Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 104151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Mom should have taken that bottle of pills when she was pregnant with me instead of the pregnancy she ended after Gabby.
Feeling responsible for someone else’s will to live was the worst fucking thing in the world.
I woke up in the hospital with my mom in a chair next to my bed, bent over, her cheek resting on my hand. There was an IV in my other arm and an oxygen mask on my face. Dad was staring out the window with his hands in his pockets. I gingerly lifted my arm with the IV in it to pull the oxygen mask off my face.
Mom quickly lifted her head. “Eve,” she said with a breath of relief.
Dad turned.
“What happened?” I whispered.
Mom batted away her tears before they made it down her face. “You—” she choked and had to clear her throat.
“You poisoned yourself with alcohol,” Dad said with less emotion, resting his hand on my mom’s shoulder as she gently sobbed. “You could have died.” He narrowed his eyes, displaying a hint of pain. “That dog— that you were supposed to get rid of—led Kyle to you. He carried you to his house, and an ambulance brought you here.”
Kyle carried me? I tried to imagine it. He must have hoisted me over his shoulder with only one arm to steady me. Then he had to carry me up a long hill to get back to his house.
I was an awful person.
“We’re taking you to St. Louis tomorrow,” Dad said.
“For what?” I whispered, and it made my mom break down with a new round of tears.
“For thirty days of treatment at a rehab facility,” Dad replied.
“What?” My head rolled side to side. “No. I don’t need that. I was upset. I’m fine. I don’t have a problem. Please. No. Just—”
Dad rested his hand on my leg. “If you go, you’ll have a home to return to. If you don’t, then you’re on your own.”
It was happening again—another Jacobson girl being kicked out of the house for falling in love with the wrong guy.
“I’ll stay with Kyle,” I said.
“Kyle’s moving back to Colorado at the end of the semester,” Dad said.
All the oxygen left my lungs; it felt like it left the room.
“What? No. I love him.”
“Eve, you are the most indecisive young woman. You have no idea what you want to do with your life. You have a substance addiction. And you’re eighteen. I’m not sure you know what love is,” Dad said. “Kyle is an infatuation. He misled you. And I hold him just as accountable, if not more than you, for everything that’s happened.”
I started to say something but stopped before the words escaped because I looked at my mom’s exhausted face and red, lifeless eyes. Was I next in line to sacrifice my happiness for the well-being of others?
“Okay,” I whispered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
WHITE LION, “WHEN THE CHILDREN CRY”
Eve
“What’s this?” I asked the next day after getting discharged from the hospital. There was a bag in the back seat.
Dad started the car. “A few things to get you by for the next thirty days.”
Mom shot me a sad smile over her shoulder.
“Uh …” I chuckled. “We’re not going home first? What about Thanksgiving? This is happening now?”
“Addiction doesn’t care about holidays, Eve. This way you’ll be home by Christmas.”
I didn’t have an addiction. What was happening? I thought it was a threat, a test to see how I’d react. I kept my mouth shut the previous day. It wasn’t fair.
“I didn’t get to talk to Erin or Grandma. I didn’t get to say goodbye to … Josh.”
“It’s for the best, honey,” Mom said.
“How is not saying goodbye for the best? Does Erin even know I was in the hospital?”
My parents shared a look.
“To help you save face, we’re telling anyone who asks, that you are on a mission trip.” Dad glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
“You’re lying to people?”
“We’re protecting you,” Mom said.
“From what or who?”
I looked out my window and quickly batted away my tears. The longest I’d been away from home was two weeks, and that was with friends and adults from the church who I knew. I wasn’t ripped away from my life and everyone I knew for a month over Thanksgiving.
They were protecting themselves.
Erin would know it was a lie. The truth would come out. And what about Kyle? He was okay with letting me leave? Of course he was. After all, he was taking Josh back to Colorado.
I envied Sarah for getting the hell out of Devil’s Head. I envied her for falling for someone who put her first above everything and everyone else in the world.
For the rest of the trip to St. Louis, no one said a word. My heart ached a little more with each passing mile, and my eyes never stopped leaking painful tears.