“Last year, I hooked up with my dealer, who generously provided a daily fix until he ditched me for a chick without a substance problem. He stuck me with what he called a drug tab and calculated that to mean I owed him over a hundred grand, which he wants paid in full immediately. He probably assumes I can get that much here.”
“Kit and Kemper don’t have that kind of money lying around,” Grant deadpanned.
“You never know,” Morgan said flippantly, taking a real attitude with Grant. “Never hurts to ask the family to bail you out after you’ve made a mess of your life, right?”
Blake wondered then if Morgan was home for that very reason. Was she down on her luck, looking to score the kind of money needed to pay off her dealer-slash-boyfriend, or had she come home hoping to start a new life on a straight and narrow path?
Grant kept a straight face. How he managed to hold it together then, Blake would never know. Morgan was all over the place, something to be expected, all things considered.
“Well? What do you think?” she asked, shoving her splayed fingers through her brown hair. “Should I ask Kit and Kemper for help this time, or play Russian roulette with my life? If you were in my brothers’ shoes, would you help, Grant?”
Fuck. Now, she’d gone too far. “Careful, Morgan,” Blake warned. “You’re treading on dangerous ground.”
“Quicksand is more like it,” Grant spat, the fury superseding his fair attempt at keeping a poker face.
Her eyes flickered with malice. “May I finish my story?”
“We’re listening,” Grant replied. “But know this, Morgan. We might hang on your every word, but we’re not your brothers. We won’t buy everything you sell.”
She shrugged, took a big intake of air, and continued. “So anyway, I asked for a few days to pull the cash together, he granted them, kicked me to the curb anyhow, and I went back and robbed him a few hours later, stealing enough money to get out of town.”
Blake leaned forward and listened to her story, refusing to go to her. He could easily promise to fix everything, to make everything all right again, but Morgan didn’t need that. Oh no, she needed to own her mistakes and figure out how to overcome them without their assistance.
They would help her. But they couldn’t beat this thing for her.
As he watched her, Blake noticed everything about her. The dark circles encased her pretty green eyes, and thanks to the bags under them, Morgan looked older than her twenty-four years. Her thin lips trembled as she spoke, right along with her tiny fingers, entwined and positioned on her lap.
From a wealthy family, Morgan once held her head high and shoulders back. Now, the self-assurance she once possessed didn’t exist. She slumped in her chair, the air of confidence not at all obvious in the way she presented herself.
“Where did you go after you left the dopehead?” Grant asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “You said you’ve been clean a few days. You haven’t been here. Kit and Kemper just left yesterday. Obviously, you didn’t know that. Where did you stay?”
“Kilo would’ve found me if I’d headed straight home, so I caught a bus to Nashville.”
“Kilo is who?” Grant asked.
“He was my boyfriend, dealer, whatever you want to call him.”
“At least he had a name befitting of the business he represents,” Blake grumbled.
“Anyway, we lived in Memphis—right outside of South Haven. I knew how important it was to get out of town as quickly as possible, so I went to the bus station. By the time I arrived there, he was blowing up my phone, sending text messages and leaving voice mails. By then, I was jonesing bad. I needed a fix, but the evil tone in Kilo’s voice alerted me to the obvious. If I went back there, he planned to kill me.
“You have no idea how close I came to returning to him anyway. At one point, I wanted to die, or I wanted that fix. There was no in-between and I was certain if I returned to Memphis, I’d get both. He’d supply a syringe full of the drug I wanted, and the dose would send me to my grave.”
“So then what?” Grant asked, moving the story along.
“I went to Nashville and checked in at a rundown motel and started detox on my own, determined to ride out the storm until I could walk out of that room by myself.”
“You could’ve died,” Blake pointed out.
“She was too proud to call home.”
“You’re right. I wanted to. God help me, I did. Still, I wasn’t sure Kit and Kemper would come for me if I had asked them.”
“You could’ve called me or Grant.”
“And both of you would’ve been willing to travel five to six hours for a drug addict who would’ve refused a rehab facility at that time?”