But it wasn’t about trust for Gavin. Not with Piper. It was about how much of her life she’d already given up for him and Winnie. All she’d ever wanted was for them to turn out okay. Instead, she had a baby sister having a baby and a brother with an addiction problem.

And she didn’t know about either.

“So you’re going to tell her?” he asked. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Anytime soon? Cuz he’s been gone a little over three months now.”

Winnie didn’t respond to this.

On the one hand, he got why she wouldn’t readily open up to their older sister. Piper had liked Rowan okay. She’d thought him sweet and affable, and good for his dad. But she’d also thought he’d been lazy and trouble, and not a great influence on Winnie, and as usual, she was right on the money there. Rowan had been all those things as well. But Gavin liked to think that in the end, he’d have changed for Winnie.

But now they’d never know.

He ended up in the middle of the kitchen, hands fisted at his sides, eyes tightly closed as he breathed through a desperate need.

For a pill.

Six months. He’d been out of rehab for six months, and after being secretly hooked on pills for three years, he’d told himself he was doing great. But it turned out great was relative. Yes, compared to the Category 5 hurricane he’d turned his life into last year, he was great. But compared to where he wanted to be—a whole person, which he had no idea how to make happen—he suspected he had a long way to go to get to great.

For shits and giggles, and to torture himself, he went through the cabinets. The place was a disorganized mess as always. Piper could find anything she wanted in here, but he had absolutely no idea how. She was a great sister, but a complete slob.

He looked around, shook his head, and began to clean up. He couldn’t help himself. He apparently had been the only Manning born with the neat gene. Above the toaster that wasn’t working, the one he’d promised to fix but hadn’t, nestled between the sugar and the flour, sat aspirin, Tums, and . . . bingo, an old prescription of OxyContin from when Piper had sprained her ankle on the job a few years back. Because his sister was anal and a control freak, it appeared not a single pill had been taken.