Sadly, they both knew who would pay the debt. 

I was grateful when my brother left for college at the end of the school year. I still had two more years to go, but I had my plans. As soon as I turned 16, I got a work permit from school and started working at a local movie theater. I was planning to save everything I could up for college. I worked as often as they would let me. 

I thought I would get a reprieve once Randy was gone. I thought I would no longer have to be his keeper, paying off his debts.

I thought wrong. 

I had already started a bad habit of helping him out. 

No one but me knew about his gambling problem, and I wanted to keep it that way. I just had to keep faith that eventually he would kick the habit.

Chapter 1

Fiona

I paused outside the hospital room door, ignoring the nurses walking behind me, and the sounds of family members leaving the rooms up and down the hall. The place had that feeling of winding down for the day. It wasn’t all that noticeable. Not unless you had spent enough time there to know the difference.

Sadly, I had. I’d spent the majority of the past week in this very room. Only leaving to go home and shower once in a while. 

Today had been my first day back at work. Physically anyway. The joy of cyber security - it was easy to work remotely. Considering I’d been at my job for 7 years, my bosses trusted me enough to know I would actually be working when I asked to work out of the office. 

I jump-startled when a soft hand landed on my arm. Nurse Betty, with her red hair mostly still in its bun, stood next to me. 

“You all right, darling?”

I gave her a soft smile, something I didn’t fully feel. It had felt good being back in my own life. Even if it was for only a few hours. Unfortunately, that made it ten times harder to go back into that depressing room. 

“Yeah, Betty. Just taking a moment before I go in. I want to make sure I don’t bring any outside stress in there with me.”

She patted my arm a couple of times before removing it. “I understand. It’s hard going back and forth. But the doctor says he’ll be able to go home in a day or two.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “That's good news.” Not.

I mean, yes obviously it was. I loved him and I wanted him home. It just meant more work for me in the long run. 

With one more sigh, and a supportive pat on the shoulder from Nurse Betty, I pushed my way through the door. 

I couldn’t help but smile at the grin he gave me from where he lay on the bed. Up until about three years ago, I rarely saw the man smile. Since then, though, they started coming more often. This last week, they’d been brighter than I remembered seeing since I was a little kid. 

As happy as I was to see it, I wished he hadn’t had to go through all of this to get that part of him back.

“Hey, Pixie. How was work?”

I chuckled. That was another thing that had returned. The nickname. A little girl goes through one very short phase of loving fairies and dressing up like them every chance she could, and a new nickname is born. 

Leave it to Dads to be embarrassing.

“Great. I was so worried I had fallen behind, but it was like I hadn’t ever left.” Except for all the hugs and well-wishers.

Everybody had offered their support and told me they missed having me around. Probably because I usually did most of the work, always helping them out once I was done with my own. And sometimes at the same time as my own.