“Listen. Here are my other conditions for coming along. You can check out of rehab. But you are going to listen to the whole twelve steps. You are going to listen tome. You are going to get all the alcohol out of your house and office and anywhere else you go. You aren’t going to drinkever again, because you are analcoholic.” She tried to express with her tone how very seriously she took this charge.
Darcy, in accordance with her rank and duties, had veryrarely been put in command of anything. But that didn’t mean she’d ever taken her responsibilities less than seriously. This disease killed people, and Teagan was not dying on her watch.
“Okay? You agree?” she prodded Teagan. “Use your words.”
She watched the muscles move in Teagan’s throat move as he swallowed. His eyes were as round and golden as a burrowing owl’s.
“Okay,” he said, faintly but without blinking, gaze fixed on her face. “I’m an alcoholic.”
•••••
The mood in the residence was tense and tumultuous. Sloane was rushing back and forth between her tent and the office, signing discharge paperwork and hauling bags. Dr. Goedert, displeased to be losing two patients and an employee in one morning, was bouncing among the three of them, alternately pleading for reconsideration and dispensing advice. Kristin, appalled at Darcy for following a presumed alcoholic home (or potentially concerned that some of Darcy’s duties would now fall on her shoulders) was standing in the middle of the entryway as though she could block the exit.
And Teagan was propped against a wall, face hidden in his phone screen. Theoretically he was adding Darcy to his flight. In reality he was staring at a blank glass rectangle, mind sputtering like one of Yellowstone’s thermal features, erupting with incoherent bursts ofoh Christ oh shit what now oh fuck.
Because, like the saying went, inside of him were two wolves. One was smugly pleased that the most surprising,fascinating, beautiful woman he’d ever met was coming home with him. The other was incoherently panicking that he was taking that same dangerously unpredictable woman, perfectly suited to her Western wilderness... to his white-collar job in New York. To address his nonexistent drinking problem. And when she inevitably figured out that he was a very different species of hot mess than she’d signed up to deal with,hisspecies would be endangered.
Only Darcy was cheerful in the chaos. She had her earbuds in to better ignore all extraneous demands put upon her, and she was hauling green canvas sea bags full of her worldly possessions out to the parking lot with a literal smile on her face and a song on her lips. Actually, when she next passed him, Teagan discerned that she was repeating not song lyrics but several of the twelve steps. She had to be listening to that cursed alcoholism podcast again.
So he had that to look forward to when he got home, in addition to whatever trials Nora put him through.
Teagan pulled his thoughts away from his imminent doom and bought the additional ticket.
“Can I use your printer?” he asked Dr. Goedert the next time the man turned to him.
Dr. Goedert’s thick dark hair was matted in some places and sticking up in others. This wasn’t how he thought his morning would go, Teagan supposed. “Yes,” the man said, eyes focusing on Teagan. “Come into my office.”
Teagan followed him up to the finished attic, the room crowded with bookshelves and file cabinets. He hadn’t been here before; group therapy was bad enough, so he’d brushed off all offers of individual counseling. Teagan ignored the therapist’s scrutiny as he connected his phone and printed Darcy’s ticket. His heart was hammering in his chest, andhe could feel a cold sweat breaking out across the back of his neck, but by long practice, he kept his face smooth.
He’d better get good at keeping himself together. Darcy was expecting him to get better, not decompensate.
He could nearly taste the bear spray in the back of his throat. That’s probably how Darcy would kill him, if she figured out he’d lied.
Dr. Goedert closed the door behind them.
“Teagan,” Dr. Goedert said as he collected the papers from the printer. “I’ve read your medical records from Gracie Square, you know.”
Teagan vaguely recalled signing releases on the first day, and he’d never thought about it either way since then.
He made an uninterested and noncommittal noise as he plucked the paperwork from Dr. Goedert’s hands, satisfied that they weren’t visibly shaking.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d realized. And I thought after a little more time, you’d open up with me and the group about your actual diagnosis—your panic disorder—and your experience with an alcoholic parent,” Dr. Goedert continued.
“Well, I’m leaving,” Teagan pointed out. So that wouldn’t be happening.
“We haven’t addressed your crisis before arriving hereat all,” Dr. Goedert said, voice distinctly stressed. “Can’t you delay your flight, even for a day, and make a plan with me for what you are going to do when you go back to your routine?”
“I have a plan,” Teagan said.
He meant his bottle of antidepressants, his second bottle of Xanax to be taken as needed—now felt like a good time—and the reassuring knowledge that just because his heart feltlike it was going to rip out of his chest, that didn’t actually mean he was having a heart attack, but Dr. Goedert took him a different way.
“Taking our handyman with you is not a plan. Darcy doesn’t have a single therapeutic credential. Or any training,” the therapist snapped. “Or instincts,” he muttered, in a lower voice.
“Interesting that you hired her to be a wilderness educator here, then,” Teagan said offhandedly. He edged toward the door.Oh God oh shit.
Dr. Goedert’s eyes narrowed. “I need you to sign a release so that I can discuss your treatment with her,” he said, “if you’re going to do this against my advice. You have a serious mental health condition.”
“No,” Teagan said pleasantly, even though he felt like he was going to throw up.
