“You’re asking the wrong man.”
I scoffed. “You’re a lawyer. You speak Latin!”
“I memorized a bunch of Latin words to pass the bar, dude. I speak English, passable Spanish, and even less passable ASL. It ends there.”
I sighed. “Fine, whatever. You get what I’m saying.”
“Yes. Multiple issues. So you’d better get started.” He gasped, and I knew that sound was from Athena using all of her claws to launch herself off his lap and onto the floor. “Fuck, she’s sharp.”
“I know.” This time, I did manage a smile. “Anyway, so…” I didn’t know where to start. My sexuality being lit on fire and birthing something new from the ashes, or my mom dropping a hellish situation into my lap. Or fucking the guy I hated—who hated me back—in the locker room after our media circus.
It was a tough one.
“Oh. This is bad, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “Is this a multi-friend talk? I can call the guys, if you want.”
“I think I need to say this to one person before I spill my guts to everyone else.” I paused, then said, “Tucker actually knows some of it.” My breath trembled in my lungs, and I went for the hard one first. The one that actually hurt. “My dad has Alzheimer’s.”
“Oh shit,” Killian whispered.
I bowed my head and nodded. “Mm. We’re not close, you know. I don’t speak much to either of my parents. Micah and Caleb have written them off entirely, so…I don’t know. They don’t care what’s happening. But my mom has outdone herself with her awfulness this time.”
Killian took my hand, making me jump, but the touch was comforting. I leaned against him, and he wrapped an arm around me. Fuck, I needed this. The orgasm was great for my stress, but I needed more than that, and I knew for a fucking fact I wasn’t going to get that out of Zeki.
“What did she do?” he asked.
I licked my lips and sighed. “She left. She left him first. She rented him an apartment, set up rent on autopay, then just…walked away. She didn’t tell us either. I don’t even know if she checked in on him, really. Maybe to give him meds. I still haven’t sorted all that out. I don’t even know if he’s on them.”
“Jesus,” Killian murmured.
“Anyway, she called us over to her place a few weeks ago and said she was leaving the country and wanted us to take care of him. I thought she was bluffing. I thought…” I trailed off. I wasn’t even sure what I really thought. Maybe that there was something in her that was human.
That wasn’t the selfish monster she had always shown herself to be.
I don’t know why it hurt so fucking much that I was wrong. Maybe it was the burden of having to take care of my dad in ways he never took care of me, or maybe it was the pain of knowing that she had been terrible to him too.
“It doesn’t matter what I thought. It turns out she wasn’t bluffing. She’s gone, she canceled her phone line, and I have no one to help take care of my dad.”
“So,” Killian said, reminding me he was still there, “what are you going to do?”
I groaned, rubbing at my eyes until they hurt. “I have no clue. I need to get him into a facility somewhere. Like…like a decent one, you know? Some posh-ass place with hot nurses who will spoon-feed him Jell-O and wipe his ass when he starts needing it.”
“Right,” Killian said slowly. “There are those facilities.”
“Except all the ones around here are fucking full and on some twelve-month wait list. Fuck, Kill. I can’t do this on my own.” My voice began to tremble. “I can’t…I can’t sacrifice more shit for my parents. I don’t want to put my life on hold and fuck my career because they decided to continue being selfishassholes—” My voice broke, and I stopped before I burst into tears.
“Hey. Hey.” Warm hands took me by either side of my face, and I realized then I was breathing way too fast. “It’s okay.”
I forced myself to swallow back a sob. “S-sorry.”
“Oh, hell no.” Killian pulled me against him, wrapping his arms around. “You’re not apologizing for this.”
It was a little too easy to collapse against his chest. I had a fleeting, wild thought that I wished he were someone else. Someone else he had no business being—that I had no business wanting—but I shoved that away as quickly as I could manage.
I took several breaths, then admitted, “It’s not just my dad. That really sucks, but I think I’m also freaking out because there’s…there’s more.”
“Okay,” Killian said. He ran a firm hand down the length of my spine, then back up. The motion was more than soothing. “Whatever it is, we can fix it.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “No. Not this one.”
