thought we could try to make things at least a little better.

I exhale a tense breath. “Even if it’s not true, that means you knew I wouldn’t speak with you on one issue,so you used something you knew meant a lot to me to get me here. You manipulated me.”

“You’re right, Kade. It was wrong of us,” Gran utters, “I see that now. But can’t you see we just wanted to talk to you? We were that desperate.”

“Yet nobody came and was honest with me. If you were, I would’ve talked.”

“Because you proved you could talk without flying off the handle before?” Gavin says. “We’ve all tried that.”

“No. Like I’ve said, you talkedatme, not to me. Don’t you get that?”

Gavin rubs the back of his neck, and this time, Blake speaks. “You’re right. We should’ve been honest. But we all love you, and we didn’t know what else to do.”

I suck a breath of air in through my teeth, willing myself not to do what Gavin thinks I will and fly off the handle. Four sets of eyes peer at me, but I feel like they’re looking through me, not really seeing me.

Black creeps at the sides of my vision, and suddenly, I feel like I’m back at Devil’s Rock, my feet half over the rock ledge. The canyon below acts like a representation of the dark pit growing inside me at a rapid rate.Fuck. I wish more than anything that Presley was here. I need to hold on to her so I don’t fall.

“Kade,” Gavin says.

I blink away the spots from my vision. “Say it, then,” I bite out, resigning myself to hearing what they have to say. I won’t run away like Gavin wants. And if this is the last time we ever speak, I might as well know exactly what my family thinks of me. That way, I’ll never fall for this bullshit again.

“Kade,” Momma starts. “Ever since we talked, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what you said. About your—” She pauses, and her eyes turn glassy. Gavin places a hand on hers, and she continues. “About your depression.”

My stomach sours. I regret saying those damn words to her. Even if they are the truth, I should’ve known they’d come backto bite me. “We’re all depressed, Momma. How can you not be, living in Randall?”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry I’ve ignored the signs for so long with you. I think I saw it before your daddy died, but I didn’t pay it any mind. Like you said, it’s a way of life around here.”

My skin starts to crawl as the urge to drown myself in a bottle of whiskey comes back to me for the first time in weeks. “I’m fine.” I grit out the words.

“You’re not fine. You’ve not been fine for a long time,” Momma insists.

I clamp my eyes shut and pray for strength. Here they are, talking at me again. “How would you all know? We haven’t talked in almost two weeks. Hell, we haven’t really talked in a year!”

“Because you’ve been avoiding us! Drinking all the time, working all the time, being with multiple women!” Momma cries.

Momma grips Gavin’s hand as her eyes fill to the brim with tears. My heart cracks, and I dig my nails into my palms, attempting to breathe. I want to scream that I wasn’t avoiding them because I was depressed. I was avoiding them to give us all space, to allow them to come to me when they could finally talk to me and include me in their plans.

But relationships are a two-way street. I told Gran and Momma where they could find me if they ever needed me, and they didn’t come. They avoided me, too. They all did until Gavin invited me here tonight, to a dinner I thought was an olive branch.

Instead, I feel like I’m on an episode ofIntervention. Little do they know, I haven’t touched alcohol in weeks. They don’t know that I enjoy the work I do or that Presley is the only woman I want. They don’t know that before I sat down at this dinner, I was feeling better than I have in forever.

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