Before Thirty

31. Blake

If you're the type to read and review ebooks, Miss Matched is available on NetGalley and Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. It releases with Wattpad Books on June 13th, 2023. 

In the middle of the night, I wake with a start, heart pounding and Gwen is curled into my side, her hand on my chest. I search the darkness for a beat, orienting myself and trying to calm the stampede in my chest.

"You have a lot of nightmares," Gwen murmurs, her lips brushing against my skin. "What are they about?"

"None of them are exactly the same." My voice is gravely from lack of use.

"Is it ever about this?" Her thumb brushes the scar above my eye.

Early on she asked me questions about the deep gash, and I avoided them all, and then she stopped asking. This moment is an opening to be honest with her, and I really consider for a beat how to respond.

"No," I say.

If I crack that memory, I worry about what else might seep out, coat my life like an oil slick. Some things are best left sealed tight. Diana. What happened. I spoke about it in mandated therapy—enough to get me cleared to return to work—but no one outside that closed door has heard a word about those events from me. Even letting my mind touch it now feels dangerous. As soon as the nightmares abate again, I can go back to pretending the past is far behind me.

It is behind me. All of the drama and heartbreak is. There's no need to swim in those seas to know how rough the water is. I can see it from the shore where I'm safe.

"Are the nightmares because we're getting closer to seeing your family? Or something else? You said it wasn't me being in the bed, but if it is..."

"It's not you," I say, squeezing her closer. "It's not you."

Or at least it's not her problem. My subconscious is in overdrive at the thought of anything happening to Gwen, ever. Somehow, something deep in me has linked Diana and Gwen together. Maybe it's simply that they're the only women I've ever loved like this, and maybe it's something more than that, but I refuse to dwell on it. Eventually, the nightmares will subside again. They always do.

"I understand why you don't see your parents, what with the drinking, and everything. But why don't you see your brothers?"

"They're a package deal."

"What does that mean?"

"Do you remember when I told you that to survive my family you were either a brawler or an appeaser?"

"Yeah," she says. "You said you became a brawler, so you left. I never asked what the tipping point was, but there must have been one."

"As a kid, I used to think my parents were decent people if they weren't drinking. There'd be stretches where they were both sober, and things would be okay in the house. But then my last year of high school, after I'd already been accepted to UBC, shit just unraveled. My dad lost his remote mining job. It was supposed to be a dry camp, and he got caught with alcohol."

Gwen cuddles closer, as though she can already sense what's coming.

"When he got home, he seemed hell bent on turning me and my brothers into his drinking buddies. No limits. My brothers, Jamie and Sam, were fourteen and sixteen at the time, and I was the buzz kill for not only saying no, but for trying to convince them to say no too. I didn't know where Dad was getting the money from. But I figured it out when I went to pay my tuition."

"They stole from you?"

"Felt like it at the time. They said they had the right to take it, and maybe they did for some of it. Their alcohol fund was my education fund. We'd all been contributing for years, and I should have known it was too good to be true. My parents never did anything without a secondary motive that benefited them. But they'd left the account for years. Money trickling in. Once I was accepted and Dad lost his job, the dam broke in the wrong direction."