“We didn’t write up an estimate for you or anything. I only asked for a fair chance. Let me get some paperwork put together for you. I’ll bring it by tomorrow. If you like what you see then, we have a deal.”

Simon nodded his head, thankful when Trevor stood up to leave.

CHAPTER SIX

Trevor was fully aware that he was avoiding his brother by not going straight home. It probably hadn’t been the smartest idea for the two of them to be roommates and to run a business together, but he figured Blake had made the suggestion as a way to keep an eye on him.

Honestly, Trevor didn’t think that was such a bad thing. Most days he was fine, but like anyone in recovery, he had his hard times. And even though sometimes things were a struggle between himself and Blake, the man was his twin. His other half. No one would ever understand Trevor the way Blake would.

Still, he wasn’t in the mood for questions about Simon or to hear Blake tell him how irresponsible it was for him to go, regardless of the fact that he’d gotten them a second chance.

So, instead of going home or trying to find something else to do (what did an ex-alcoholic and drug addict do for fun? He wasn’t even sure), Trevor pulled over and looked up the schedule of meetings on his phone.

He had his sponsor, and he typically went to meetings once a week at Cedarhill Recovery, but they had meetings a few other places in town as well. Trevor had been to them all. It couldn’t hurt.

It didn’t take him long to get over to Rockford Bridge for their NA meeting. His skin felt itchy and tight, as it always did when he walked inside. Even after all this time, he couldn’t believe he had to be here or that things had gotten so bad, so out of hand, that he’d spent months in inpatient to get clean. That he’d gotten so drunk and high that he got in a car with a friend behind the wheel who was even more wasted than he was.

It was a blessing they hadn’t hurt or killed anyone else that day. Greg hadn’t been so lucky. After he and Trevor separated, Greg had gone right over the steering wheel and out the window. Trevor had ditched him and lay in the middle of nowhere in his own vomit while his friend (was he even a friend?) died.

Trevor rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, trying to keep his mind from going back to the car that night.

He reminded himself that it was a good, responsible thing that he came to a meeting today. He needed to keep making decisions like that.

After Trevor climbed out of his truck, he made his way inside the building. The meeting had started about five minutes ago, so Trevor quietly slipped his way in and found a chair at the back of the room. He held his sobriety token as he listened. There was a woman with graying hair standing at the front. She talked about forgiveness, and trying to find it in herself after everything she’d done.

Trevor could understand that. He lived in constant regret of all the things he’d done while trying to make up for them. How did you make up for the past? He wasn’t sure he could, but not trying wasn’t an option, either.

He’d been so lucky in his life. He was born with a best friend who would do anything for him, to a mother who loved her sons unconditionally. He never had to worry about acceptance from her. Neither Dixon boy had. His father had been the only black mark on their lives—an alcoholic who functioned much better than Trevor had in the fact that he went to work every day and no one outside of their family knew. It was a secret that he drank half the night, every night. That he would call them all names, and curse them out when he did.

He never hit them, but the verbal abuse had been enough.

How in the hell Trevor managed to lose himself down the same bottle, he’d never know.

“I’ve realized it’s killing me, the looking back, the trying to make excuses for everything I did, or trying to make amends for it now,” the woman continued.

Yeah, Trevor got that. He’d done it all—been bailed out of jail, stolen, broken hearts. It weighed on his mind every second of every day. He couldn’t stop focusing on the why of it all, and he would never stop trying to make up for it.

***

Simon spent the day doing a whole lot of nothing. It was a struggle getting used to that. When he’d become a surgeon, he was important for the first time in his life. He was doing something that mattered. Nothing he’d done mattered before that. Not to himself, and not enough to get his father’s attention.

And now he did nothing.

Well, that wasn’t completely true. He always had his laptop close. There were endless medical articles for him to read, some he’d written himself.

But today he’d spent most of his time thinking about his morning with Trevor.