He did go to an addiction specialist. Sometimes we sat in. Other times, we couldn’t. But we’d be in the waiting room, either one of us or both of us every single time. Without fail.

And we kept our promise. He didn’t do a goddamn thing without running it by us first.

He hated us for it, I think.

But I didn’t give two fucks about that.

“We didn’t get this far to crap out now,” I reminded him after he’d snarled at me for asking where he was going when he’d headed for the front door, backpack slung over his shoulder. “We’ve been through too much shit for you to do anything else like this again.”

He stared at me for the longest time before he muttered he was going to meet his study group at the library. He sent me a selfie later on showing an arched eyebrow and people sitting at a table with books spread out in front of them.

That asshole.

IT WASN’T easy. Nothing good ever is. Once an addict, always an addict, or so they say. His recovery was slow and arduous, and there were days when I thought he’d slip right back to where he’d been before, days when I couldn’t believe we’d missed this, that I’d missed this. Looking back, it was so blatant what had been going on, and the fact that I hadn’t figured it out on my own continued to gnaw at me. I watched him like a hawk.

He accused me of not trusting him.

I told him I couldn’t. Not yet.

I didn’t miss the hurt on his face.

So, no. He didn’t get better right away. Real life didn’t work like that. There wasn’t going to be a revelation of addiction and then everything was going to be all right. The Kid had been through the ringer and was only now finding his footing.

Everyone told us it’d take time.

“You just gotta be there for him, you know,” Creed said to me one night when Otter and Ty were out at one of Ty’s appointments. “Same as you’ve always been.”

“Yeah, because that helped so well before,” I muttered.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself,” I said back.

“Don’t be a dick.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Don’t be a—”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Oh. Then why’d you say—”

“I’m not being a dick.”

“A little bit. You can’t control everything, Papa Bear. No matter how much you want to. There’s always going to be something that’s out of your con—JJ, what the—Jesus Christ, did you bathe in chunky peanut butter?”

“I was trying to make a sandwich!” I heard JJ holler in the background. “I couldn’t find a knife, so I used my hands!”

“How is it in your hair?”

“My head itched, Dad. But look! Look. It’s chunky peanut butter, right? I guess now I’m nuts!”