She frowns. “Were you addicted?”
I nod. “I don’t know. Sort of. It was like . . . like I was trading one addiction for another. Losing you and filling the void with getting high.”
“I see.” But I know her tone. She doesn’t see. How could she? Dixie doesn’t understand living a life of crime to make ends meet because she’s never had to and she probably never would. She’s moral and good and pure. “So you got caught? How?”
I sigh because this is the beginning of the end and I don’t know what I thought but I’d hoped I’d somehow figure out a way to avoid this part. I didn’t.
“I got busted for possession in a back alley behind a bar a few towns over. Got a suspended sentence, days on the shelf basically, court-ordered addiction counseling and community service for it because Ash—uh, my attorney—was able to plead it down. But I’d no sooner finished the court-mandated program than I got into an accident. I was high and it showed in the tox screen. Since I already had one major strike against me plus a few minor arrests for assault for petty bar fights and other BS, the punishment was a little heavier that time.”
She sits there processing for a while and I sit there hating myself for tainting her with my fucked-upness.
In a way, I’m glad that much is out there. I feel like I can breathe a little easier. But in my heart I know I’ve glossed over the most painful details of that year and my Bluebird isn’t stupid. She’ll catch on and demand the full story.
It doesn’t take long.
“Were you alone in the back alley? When you got busted?”
I shake my head but don’t answer.
“So . . . did the other person get arrested?”
I nod.
“Gavin, don’t turn mime on me right now, please.”
I swallow hard and choke out a quick “Sorry.”
God, I am so fucking sorry.
“They got arrested for drugs, too?”
I shake my head, and she narrows her eyes at me. “For performing a lewd act in public, Dix. That’s what she got arrested for. Is that what you want to know? That I found the only peace I could with other women?” She flinches and a white-hot blanket of shame covers me. “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t mean anything right now, but for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
I’d say it a million times if I could. More if I thought it would help.
“That’s why Dallas got so mad when he caught us behind the bar in Nashville. Because he thought maybe we were . . .”
“Yeah. Probably,” I answer shortly. It still pisses me off that he thinks I would’ve been doing anything like that with Dixie, but I try not to dwell.
“Jesus.” She’s quiet again, contemplating her next question, I assume. I’d rather be questioned by the FBI, by people I don’t give a flying fuck about, instead of by the woman I love more than life itself. But she deserves the truth and it’s time she got it. “The accident . . .”
My chest constricts as if she’s placing cinder blocks squarely on it. “Yeah. It was bad. Nearly totaled Dallas’s truck and gave both of us concussions and severe whiplash.”
Dixie’s eyes are wide when they meet mine. “Both of you? As in, you drove high with my brother, with my only fucking living relative, in the truck?”
Her arm swings left and takes her coffee cup off the table and onto the floor. She barely glances down at where the handle now lies broken.
Technically Dallas wasn’t her only living relative at the time, but this hardly seems like the moment to mention that. I clean up the mess quickly and efficiently setting the cup and its handle back on the table while she continues gaping at me and waiting for her pound of flesh.