Chapter 43

As soon as breakfast was over, I was out of there. Declan and Raven were right behind me while Mom and Cade lingered. Me? I didn’t give a fuck about any of that. I was hoping to catch sight of Sadie again since she’d left right before us.

Instead, I ran right into Esther and Vera—my two favorite ladies of Cedar Harbor besides my wife and my mom. Esther Mason and Vera Zimmerman were the wildest old ladies. For two women in their eighties with matching tracksuits and hairstyles, they were into everything. Literally everything. And they may have had everyone else convinced that they were friends, but I was convinced they’d been dating for years.

“Ladies!” I exclaimed.

“Killian Byrne!” they said in perfect unison. Even their fucking pitch was the same.

“We heard you were back in town, young man,” Esther continued.

“I am,” I replied. “I couldn’t stay away from two of my favorite ladies.”

“Oh, stop!” Vera fawned. “You little charmer.”

“A handsome little charmer,” Esther chimed in. She grabbed my face, pinching my cheeks together. “A very handsome little charmer. Look at you growing into yourself.”

“Good God,” Declan muttered behind me so softly that I only caught it with my wolf hearing.

“Shush you,” Raven chastised under her breath. “Don’t pick on your other girlfriends.”

There was a fucking story in there that I wanted.

“My goodness, do you work out?” Vera asked.

“Regularly, yes. I’ve got tattoos as well.” I nodded. And then with a cocky fucking grin, I added, “Want to see?”

“Oh, yes please!” Esther crooned.

“Do we ever!” Vera agreed.

And so I lifted my t-shirt to show off my abs—I was fucking proud of my tattoos. And my abs. Mostly the tattoos. I stood there in the middle of the sidewalk with Esther and Vera stroking my abs, grinning like an idiot because why the fuck not?It was the best reception I’d gotten so far. And hell, my two favorite old ladies needed some action from time to time.

“Tell you gorgeous ladies what,” I began as I lowered my shirt, “next time Declan is over to fix something, I’ll come with. We can sit on the porch, have some sweet tea, and you can give me all the town gossip I’ve missed out on. How’s that sound?”

“Oh, Declan,” Vera called sweetly over my shoulder.

“Our house is broken!” Esther told him. I cracked up and glanced at my brother. He crossed his arms, frowning.

“What part?” Declan asked.

“All of it.”

“Any of it.”

“You pick.”

“Esther! Vera!” Raven exclaimed. “We talked about this. You’re supposed to tell him you need some wood cut, and then invite me over so we can watch together!”

“Why?” he asked. “Why do you do this?”

“Because I love watching you handle your wood, baby,” she quipped back. I stepped back as I laughed so hard I couldn’t fucking breathe. The mouth on that woman.

“Oh, we want that,” Esther damn near purred as she eyed my brother like a goddamn meal. Declan sighed heavily. The defeat was real.

“I’ll be there next week,” he said. To Raven, he added, “You have one week to make sure they even have firewood to be cut.”

“Done deal.” She beamed. “You’re welcome, ladies.”

“Rule number one.” Esther smiled all too knowingly as she gestured to Raven’s dress while Raven beamed.

“Yes!” Raven exclaimed. Declan, however, was unimpressed, and his eyes narrowed. What the fuck was rule number one?

“How does she know about that?” he demanded, facing Raven.

“Baby! They’re experienced, and I had questions,” she retorted. She crossed her arms and raised her chin as if squaring off against my brother. “It never hurts to ask and learn. And they asked their own questions.”

“Raven!”

“Don’t worry, you cheeky boy, we won’t tell the town,” Esther assured him.

“What the fuck is rule number one?” I asked, desperately wanting to know. Esther grabbed my elbow and leaned in closer.

“He doesn’t let her wear panties when she’s in a dress,” she informed me. For as close as she got, she didn’t talk any quieter.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Declan grumbled. I stared ludicrously at my brother, watching him turn redder by the minute. Oh, this was fucking Christmas morning and I was five years old all over again.

“And,” Vera took hold of my other arm, “if she does, he takes them.”

“And makes her earn them back.”

“On her knees!”

“You kinky little fuck,” I teased, grinning so fucking wide my face hurt. If only he knew the shit Genevieve and I had been into, but I wasn’t about to give him that ammunition. “I always knew you had it in you.”

“Not helping,” Declan growled.

“I’m not trying.”

“Is there a way we can get an interactive demonstration?” Esther suggested. I fucking snorted.

“No,” he answered so quickly that she barely got that last word out. Fuck, I was never letting him live it down.

“Oh, the bar guy,” I said as it suddenly hit me. If she wasn’t wearing anything underneath that fucking skirt in the bar, it changed the dynamic about what the fuck had happened.

“Yeah,” Declan replied tightly.

“Shit. He’s fucking lucky you didn’t lay him out and bury him.” I would’ve.

“What bar guy?” Esther asked.

“Lay who out?” Vera prodded.

“Look, you gorgeous fucking ladies,” I began and leaned down to kiss Esther on the cheek and then Vera. “I have somewhere I need to be, but when we get together, I’ll tell you about the time Declan punched a guy and started a bar fight.”

The actual fucking ‘oh’ that came out of their mouths was hysterical while they stared at Declan as if seeing him in a whole new light.

“Oh, a bad boy at heart,” Esther commented.

“That little rebel,” Vera agreed. “Who knew he had it in him?”

I hate you,Declan mouthed over their heads as I backed down the street. I drew a little heart in the air as if I fucking cared and left him to deal with three of the horniest fucking women in Cedar Harbor.

David White wasn’t just Mom’s not-so-secret boyfriend. He was also the town’s psychiatrist. Which meant, he was my mom’s boyfriend and now my doctor. The combination didn’t thrill me, but I wasn’t about to drive two hours to Olympia to see a psychiatrist.

The nice thing about David was the way he handled small-town gossip. Instead of running an office in town where everyone could see, he kept his office tucked away in his house. No one could ever tell why the fuck anyone was there. At least him dating Mom was a good enough cover for why I was there as I walked up with my fucking file in hand.

I’d never know what Mom saw in David with his bushy-as-fuck brows, thin smile, and lanky figure. There was nothing all that extraordinary about him, but maybe I was just a little protective of Mom—okay, I was definitely protective of Mom. She’d been through hell. She didn’t need any more shit on her plate.

Granted, David had never done a damn thing to prove he had anything but Mom’s best interest in mind, so there was that.

“I was surprised to see you on my schedule,” David said from his spot by the front door. He held it open for me to come in.

“I think most people would be surprised to see me on your schedule,” I countered. Handing him my file, I stepped inside and followed him through to the back of the house where his office was. The simple room was cozy enough with a soft couch and chair opposite of a long desk and cabinet set.

I sat while David took his spot at his desk. An uncomfortable silence stretched between us as he flipped through my file. Okay, maybe I was the uncomfortable one. For as much as my appointments were necessary, I still didn’t like them. It felt a lot like admitting I was broken and a little bit crazy.

“Bipolar type two,” he mused. “You were diagnosed two years ago after trying to commit suicide.”

“Yeah.” I swallowed hard. I knew he couldn’t say a word to Mom but that nagging and irrational worry that he would was ever-present. I couldn’t let her find out I’d tried again. It’d break her heart.

The silence was agonizing, chipping away at my patience. My leg bounced quickly, and I shifted repeatedly in my chair.

“Are you feeling all right?” David asked as he set down his pen. He watched me carefully.

“I just want to go,” I admitted. “I hate these appointments. They feel pointless.”

“Why?”

“It’s always the same. Is your medication okay? How are you feeling? Are you taking it? Same fucking bullshit.”

“I imagine,” David began, closing the file to give me his full attention. Fuck me. “I imagine most appointments are mundane. I get that. However, I think this one warrants more than a handful of quick one or two-word answers before you leave.”

“How do you figure?” I frowned.

“Let’s just call the last few weeks… stressful,” he said. “Two weeks traveling with the packs, a lot of drinking and temptation to drink, reuniting with your estranged wife, reuniting with your mom and your brothers, moving back in with your mom, taking your place in the pack, dealing with your father-in-law, handling—or not handling—the accusations that led to you leaving town—”

“You have no fucking clue why I left town,” I snapped. Jesus fucking Christ, he wasn’t holding any punches.

“Look, Killian, you’re dealing with a lot more than the average person ever deals with,” David continued as if I wasn’t a grumpy asshole. “It’s natural to feel the stress of that.”

“I’m fine,” I shot back.

“Does your mom know about your diagnosis? Your brothers?”

“No. And it’ll stay that way.”

“Killian, what support network do you have?” he asked, and I faltered. Support network? I didn’t fucking need one. I had a doctor. I was good to go.“I can only assume from your resounding silence that you don’t have one.”

Fucking jackass.

“Did you know your grandmother was bipolar?” David said, and I frowned. “Maeve’s mother, not Seamus’s.”

Well, fuck. Mom didn’t talk about her mom. At all. Ever. We knew enough to know that her mother had left her on a friend’s porch in the middle of the night with a backpack, a note, and a kitchen timer so her mother could get away without confrontation. Beyond that, Mom never talked about her family. Not that I fucking blamed her.

Now this? This was more reason for her not to know about my diagnosis.

“No,” I replied. “I didn’t know.”

“You should tell her. She’d understand your struggle,” he continued. Or she’d fucking hate me and want nothing to do with me. Unlikely but the thought stuck in the back of my mind because what if she did?

“I don’t want to talk to her about this,” I reiterated. I shifted in the chair again. Who the fuck kept a chair that felt like it was made of rocks? “It’s not her problem. It’s mine.”

“You’re on edge.”

No fucking shit. I hadn’t planned to deal with so much crap. Rationally, I could convince myself I understood why he was being so thorough. But I was irritated. Annoyed. The last Fall Games event was today, the packs were all together, and there was shit to be done. And all that was before the sour taste the town’s newcomer, Sadie, had left in my mouth.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting the third degree,” I scoffed. “I figured I’d get my medication and go.”

“How is your medication working?” he asked instead of indulging my frustration.

“Seems fine.”

“Seems fine?” he repeated. “What does that mean?”

“It means it seems fine,” I said once more.

“How have your moods been?”

“I don’t know.” I clicked my tongue as I tried to think about how they’d been. “Up and down. The normal.”

To be honest, fuck if I knew what constituted normal emotions. I’d always been all over the place. That was my normal.

“How up and down?” I hated the way he fucking stared at me over the rim of his glasses.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you track your moods?” David asked.

“No. I don’t have the fucking time for that,” I snapped. “I don’t need to.”

“I can’t help you if you don’t want to help yourself, Killian.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” I said, gesturing around the room. “I think that means I want to help myself.”

“I’m going to guess that you started taking medication because it was the one way you’d get out of the psychiatric facility,” he said. Shit. “And I’m going to guess that you barely talked about what was going on in both group therapy and individual while there. Just enough to make them think you were improving without having to dig too deep. After you got out, you realized the medication helped the same way alcohol did. Except you’re much less self-destructive when on medication, so you stuck with it. Your doctor didn’t push therapy, so you never had to figure out how to handle your moods. You put a bandaid on it. And all that anger and irritability with your hypomania is easy to funnel into bounty hunting and fight nights. Am I right?”

My jaw ticked as he waited. I wasn’t about to say a damn thing.

“You’re surviving, Killian,” David continued. “You’re not helping yourself like you think you are. You’re getting by without actually trying.”

I said nothing. I had nothing to fucking say. My skin burned as I clenched and unclenched my fists. Every part of me vibrated with a need to hit something.

“I’ll give you your medication but only for thirty days. And only because I know you’ll crash and burn if I take you off it. I want you to track your mood for the next month—a scale of one to ten—morning and night. You don’t have a therapist, you have a lot going on, and you’re irritated right now.” He gestured to my furiously bouncing leg. Of course, I was. The dick was under my skin and saying shit he didn’t need to be saying. “I want to see how they’re doing. There’s an indication that you rapid cycle, which would explain a lot, but it also requires a different management approach.”

“Fine,” I ground out.

“And I highly encourage you to find a therapist. I’m going to give you a list of some of the best ones I know.”

“My other doctor didn’t do this shit.”

“I’m not your other doctor. I don’t believe in letting my patients survive and drown,” David replied in a sharp tone. “You need to heal and learn to take care of yourself, Killian.”

I scowled. What the fuck was I supposed to say to that?