Hot Mess - Elise Faber Page 0,34

you know? My line in the sand might be something as simple and stupid as having a proper cup of coffee in the morning, maybe yours is organization and keeping all of your ducks in a line, maybe my agent’s is getting as much money as possible so he’s never at risk of living again like how he grew up. And acting gave me the space to explore all of that, to understand it.”

“But you haven’t felt that way lately?”

“No.”

“Is it—” She stopped, trying to phrase the question in her mind differently, because she was wondering if the trauma of what was done to his sister had taken away his enjoyment for his craft.

If perhaps he blamed himself for being away or somehow thought his fame had made her a target.

“About my sister?” he asked as she was struggling with wording.

Shan nodded.

“I’m sure it is in some way.” He sighed. “I’m sure it is in a lot of ways. She was at a party for an actor friend of mine, took the rapist she met there up on his offer to drive her home. If I wasn’t doing what I was doing, she would have never been at that party at all.”

“And she thought it was safe because the host was your friend.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. “I should have been there,” he said. “I was supposed to be. But I’d just gotten in from a long shoot, and I was tired—” He broke off, shoved a hand through his hair.

“You blame yourself,” she said, confirming her earlier thought.

“How can I not?” he asked. “I didn’t go, and that happened to her. I should have sent her in a car, should have been there in the first place—” He broke off, hands fisting on his thighs.

“Trauma is an odd thing.”

His gaze flicked to hers.

“My mother was an addict. Opioids. OxyContin. Percocet. Vicodin.” She sighed. “Then heroin. And eventually, what would be her downfall, fentanyl.”

“Shannon.” The tension left him, and he scooted closer, slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t bring it up to try to out-trauma you. I . . . well, my point is that my mom died when I was twelve. OD’d. I found her after school and called 9-1-1 and there was nothing they could do. She was gone.” Shannon inhaled and exhaled slowly, putting that old pain back into its box, carefully locking it. “I went to live with my dad at that point. An arrangement he wasn’t too thrilled about, especially when he’d—direct quote here—dodged a bullet with my mom. He didn’t want another female of her blood in his life.”

“That’s—”

“Horrible. Terrible.” She nodded as he slid his hand up and down her back. “All the -ble’s,” she said, going for a weak joke. “It was. I’d spent a long time taking care of her, and then I went to my dad’s and I spent the rest of my childhood trying to make him proud of me.” Her eyes slid shut. “Newsflash. It didn’t work.”

“Asshole.”

“In a lot of ways,” Shan said, with a broken laugh. “I agree with you. But the trauma of dealing with my mom brought that side out in him. Granted, not all of it, because he wasn’t a gem in ways that were many and copious, but living with an addict affects people differently, trauma affects people in strange and painful ways. My dad did his thing. I did mine. We were both sliced to pieces inside.”

“Except, family is supposed to help you heal those hurt pieces.”

“My dad wasn’t capable of that.”

Finn sighed and sat back. “That’s bullshit. That’s not what a good parent does.”

“You’re right.”

“Then how can you talk so calmly about it?”

“He couldn’t be what I needed.”

“That’s—”

“The painful truth,” she said. “Right around the time I found out that Brian was cheating, I realized how much I’d shrunk myself down in order to try to be this perfect person for him, just liked I tried to do for my dad. I’m still working on it, still find myself fighting the urge to bend and transform myself into what people want from me.”

“Blue Eyes.”

“I’m different now. I promised myself it would be different.” She touched his cheek, ignoring the pity in his tone. “It’s a promise I’m scared I won’t be able to keep.”

“You will.”

She bit her lip. “I hope so.” She wrinkled her nose. “Did you know that I didn’t even want to be a teacher?” she said. “I became