I’d pace my living room, but stress makes my stump ache even more. The extra muscle tension in my body puts added pressure on Ghosty and can even give me muscle spasms.
Like right fucking now.
I’m going to kill that bastard Pete with my bare hands. I’ve worked in the media for long enough to know that trying to sue for, well, any reason—unless you’re a hugely famous person with no end to the pounds in your bank account—is futile.
I did it again. I hurt someone I cared about.
With one hand, I cover my face, and with the other, I massage my thigh, even the quiet sound of fabric rustling is grating against my last fucking nerve. I have no idea what the fuck I’m supposed to do. How could I have been so damnstupid? They had to have stolen it from the networked folder on my company computer. Ofcoursesomeone used my words against me.
I find my mobile and type out a scathing email to both Pete the Prick and my editor, despite the bright screen making my brain hurt. I don’t care which one of them did this, but they need to print a retraction right fucking now. It’s not going to make a damn bit of difference to the damage done to Rhiannon’s reputation, because people fucking love scandal.
Wasn’t this every single damn thing we were trying to avoid?
The ache in my stump flares sharp, electric. Like my body’s punishing me for every word that shouldn’t exist on that page.
My phone lights up with texts and calls from Sully, Emma, my mother, and even the youngest Morrigan sister, but I can’t face any of them. I can’t bring myself to talk to anyone.
My therapist has mentioned in previous sessions that my avoidance is “self-harm adjacent behavior.” That I’m cutting people off to hurt myself. But talking to me will only punish them all further than my actions already have.
I should have locked my article down.
Isn’t that the plot of a movie? Some person didn’t have a burn bag, or whatever the hell people call them now when they secure their deleted documents… then their data got stolen.
It’s predictable. So fucking predictable, and I feel like an absolute dick because as someone whose lived his life on the computer, dealing with sensitive information, I should have fucking known better.
Mum’s left a voicemail, even waiting for it to play has my stomach in knots. She doesn’t sound worried, exactly; there’s a subtle edge of parental impatience to her voice as she speaks.My throat clogs, jaw trembling, and eyes welling as they burn with the sting of unshed tears.
“You promised you’d try, Rob. Can you really say you’re trying?”
Try. That word hits harder than the article. Try feels like I haven’t. Like everything I’ve clawed back from the edge counts for nothing.
I love my mother, God knows I do. And I know she loves me, even if she doesn’t always love me in the way I need to be loved. But she just never meets me where I’m at when it comes to my mental health. If Dad were still alive, I expect he’d be worse.
They come from a time where mental health was seen as some kind of Madison Avenue term: something that didn’t really exist, and no amount of trying to educate them on the realities of living with depression seem to have done any good.
My hands tremble as I delete the voicemail and hang up. I rub at my temples, but no amount of pressure gets rid of the hammering bass thumping under my fingers.
My brain whispers, “Youdestroy people” on an unstoppable loop.
Panic, shame, fear, anger, and pain have taken over control of my body, so I do what any rational human being would do— I pull the blanket over my head and let the world shrink to the sound of my own heartbeat. I’ve weathered storms before, but this one feels like it wants to take me with it.
CHAPTER 46
Rhiannon
Ipace back and forth in my living room, like a feral animal rattling the cage walls. I’ve given him, what, twenty-four hours? And he’s still silent? Part of me wants to march right over there and beat him with my rugby boot until he talks to me.
It wasn’t for lack of trying, even if Matthew did say, “If you go now, furious, you’ll destroy everything. Wait a day and let everything calm down.”
I waited, but not on purpose. It wasn’t my choice. If it was up to me, I’d have been at Robert McAllister’s door first thing this morning to demand what the actual fuck he thinks he’s playing at.
Or maybe I’ll strangle him with the hoodie I stole from his house the other day that I don’t think he even knows I have. I pluck at a fraying thread on the hem of the sleeve. I thought it might help settle me, make me feel closer to him, connected somehow, but all it seems to be doing is providing me with a potential murder weapon.
I know every word of the fucking article. I can quote it.Pieces of it are definitelyhisphrasing—but I hear the whole thing in his voice.
It’s Monday night.
Twenty-four hours have passed since I walked out of my training session with Charlie and my world collapsed on itself.
