I really thought he’d have my back today. I really thought Carter would stand up for me with his family like he did with Lani.
That’s the part that makes me want to cry the most. Not the ankle, not the lightning, not even the bizarre, electricity-created reenactment of my mother leaving me when I was five years old. It’s Carter and the way he let me down.
He’s barely spoken to me more than necessary, and that doesn’t change when we get back home. He makes me a grilled cheese and tomato soup (my heart feels stupid when I remember this is what his mother made him and his siblings when they were sick), and he makes sure there’s ice on my elevated ankle at all times. He gets me my painkillers and brings me my bedtime clothes, turning his back so I can change, because he refuses to leave me alone. He even brings my toothbrush to me and a bowlto spit in, which seems unnecessarily gross, but when I balk he shakes his head and clenches his jaw and acts like…I don’t even know. Like he cares?Nowhe cares?
When I lie down in bed, he tucks me in like I’m a little baby. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do any of this,” I mumble.
“Of course I do. I’m…I’m your husband.”
Okay, so now he wants it to be like that. “Don’t say it like that. Like you mean it.”
He knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Teal, I’m sorry.” His voice sounds so defeated. “While you were getting all those tests done, I looked up what you said. Verbal abuse.” His shoulders slump, the small of his back wedged up against my knees. He’s so warm and I wish I didn’t love it as much as I do. I wish I could somehow stop wanting him in the same way I click off the heat and light of a lamp or take deep breaths to make the rainstorm go away. But I can’t. All I can do now is hold my breath because I suspect he’s about to make me want him more.
“We’ve all been raised to never question Abuela Erika, or, when he was alive, Abuelo Gene. When Erika started getting mean, we could all laugh about it later, and almost always Gene was there to balance her. But he’s gone now, and…and a part of me knew she’d be that disrespectful. That’s why I didn’t want to tell my family about you. I didn’t want her to treat you like that.” He turns his body to look at me, and even in the dark, his eyes glow like a wild lightning storm, feral and full of heat. “I won’t ever allow it again. I promise you.” He glances away. “I already called and told her.”
I blink. “Told her what?”
“That if I ever hear about her talking to you that way, I won’t speak with her again.”
I swallow a gasp. “But, Carter…the money.”
“Right. Here.” He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and hands me a folded check. “I can spot you till she gives me the money…or whatever.”
“How can you do that? With your investments?”
He stares out the window and clears his throat. “Sí. This is nothing to me. Ta bien, Teal.”
I stare at the check. It’s two more zeros than I was expecting. “Are you sure, Carter? This is a big cut.”
“Consider it another form of apology. I should’ve been the husband you deserve today. And I wasn’t. Like I said, it won’t happen again, but maybe that”—he nudges his chin toward the check—“maybe you can use that for something that will, I don’t know, comfort you after everything you’ve gone through.” He swallows and when he speaks again, his voice chokes. “When I saw the lightning get you out there…Teal. My God, I felt like I was the one who was dying. And when you fell. I thought the worst.” He puts a hand on his chest and lets out a shaky chuckle. “Maybe I need to get my heart checked after today.”
Next he clears his throat, letting his hand fall into his lap. “There’s another thing I looked up. But you’ve got to let me know if I’m overstepping, all right, and I’ll shut the fuck up about it.”
I…have no idea what he could be talking about. My breath begins to get a little short. Even after all the sweet things he’s said and done tonight, I still can’t help thinking that he’s going to kick me out after I acted like a fool on the rocks. “Yeah? Okay?”
He makes eye contact. “Bipolar disorder.”
I shake my head. “Yes? I have it?”
“When you first told me about it, I did a lot of research. I wanted to, you know, figure out how to best support you and stuff. Be a good friend.”
My heart feels a bit too full at these words. “That’s very sweet. Go on.”
“I remembered something I had read earlier.” He pulls up his phone. “These are a list of symptoms, the manic states versus the depressive states. And one of the mania ones is ‘excessive behaviors with painful consequences.’ ”
I furrow my brow. “So what the hell are you saying?”
“I don’t know, Teal. I just…all this running you do sounds like it fits the bill, right?”
My cheeks burn as I look down. This is exactly what Sage and Sky tried to bring up with me earlier this year. That all the running I do isn’t “healthy.” “So what? Something’s got to keep me from drowning the whole world like it’s biblical times.”
Carter reaches out and touches the tips of his fingers to my chin, lifting my face up. “Remember when I told you that you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen? This isstill true. And I don’t just mean your outsides. I mean your insides, as dumb and cliché as that sounds. What you’ve gone through, and being bipolar on top of it? You’re so fucking strong, Teal. I don’t want to see you get embarrassed and hang your head, though—” He clears his throat. “I mean, all your feelings are valid and shit. I think you should be proud of yourself, and I just wanted you to be aware of what this running could be, and now that you can’t do it for a while, maybe consider other options. Like the breathing, no?”
I was right. I want him now more than ever. And I don’t even know if he’s being true, if he’s actually going to stick to his guns about Erika, if he’s going to start acting like my husband. Which is why I can’t explain the way my brain immediately goes to my conversation with Sky in the PI’s parking lot.
Just get it out of our systems. Right? Right now, fast, before I can think about it too long.
I fling the check onto the nightstand. “Carter,” I say, my voice breathless and shaky.
