Harmless(28)

Closing his eyes while he rocked Liam gently, Roan let the dream bring back the reality of that day.

His phone was ringing and he knew it wasn't time to get up. Hell, it felt like he'd only been asleep for a few minutes. Peeking through one eye, he peered at the clock on the bedside table. One twenty-seven a.m.

What the hell? He had only been asleep for a few minutes. About twenty, in fact.




 

 

Thankfully, his phone stopped ringing and he rolled again, only to come up short when the damn thing started the high-pitched shrill thing. Then he remembered, that was the ringtone he'd assigned to his sister Cassie. It was a mind-numbing reminder of how she was wreaking so much fucking havoc on his world.

"Yeah?" he grumbled into the phone, turning his head to the side.

"Roan, I'm at the hospital. I need you to get over here now."

Roan bolted upright in bed. "What's wrong?" he asked even as he snagged his jeans from the floor where he'd dropped them.

"You just need to come up here. I came in with a backache and …  Roan, if you give a fuck about me at all, just get your lazy fucking ass up here."

Yep, that was Cassie. The sweet little sister he'd once known had been long ago consumed by the raging bitch drug addict who he now found himself trying to take care of.

"What hospital, Cassie?" he bit out, swiping his wallet off the dresser and tucking it into his pocket.

"Brackenridge."

Roan stopped short. "What?" Brackenridge was in Austin. A good forty minutes away. Why the fuck was … ? "Goddammit, Cassie."

"Fuck you, too, Roan. I didn't ask for this shit."

He ground his molars together to keep from saying things he would later regret. His only mission in life right now was to survive. He'd made it this far, doing his best to take care of Cassie and keep her from …  Keep her from what, he didn't know anymore. No matter how fucking hard he tried to keep her off drugs, she refused his help and did as she damn well pleased anyway. But, he was the only one in his family who was trying to help her. She'd burned her last bridge with their father, their stepmother was more than upset by all of it, and of course, Eva believed that Cassie could quit if she wanted to.

"I'm on my way," he ground out.

Roan was tempted to call Cam and let him know what was going on, but the last thing he wanted to do was drag his friends into this shit. He'd managed by no small feat to keep them all out of it. To them it looked as though he was being the loner asshole he'd somehow managed to turn into recently-in no small part thanks to his sister. He wanted more than anything to confide in them, to get some help before he found himself too far under to dig himself out. Only they didn't deserve the mountains of shit Cassie would rain down on them.

He knew there was only one fucking reason Cassie was at the hospital. Especially one in downtown Austin.

Vicodin.

The girl was looking for painkillers. She'd concocted this screwed-up scheme where she would walk into emergency rooms and complain of severe back pain. He didn't even know what bullshit she fed the doctors, but every damn time, she seemed to score. Of course, she'd played Roan for a while, and he had filled the prescriptions for her, not making the connection. Then she'd done the same to their father until finally Roan caught on. Where she was getting the money to fill them now, he didn't want to know. 

After wrangling on a T-shirt, then pulling a ball cap on, Roan yanked on shoes and headed out to his truck. He estimated it would take a good half hour to get there with no traffic on a Tuesday morning. Which, unfortunately, would give him more than enough time to work up a good fucking mad.

He only hoped he didn't lose his shit this time. Cassie knew exactly what buttons to push to get him dangerously close.

Forty-seven minutes later, after parking in a nearby garage and walking into the hospital, Roan was escorted back to one of the small, glass-enclosed rooms, where he could see Cassie sitting up in the bed.

She looked like hell. In the past year and a half, she'd dropped a significant amount of weight. Rather than buy clothes that fit her emaciated body, she continued to wear oversized T-shirts and shorts day in and day out.

"Hey," he greeted when he stepped into the room.

As soon as she saw him, Cassie rolled her eyes. Roan knew she hated him. She'd made that abundantly clear on more than one occasion. She didn't want him interfering in her life, so she did her damnedest to guilt trip him over every little thing. Her favorite was to let him know that he was a shitty brother because he'd been the one to cause their lunatic of a mother to turn tail and run because of Roan's sexual orientation. According to Cassie, if he would just be normal and appreciate pussy, they wouldn't have grown up without a mom.