“You didn’t see her that night. She was...inconsolable. On the verge of a panic attack. She didn’t want to leave you ...”

Will’s words echo in my head, and I feel like shit all over again.

“I know,” she says strongly in a voice barely above a whisper. “Trust me, Waylon, I know.”

And then it hits me.

Her brother.

How could I be so fucking stupid?

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” I’m shaking my head. “I didn’t even think.”

I try to see the night at Bootleggers from her perspective from what little I remember and the gaps Will and Reggie filled in for me.

“It wasn’t the same,” she says gently. She pulls back to sit cross-legged in front of me, while I sit up and lean against the headboard.

I try to swallow the guilt trying to rot me from the inside out, but it’s no use. How the fuck did I not realize why she was so triggered? So caught up in my own shit, I didn’t put two and two together. I thought it was because I scared her, but it was so, so much more than that.

“I told them to do it, Ivy,” I admit roughly, not taking my eyes off her sad ones. “I asked them to make it all stop. I said yes. I was drunk, but I knew what I was doing.”

Her face tightens. “I know that now. But at the time...”

At the time, she thought they drugged me.

Like her brother used to drug her.

My eyes slide shut with shame.

“I just needed out. I didn’t want to leave you—”

I pop my eyes open. “I’m glad you left. I wish you weren’t there at all. You shouldn’t have had to see any of that.”

She purses her lips. “Fuck you, Waylon.”

I roll my eyes. “Not because you’re a girl. Jesus Christ. Because—” I huff out a breath and look down at the blanket covering my lap. “Because you’re the last person I ever wanted to see me like that. I’m supposed to be the strong one, the one that protects you—”

She groans. “Seriously?”

I cut her a pointed look.

She gives me one of her own. “Did you forget that I was the one who used to hold you as you cried yourself to sleep when we were kids? The one who’s lied all these years for you, when everyone would think you were off on some bender, when really you were just hiding out in my spare room because you couldn’t be around anyone without having a fucking panic attack?”

Everything in me stills.