“I didn’t ask to have you checked out because I thought you were unstable. But when I saw the meds, I needed to know why you’re taking them. I want to help you. If you ever have an episode?—”
“There!” I choke out. “That word. Episode. You make it sound like I’m a ticking bomb.”
He flinches.
Connor shifts uncomfortably, eyes darting toward Trace, signaling tofixthis.
Trace just exhales, “Let’s let them talk.”
“No. No need for privacy now. You all know everything,” I seethe. “Did you tell them I was raped, too?”
“Fucking what?” Connor grinds out.
“Fallon, no,” Rhys says, holding back a sob. “I didn’t tell them. That’s no one’s business.”
I glance around the room and focus on Raina. All buttoned up and under control. Good with a gun and knives. She’s an asset to the family.
I’m a burden.
I take a shaky breath. “Now that your family knowsabout the pills, they’ll make you leave me, because I’m broken,” I say quietly.
Rhys’s jaw flexes. I catch the hesitation. See that flicker of calculation behind his eyes. “No, they won’t. I’m the broken one! Please, I need you. I need to hold you.”
“I can’t.” My eyes sting. “It hurts too much.”
“Fallon. Stop. You’re spiraling. Let me hold you.” He’s trying to find the right words to calm me down, to make me compliant.
To be a…a good girl.
I’m tired of being good.
“No. I can’t do this.” The words come out shredded, a sob trapped in my throat. “I can’t be your weakness.”
Rhys makes a growling noise, sits up, and starts to untangle himself from the tubes to climb out of the gurney. I ignore all the faces and disappointment in their eyes and bolt for the door.
I hear Rhys calling my name, but I don’t stop. I was supposed to rise to the occasion. Be strong. Instead, I’m spiraling and falling apart.
That’s what crazy girls do. We are weak and wild all at once.
Rhys calls me again, but I’m already erasing the sound from my memory bank. Nothing. I hear nothing. I feel nothing.
Okay, that’s not true. I’m dying inside.
“Goodbye,” the words scrape from my throat like glass, and I can’t breathe.
Raina, seeing me holding it together and losing, pushes the door open for me. “Come on,” she says softly. “I’ll take you home.”
She steers me out of the exam room, and flashing lights from a medical transport van blind me.
“Nero, take us back to Rhys’s building,” Raina says, holding me by the shoulders.
I get inside and clutch at my middle. I feel the panic rising again. I want to disappear.
No one understands me. No one but Rhys. And he’s been brutally honest with me. It’s the idea that they might have been laughing at me that makes me sick. And the man I’ve loved for years joining in? I can’t handle it.
The Tahoe roars to life and pulls away from the building.
“We overheard that you were in Rhys’s apartment when a man broke in,” Raina says calmly. “You saw him kill the guy, right?”
