OFF LIMITS

CHAPTER THREE - We'll Figure It Out

KAT

I open the door to my childhood home and silently go inside. I don't want to make a big fuss about my arrival. Not when every member of my family is pissed at me.

"Well, well, well, look who it is," Rosie's voice startles me. I look around and find her sitting at the bottom of the stairs in one of her usual sporty matching sets and her long red hair in a tight bun.

She glances at my hand where I'm holding my phone. I managed to charge it a little in the taxi. "Oh, you do have a phone. Maybe you should learn how to answer it."

"It just recently came back to life. I swear," I lift my hands, but she's still violently scowling at me.

"You're such a bitch, Kat. You could've told me you were staying out, and I would've covered for you. Wherever you were."

I know she would. We're close like that. All three of us are close in age, making it so easy for us to grow up as sisters and best friends. We may have distanced ourselves a little during my time in Toronto, but my sisters are still my best friends. They're my only friends, in fact.

"I wasn't expecting to stay out the whole night, Ro. I only went out for chicken wings," I explain. It's not a lie. I only went out for chicken wings.

"What kind of chicken wings make you stay out all night and then appear wearing what I'm pretty sure is a dude's t-shirt." My sister, the observant. I was hoping the T-shirt wouldn't be an issue. I know my dad won't notice. He put Effy's clothes in my closet when I was eight, and she was four.

"Really good chicken wings?" I joke, but she doesn't find my humor amusing. She rolls her eyes and stands up from the bottom stairs to walk past me and grab her bag and skates.

"I'm just saying, Kat. I believe you're better, but Dad still worries, and when he worries, he makes it everyone's problem."

I know she's guilt-tripping me into apologizing, but I've always been pretty bad at it. Not because I don't know what I did was wrong but because I never want to admit when I am incorrect.

My family is my kryptonite, though. They can pull confessions and apologies out of me like no one else.

"I'm sorry, okay? Not letting anyone know I wasn't coming back home was a horrible move. I know it was, and I'm sorry," I'm being as earnest as possible. I was wrong for not letting anyone know, of course. But I'm not sorry I stayed out all night.

Rosie's little smug grin makes me want to take the apology back, though. She's such a bitch. She knows I hate admitting when I'm wrong.

"That was a good apology, but save the waterworks for Dad," she smiles, still standing by the door holding her bag and skates.

"Are you going to the rink?" I ask. I've been biting my tongue since the second I saw her pick up her skates. I'm a junky. I know I am one. I just can't seem like one, or I'll worry my family, so I have to seem casual when I ask about anything related to skating.

"Yes. Logan is picking me up soon." She stares at her skates and then at me with furrowed brows. "Would you maybe...want to come with me? Dad doesn't have to know."

My sister, the enabler.

If anyone's going to understand me, it is another junky. Rosie loves skating as much as I do, but she does pairs. I could never trust a guy enough to let him throw me in the air like that, but Rosie and Logan have been skating together since they were kids, and by now, they're just an extension of the other. Rosie trusts that Logan will never drop her. I trust him too, though if he ever drops my little sister, I might murder him.