Chapter 71

Intimacy, on the other hand,” I sighed, “wasn’t working for us. We managed to get to the point where she stopped crying, but she wasn’t enjoying it either.”

Jesus fucking Christ. I couldn’t believe I was discussing my fucking sex life with my mom.

“Our therapist suggested an upscale lifestyle club in Olympia.” Yeah, Mom, we joined a sex club. Where was my fucking grave when I needed it? To her credit, if she could support Finn’s naked cooking endeavors, my wife and I figuring out how to have sex with each other had to be okay—embarrassing as fuck to admit but okay nonetheless. “The club put a lot of emphasis on beginners discovering… what they liked and didn’t like. We went. It took four trips out there with our therapist on the fucking phone to get Genevieve to walk into the goddamn building, but I got her in the building. Long story short, it worked.”

And that was the end of that part of our fucking story. There was no way in hell I’d break down the kinks we enjoyed. Not to my mom. I also didn’t want to fucking explain how my wife had major control issues. Except being in constant control was fucking hard for her, and she needed a space to give up that control while still knowing she was safe. I was that safe space for her—sexual and non-sexual because some days she struggled with basic functions. I liked being that for her. I liked taking care of her. I enjoyed her unabashed surrender to me that let her feel what she otherwise was afraid to.

“It took a fuck ton of emotional investment, but we figured it out,” I continued. Figured it out was an understatement. It took a long fucking time and communication to find our rhythm and boundaries. We went from barely touching to fucking every chance we got. But it was more than that. The whole fucking process taught us how to communicate with each other, how to appreciate the journey, and how to connect. Our life became lazy Sundays with music and dancing while evenings were spent cuddling in the grass behind our building as we watched the sunset. Genevieve found a calm and comfort in our routine that gave her relief from her trauma. I learned how to support her the way she needed it. We were happy—happier than we’d been in years.

“Are you okay?” Mom asked. I opened my eyes to see everyone staring at me.

“Sorry, lost in a memory,” I muttered. “Things were good. I had my job at the department, Genevieve was finding her footing in social media management, we bought the house… the most logical next step was to start a family. But Genevieve being… everything that makes her exactly who she is didn’t want to just play the fucking lottery. She bought books, talked to the doctor, bought a fucking thermometer.”

“Why a thermometer?” Finn asked.

“Trust me, sunshine, we don’t need to get into that,” Mom said for me.

“She had calendars and windows and all that shit worked out. And by windows, I mean she planned when we would fucking go at it based on what her goddamn calendar said. None of the shit you taught us ever said how weird and complicated it could get,” I told Mom.

“Not everyone gets so technical about it, baby boy.” She grinned. “Some people just win the lottery four times.”

“I like the lottery better.” Shit, the stress of trying to get it up on a schedule had been a lot. “But I stuck to her schedule like a goddamn champ. Unfortunately, some of that had to happen around my shifts with George.”

I blew out a breath of air. Yeah, this was all the shit I should’ve told them but never did.

“The thing is…” I began quietly, feeling fucking horrible for even mentioning it. Hadn’t I said enough about her? Given up enough secrets? Except, if I didn’t tell, the rest of the story wouldn’t make any fucking sense. They’d never get it. “The thing is… Genevieve’s thing… God, I feel like shit even saying this. Don’t you say a fucking word, got it?”

“How many times are we going to agree to this?” Declan replied. “If it’s said here, it’ll stay here.”

My brothers echoed their agreement.

“Genevieve’s thing is breath play… one of the things she enjoys is being choked,” I said. “Which is exactly how we ended up in the situation where my hand was around her throat when her mother popped over for a surprise visit.”

I let that sink in as I swallowed hard. The memory flashed through my mind. The start of our fucking destruction.

“Are you serious?” Mom demanded in the silence.

“That it started as an interrupted kinky sex thing between a husband and wife?” I retorted. “Yeah, but it hit her hard and deep. The shame and guilt she felt about everything came back uglier than ever. She slipped right through my fucking fingers. I lost her in an instant. And when Phillip started shouting abuse from the fucking rooftop for everyone to hear… Genevieve said nothing. She froze. The fear of how they’d respond if they knew the truth… that destroyed her before anything ever happened to our fucking marriage.

“We unraveled so fucking fast. I never got the chance to catch my footing. I couldn’t tell the truth… I couldn’t do that to her,” I admitted. And I couldn’t begin to describe the guilt that weaved its way through me for announcing it now. It didn’t fucking matter that my family wouldn’t use it against her. It still felt like a betrayal. “It had to come from her, so I kept waiting. Waiting and fucking hoping that she’d say something, but she never did. I didn’t stand a chance against Phillip. Once he got started, he was fucking relentless. And gossip travels fast in Cedar Harbor. I lost my job, I lost my friends, I lost my footing in the pack, I lost my family’s respect—”

“We never stopped respecting you,’ Sam cut me off. “We just didn’t understand.”

“Yeah, well, it fucking felt like that,” I muttered. “I started drinking. I couldn’t find a job, and I couldn’t stay at home. I’d spend the day two towns over, drunk in a fucking bar because I didn’t know what to do. And if I wasn’t there, I was still fucking drinking.”

“I had no clue,” Mom whispered. There was something in her voice—sadness? Surprise? I couldn’t place it.

“I hid it fucking well.” Too fucking well. Even Genevieve didn’t fucking know how far I’d fallen. “And then, in the middle of it all… we found out Genevieve was pregnant.”

“Killian—”

“We didn’t tell anyone,” I said over Mom before she started on how she didn’t know. “She didn’t want anyone to know. She said… she said it’d be the only time we had alone before everyone wanted a part of our kid—being a Byrne and all that. She wanted a bubble. She needed the fucking bubble. So, I gave it to her. The cold season made it easy to hide. We built a nursery, we picked out a name, and we made plans. We fell into this… ridiculously fake routine where we pretended everything was okay as if my entire life wasn’t fucking falling apart outside our fucking front door.

“I couldn’t…” My voice caught in my throat. That familiar burning anger ebbed through my veins. Every time I thought about the fucking spiral, it crept up on me. I cracked my knuckles and shifted in my chair, needing to do something with the restlessness. “I couldn’t tell the truth. Nothing on God’s green earth could make me do that to her, but what the fuck was I supposed to do? I couldn’t get a job anywhere around Cedar Harbor, so how the hell was I supposed to take care of my wife and kid? Genevieve wouldn’t fucking entertain the thought of leaving. That was our home. We fought all the time. My drunk ass picked fights. I was… angry doesn’t feel like the right word.”

Running my hands over my face, I leaned forward in my chair. I was fucking exhausted. And what came next… fuck, I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to fucking talk about it.

“Killian, what happened?” Mom reached for me, but I pulled away.

“Please, don’t,” I replied, my voice breaking. “She was twenty-five weeks when… fuck.”

I got to my feet, unable to sit still any longer—not with Mom looking at me the way she was. Instead, I paced. It was about the only damn thing I could do.

“Killian, you don’t have to,” Mom said. The gentleness in her voice was nauseating. I didn’t fucking deserve it. Not after what I’d done.

“Genvieve wasn’t feeling good, and I felt like shit that night after drinking too much, so we went to bed earlier than usual. If anything, she said she’d call Charlotte in the morning, but then… she… she woke up in the middle of the night, bleeding. I was still fucking drunk, but I managed to get her into the car and drove her to the hospital. They said… they said…” I couldn’t say the fucking words. My throat clogged with emotion, and my eyes burned. Would this ever get easier? Unsteady waves rolled through me, dragging me right back down—not that I had far to go. “I just…. I just…”

I couldn’t fucking look at them. I didn’t want to see the looks on their faces. Pity. I couldn’t handle the fucking pity.

“I just…”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Mom rushed to say and hurried out of her chair. She intercepted my pacing and took my face in her hands. The tears started up again, and, even as I tried to push her away, she remained close.

“I can’t…”

“You don’t have to say anything, baby boy,” she said, her voice breaking. “I know. We know. You don’t have to say a word.”

“I left her,” I sobbed. “I just… I left her. I just…. I left her there. I just couldn’t… I couldn’t take it anymore. He was my son too, and I just… all I could think was what they’d say I did to her… to him. I just fucking broke. I didn’t have anything left to fucking give, so I walked away. I shouldn’t have walked away, but I just… I wasn’t strong enough.”

“No, Killian,” Mom replied. “It’s not about strength—”

“It is.” I pulled away and dropped back into my chair, burying my face in my hands. Hiding was so much fucking easier than facing them. I took a few deep breaths before forcing myself to continue. “I left her there to go drink. I blacked out and ended up in Iron Falls. I just… stayed. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I just wanted to fucking drown.”

Drowning wasn’t a good enough word for what I wanted. I was fucking destroyed—broken in pieces I had no hope of fucking picking up.

“On the first anniversary, I just… I quit. I just quit fucking trying. Everything hurt, and I was so fucking tired of hurting…” I rubbed my eyes with my sleeve, but the tears wouldn’t fucking stop. It was like fucking floodgates had been blown apart. I had no fucking hope of getting my shit together. “I tried to kill myself.”

“Killian—”

“I just couldn’t fucking do it, Mom,” I said over her. I knew she’d be disappointed—why wouldn’t she—but she had to hear it. She had to. “I agreed to go into a psychiatric facility as long as Brady didn’t tell you. I couldn’t do that to you… not after before.”

“What happened before?” Nolan asked. Finn and Lucas echoed the question with him.

“I tried to kill myself when I was sixteen—”

“You were sick,” Finn stated, but I shook my head. At least not sick like that.

“No, I’m bipolar,” I replied, the words damn near sticking in my mouth. I glanced at Mom. “Early onset bipolar type two. That’s why I see David. I was diagnosed two years ago. I take a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant, and I have an anti-anxiety medication if I need it.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me this?” Mom asked. “I could’ve helped, Killian.”

“I didn’t want you to stop loving me,” I answered pathetically.

“Oh, baby boy, no, no, no.” She knelt and dragged my hands from my face, holding them tight. That pity on her face? I couldn’t handle that pity. “That’s not how that works, Killian. I’d never stop loving you because you’re struggling.”

“It’s so much more than fucking struggling… I just… I get inside my fucking head and I… I sink…. I don’t know how to…. I don’t… I’m just so fucking tired of feeling like this.” I broke down, a sob clawing its way out of my fucking chest.

A strong arm snaked around my shoulders and held me tight. Declan pressed his forehead to the back of my head as I latched onto his forearm. I squeezed my eyes shut as chairs scraped on the hardwood. I had no clue who was who, but I felt them—hands on my shoulders and my arms offering unspoken support.

It fucking shattered me.

I just sat there because no matter how I fucking felt on the inside, I needed the reminder that I wasn’t alone.