WINTER

I found her by the crib. The bottle of gin was in her hand and the cap was off, but as far as I could tell none of it was gone.

"Oh, Ivy, honey," I said and fell next to her. Finn stood at the door.

She crawled onto my lap, and I held her trembling body close. "I'm sorry, so sorry," she wept. Her tears wet my shoulder and dripped down my back. "I can't do this alone," she said.

"You're not alone." I wished I was stronger. I wished I could give her strength.

"I called and called for you, but you didn't answer. I wanted to drink. I wanted to so bad. It was there. Everywhere." She shuddered.

"But you didn't." Guilt lanced through me. While I was busy screwing Finn, Ivy was left alone. I said she wouldn't be alone, but where was I? That was her question, and it was one I didn't have a good answer for. I tried to encourage her, but I don't know if she heard me over her noisy sobs. Her skin felt clammy. She needed to get into bed. "Come on, let's get you into bed."

I hugged her close to me, and with each tremble my guilt got bigger.

"I was scared. I have this baby inside me, and I was going to drink. Winter, if you hadn't come in time…" She left the horrible thought unfinished, but it was easy enough to fill in the blanks.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I shouldn't have gone to State. If I was here with you, I know you would have stopped me before I fell too hard, stopped me before the addiction started."

"I'm here for you now." Her shivering wouldn't stop. I didn't know if all she said was true, but that she felt that way tore through me.

"This baby…if I tell you who the father is, you'll hate me."

"I won't. I swear it." But even as I said those words, I knew. I looked over at Finn, and all the color had drained from him. He looked deathly pale. She didn't have to say a word, and I hoped she didn't. All those dreams I'd built in my head were crumbling, and I didn't need either of them to say one thing to pulverize them into dust even faster.

Her lower lip began to tremble. "I'm sorry. I should have told you earlier, but I was afraid I'd lose you. I need you. I'm so scared. I'm scared I'll be a shitty mom. I'm scared I'll start using again. I think about drinking and then I think about shooting up and then I feel shitty again. It's a crappy cycle. I'm resentful that you watch me so closely, and then I'm scared when I'm alone because I know those habits die hard. I'm a junkie, Winter. God, if you knew some of the stuff I did…you would take this baby from me."

"Ivy, you can do this. I know you can."

"Please stick with me." She sat on her knees, a frail pleading figure. Behind me I heard a rough noise, but I didn't pay him any attention.

"I will. I promise."

"Donovan pinkie promise?" She held out her crooked pinkie. I stared at her thin pinkie waiting for mine. And then I turned. Finn was half in the doorway. He hadn't said a word, but we both knew what Ivy was asking. She was asking me to give up my claim on Finn.

Heart pumping, I lifted my hand. She waited, an expectant look on her face. His face grew darker. After what must have been a decade, I made my promise and hooked my finger around hers. "I'll be there for you no matter what it takes."

She gave me a watery smile. "Thank you, Winter. Thank you. I love you. I'm so glad you're my sister."

She threw herself at me, but this time when she hugged me I didn't feel the same blanket of warmth fall. I heard the outer door close, the snick almost too quiet unless you were straining for it.

When he left, I allowed the truth to slide from my brain to my heart. Finn was the father of Ivy’s baby. My own tears came like a flood and drenched Ivy's hair. And in that moment, I hated them both. I loved them but hated them, and I wanted to run away where no one knew me. Where I would never run into either my sister or her lover. My lover.

God, fuck me. What did I do to deserve this?

I stayed with her until she fell asleep, rocking her like I would a baby. I didn't know if Ivy could parent this kid. I didn't know if I was up to it either. I laid her down on the mattress and covered her up. Outside I saw the truck lights on. He was waiting.

* * *

FINN

When I saw her walk out of the apartment, I pushed away from the truck. I shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn't grab her. I wanted to kiss her. No, I wanted to make love to her—as if by fucking, I could somehow tie her permanently to me, or maybe if this was the last time I was going to hold her then I wanted to make it memorable. I thought this was how my father convinced himself that his actions were okay—by putting things off. Tomorrow, I had told myself. I'd tell her the truth tomorrow.

"How?" she asked. She wasn't just asking how. She wanted to know the how, the why, the when.

"My dad died on February sixteenth. Two days after Valentine's Day. In the grand, fucked-up tradition of trying to forget how fucking painful it is to lose your parent, I started drinking." 

Winter covered her mouth to muffle the gasp of horror. Few things probably scared her more than hearing about someone going on a grief-fueled bender. 

"It wasn't very effective. I knew it early on, but when you found me a month later, I was just figuring that out. I figured out that women, booze, acting like a goddamned fool in general wasn't going to make that ache go away. You…when I saw you at the café and you smiled at me, I thought to myself, if Winter Donovan can get her fucking life together after her parents died, after her sister abandoned her, then so can I. Then you sat and talked to me. You listened as I droned on and on about nothing and everything.”

"Is that how it happened with Ivy too?" Her words were icy cold, and the look on her face terrified me. There was nothing there, like she'd already severed me from her heart.

"No. I'm not going to say you saved me, even though it felt like it, but you made me realize how weak I'd been, and I could have gone one way or another that night. If you hadn't been there," I shuddered, "I'm not sure where I'd be today. And when we left the café, you rocked my world. It wasn't just the sex, although that had been spectacular, it was everything else. The way you saw right into the heart of my grief, the way you held me. I ran from that because what you made me feel was too strong for me to handle in that moment so close to Dad's death. I was scared of love."

"And you're not now."

I tipped her head up and longed to kiss her, but I couldn't. Not yet. "No, my fear now is losing you." 

I waited for a response, any response, but I was met with a stare of indifference. I took a deep breath and went on. "Day after Dad died, I was at a twenty-four hour drugstore not so far from my house. I saw Ivy there."

"She mentioned that."

"We got in my truck. We drank. I passed out. She passed out. When I woke up, it was after midnight. I called Adam because I knew I shouldn't drive. He came and got us, and Ivy had us take her to some place north of the city."

"Tanya's," Winter murmured absently.

"Yeah.” The name rang a bell. “A small girl, not much bigger than you. Run down place."

"Gnomes in the yard?"

I thought back to that night. It was such a blur. "Maybe? Anyway, I went home and didn't think about it. Not even when I saw you because it had been such an unimportant night. I felt guilty, yes, because I knew you'd be disappointed that I allowed her to drink alcohol with me, and I swear to you at any other time, it wouldn't have happened."

"Are you…did you…" She couldn't bring herself to say the words.

"No!" I nearly shouted the word. "I swear to you. When I woke up, my pants were zipped. All her clothes were on. You can ask Adam, who found us. We were totally on opposite sides of the truck. Front bucket seats." I jerked a finger behind me as if the truck itself could back me up.

She looked over my shoulder at the passenger side and shivered. She was envisioning two people having sex up there, and it wasn't the two of us.

"Stop. Don't think that way." I fumbled with my phone and dialed Adam. "Here talk to him." 

"No, I don't want to." She turned away, but I needed her to hear this. 

"Adam," I barked into the phone. "Tell Winter how you found me and Ivy. Everything. Don't leave a word out."

He answered immediately. "They were piss drunk. Ivy was passed out. They were both completely clothed. The truck smelled like alcohol and that's it. Ivy woke up, and I drove her to the north side to some chick's house that had a lot of garden gnomes in the front. Freaking scary if you ask me. I took Finn back to the house and poured him into bed." 

She didn't respond, and the silence went on so long Adam thought we'd hung up on him.

"Hello? You still there?" he asked.

"You know the difference between men and women, Adam?"

"I know some differences, but I'm guessing my answers aren't the right one."

She continued as if he hadn't even said a word. Her dark eyes were glued to me. "A woman is out all night and comes home. Her boyfriend asks her where she’s been. She says with friends. Boyfriend calls the ten girlfriends on her favorites list. All of them deny going out with the woman. The man is out all night and returns home in the morning. Girlfriend demands his phone. She calls the ten male friends on his recent call list. Eight of them say that he slept over, and two say that he was still there."

Adam didn't respond right away. "I promise he's not with me, but he did sleep here last night."

I laughed because it was too fucking pitiful not to laugh. Either that or cry. 

"Thanks, man," I said.

"No problem. Finn's a good guy and cares a lot about you, Winter," Adam said. "Don't let anyone else tell you differently. I've known this fucker for twenty years. Hell, we probably ate each other's snot in kindergarten, but dude wouldn't lie about this. He doesn't have to, and if you think about it, just for a minute, you'll realize that."

He hung up, and I was left with Winter, her doubts, and her deceitful but broken sister upstairs.

"Do you believe me?" I asked the important question.

She looked up to the stars as if the constellations held clues as to how her universe worked.

"Why does she say it's you?"

"Convenience? Coincidence." I shook my head. "I don't know if she knows who the father is."

"But she's told you she thinks you're the father."

"She's thrown it in my face, yes, but again not seriously."

She still didn't look at me. I wanted to grab her chin and force her to look me in the eyes and tell me to my face that she didn’t believe me and that she didn’t love me.

"Do you want to be the father?"

"No, but not because I don't want to be a father. I do. But not with Ivy. Not with her."

She ducked her head, and it broke my fucking heart that she couldn't look me in the eyes. That she no longer believed me "Winter." I reached for her, but she flinched away.

“Maybe you aren’t the father. Say I believe you. We still can’t be together. Ivy is a mess. She’s a fucking disaster up there. I can’t hold you and her at the same time.”

I shook my head. “This is what she wants you to believe. She’s manipulating you. How long are you going to pay for her mistakes?”

She choked back a sob but stepped away before I could reach her. “It’s not just Ivy I have to worry about now. It’s her baby. Fetal alcohol syndrome is terrible. I’ve got to keep her dry.”

I drew on a store of patience I didn’t know I had. “But it doesn’t have to be you,” I said. “There are others who can help her.”

“No.” She wiped her hand across her face. “Ivy has always been there for me when it counted. When Eli Shorthaven said my face was flat because I fell off the monkey bars too many times, it was Ivy who punched him in the face. When that asshole in tenth grade said he would never date a chink, Ivy was the one who stuffed a dead fish in his trunk.”

“That was me, actually,” I interjected, remembering Ivy raging about how some punk was mistreating her sister.

“Oh.” Winter looked confused for a moment. Then she barreled on. “Still, Ivy’s been there for me. I’m her only family. Don’t you see that?”

I didn’t—or at least not in the way Winter wanted me too.

“Who’s not the first wife now?” I challenged.

She stared at me, tears rolling down her face, but she still turned away. I wanted to follow her in, but I knew I'd only make things worse.