Bury the Hatchet

Chapter Nine - Bury the Hatchet

HUNTER

One of the very few reasons, as far as I could tell, to have an older brother was supposedly to have someone to look up to. He was supposed to be the guy who taught you about life, and maybe he would make a few mistakes along the way, but then he'd show you how to avoid those same pitfalls.

Kade had made more than his fair share of mistakes along the way, and you can bet your ass I'd learned from them...but there wasn't a chance in hell that I could look up to him. How could I do that when most of the times I saw him, it was when he was in the hospital having his stomach pumped because of some overdose or another, or maybe from mixing up a combination of drugs that should never be mixed? How could I respect him when he was doing everything he could to tear our family apart? How could I want to follow his example when he had a kid, but the courts wouldn't even allow him near her? How could I look at what he was putting our mother through, time and again, and forgive him for it?

It had been close to two decades now that he'd been ripping Mom's heart out with his addictions and all the bullshit that came along with them, and at this point, there was at least a tiny part of me that hoped he would take it past the point of no return. That he would overdose and no one would be able to save him.

That he would die.

Maybe I was a callous son of a bitch to think along those lines, but that was the truth of it. Around the time I got drafted, I'd realized that Kade was too far gone with the addiction. They say that people have to hit rock bottom before they're ready and willing to make changes. Well, he'd already hit what would have been any normal person's rock bottom at least a few times by then, and he hadn't changed a damn thing for the better. He'd had countless drug busts. He'd been to prison. He'd been forced into drug rehab and counseling. None of it had taken root for him because he wasn't ready to move on. He didn't want to give any part of his lifestyle up. He was so deep in it that he couldn't imagine a life without getting a fix when he needed or wanted one, so he didn't try beyond what he was forced to do when he was in treatment.

Even in those rare moments when he was clean and sober, he never recognized the strain he put on the rest of his family. He didn't care that he was ripping Mom's heart out repeatedly. He didn't see that he had pushed our parents into depleting their savings in order to get him the help he needed. He didn't give a rat's ass that he'd destroyed his relationship with me when he'd dragged Chantel, Carrie's twin sister, into his hellhole of addiction along with him. That had happened when I left home to play college hockey. It might have been the thing that had driven me and Carrie apart, actually. Before that had happened, our mothers might have had their way. Hell, it didn't even bother him that he'd destroyed Chantel's life and caused the same sorts of strain for their family, or that they'd taken Kaylee away from him and he would never get her back.

No, in Kade's world, the only thing that mattered was Kade.

Which was why it pissed me off to no end that Tallie and I were sitting in the waiting room at the hospital while, once again, they were probably pumping his stomach to save his sorry life. I doubted he wanted to be saved at this point. It would be even harder for Mom to take if he died right in front of her, though, so I supposed it would be best if he came out of it. Maybe next time he OD'd, he'd be all alone somewhere, and by the time someone found him, it would be too late. A morbid thought, yes, but that was how much things had deteriorated between us. It would probably be easier for Mom to mourn him than it would be for her to keep hoping he would straighten up, because he wasn't ready for that. It was sure to be easier for Kaylee if she grew up without either parent alive instead of wondering why they loved their drugs more than they loved her.

I wasn't fully convinced that any addict could ever move past his addictions—something that made me question the Storm's decision to keep Nicky Ericsson as their goalie instead of me—but even those who made strides in that direction tended to have setbacks. Kade didn't just have setbacks. He had brief moments during which he was forced to keep his act together, but in the end he kept following the same broken path he'd been on for years. I wished there was a way Mom could harden herself to him like Dad and I had done, but I'd come to learn it just wasn't in her makeup.