Chapter 94

Ican’t do this,” I whispered. I stood in the kitchen with my back to Declan. Fuck, my heart raced violently in my chest. I wanted to do this—I had to do this. Genevieve had been through enough. This was supposed to be the one thing I could do for her, so why the fuck couldn’t I make myself move?

“Tell me what you need,” Declan said. I drummed my fingers against the counter as I considered telling him to fuck off. I could do this. Had to. Fuck. Declan moved to the counter next to me. “Let me help, Killian.”

“I have a whole list,” I muttered.

“So, break down the list for me,” he replied. “I can handle it. We all can. It’s why we’re here. To make this easier on you.”

“I don’t deserve for it to be easy. She went through hell—”

“You did too.”

“—and this is the least I can fucking do for her,” I continued over him.

“First off, you won’t make any progress if you keep punishing yourself,” Declan told me. I glanced at him, and he raised a brow as if to challenge me to argue with him. I didn’t. “You both made poor choices, but there were a fuck ton of reasons why you both did the shit you did. But you’re both trying to get better and trying to take care of yourselves. That’s what matters. Not what you did in the past, but what you’re doing with yourself here and now.”

Fucking Declan and his words of wisdom. Not that I was complaining. He always knew the shit I needed to hear, even if I didn’t want to fucking hear it.

“You can’t do that if you’re punishing yourself at every fucking turn, Killian,” he stated. “You did the right thing—asking us to be here. Now, get out of your own way and lean on us. You’re not doing this alone.”

I wasn’t doing this alone. I stared at him stupidly, that single thought hammering against my skull.

“You have no idea how much like Dad you are, do you?” I said quietly.

“Not really,” he admitted. “I hear the stories and all that, but I don’t know. Some days I feel like the memories I have are fading.”

“He’d be proud of you.”

“I like to think he’d be proud of all of us. We’ve managed to do the one thing he always worried about—always stressed was important.”

“Which was?”

“Stuck together. He didn’t have that. He wanted that for us.”

“Did he tell you that?” I asked, genuinely curious, and he nodded. Sounded like Dad all right. Under my breath, I admitted, “I don’t want to go upstairs. I have to go up there, but I just… don’t want to.”

“Then don’t.” He said it so simply. “I mean that, Killian. Walk me through what needs to be done up there.”

“Okay,” I replied, nodding. “The mattress in our room needs to be taken to the dump. I figured we could take the guest bed mattress and put it in there for now. I haven’t had the chance to buy a new one, so it’s the best I’ve got.”

Admittedly, I should’ve thought about this more. Impulsiveness would be the end of me.

“We can get that loaded in Lucas’s truck and out of here first,” Declan said.

“There’s a chest under the bed. Move that into the closet.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“Probably better if you don’t,” I told him. I wasn’t about to try explaining the shit in our toy chest to him. He’d be scarred.

“Got it,” he muttered. “Sex toys in the closet. I’m not responsible for what happens if Raven gets wind of that.”

I shrugged. I’d answer her questions. Though, she’d probably have a million of them.

“What else?”

“His…” My voice caught in my throat. Fuck, I could do this. “His room needs to be completely emptied. I can’t… nothing stays. I don’t know what the fuck to do with any of it. I haven’t really fucking thought that far ahead. It just needs to go. All of it. I need it out of our fucking house.”

“I’ll call Mom,” Declan said. “She may have a few ideas of what to do with everything besides trash it.”

“Okay.”

“Either way, we’ll get it all out of there,” he promised.

“I want to build Genevieve an office in there,” I told him. “I don’t have any fucking ideas, but her books are always scattered around the house, and she takes all her shit for Nolan all over the fucking place. I figured we could make some sort of reading room with a desk or some shit. I feel like Nolan and Raven would probably know what the fuck to do with it.”

“Probably.” He smiled. “I’ll get them and Cade to start on it while we get everything else out of here. Sam can probably build the bookshelves and desk. He also might have that shit in his garage already.”

“Good to know.” I nodded slowly. “What the fuck do I do, Declan?”

I didn’t have a clue what the fuck I was supposed to do while they dismantled our trauma.

“Whatever the hell you want,” Declan said. “This is as much about taking care of you as it is taking care of Ginny. If you need to leave, then leave. If you want one of us to stay with you, take Nolan with you please.”

I chuckled at the subtle attempt to keep Nolan out of the way. The kid was fucking brilliant and incredible in his own way. Fixing shit or really any of the shit we were about to do wasn’t it. He was more likely to hurt himself than anything else.

“This feels fucking stupid,” I whispered. He made a small sound, and I continued, “There’s a hunter out there… and I’m over here fucking worried about this shit. It feels selfish.”

“Good. Be selfish. It means you’re taking care of yourself,” he replied. “Someone very wise once told me that we can’t be the best versions of ourselves for the pack if we’re not taking care of ourselves.”

“Mom?” I smirked.

“Yeah, and if you tell her, I’ll drag you out to the woods by your tail and make you fucking pay,” he retorted, making me laugh. “She’s not wrong though. After everything… the hunter’s not going anywhere. But honestly, Killian, after everything… I don’t trust that one way or another you won’t.”

“I’m sorry.” That fucking hurt. Good ol’ Declan and his honesty.

“I want you to stay,” Declan said. “But I want you to be okay more. If after everything you want to leave, then okay. Don’t encourage my wife to buy a fucking jet and I’ll come visit you.”

“She fucking wouldn’t.”

“Mile high club.”

“Never mind, she would.”

“My point is if you leave on a good note, more power to you. But if you run away or… you know,” he faltered. “I just want you to be okay, Killian. If this helps you be okay, it’s important. That’s all.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. You’d do the same for me in a heartbeat. It’s what we do.” He left me in the kitchen to start doling out orders. It may have been what we did, but that didn’t make me any less grateful.

My skin prickled with an endless cascade of uncomfortable sensations while a fiery heat spread through my chest. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I sat on the back porch, fingers twisted in my hair and my leg bouncing erratically as I tried to deal with the onslaught of emotions rolling violently through me.

Anger? Yeah, there was a fuck ton of that in there.

Sadness? Was this sadness? Grief? Guilt?

I couldn’t fucking tell.

Withdrawal was the other thing mixed in all that. It made me fucking weak—nauseous and crawling out of my skin. David wanted to wean me off all my medication before starting me on new ones, but it’d been a week anyway since I’d taken them. Not my brightest fucking idea ever. I knew that shit. I was stuck getting through every bit of the crappy fucking aftermath. I did this to myself, so I couldn’t fucking complain. But the tapering process of switching medications felt like it was going to fucking kill me. He wanted daily check-ins and mood tracking, threatening to commit me himself if I cut him off. He wasn’t fucking around with my mental health.

I’d thank him later when I wasn’t fucking drowning in symptoms.

Inside, I could hear my brothers fucking laughing at something, and I hated them for it. Irrational and stupid but I didn’t care. There wasn’t a goddamn thing to laugh about. This whole thing was fucking awful. My fucking heart was falling out of my goddamn ribcage in pieces while they laughed at a stupid fucking joke. I just wanted to go inside to yell and scream until they fucking understood what was happening.

A hand touched my back. I lurched forward, damn near toppling off the steps in a panic.

“It’s okay, baby boy,” Mom said gently. She took hold of my shoulder and guided me back to the steps. “Declan was worried about you, so he called me to come sit with you.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

“You don’t have to apologize. There’s a lot going on today. I know it’s not easy.” She found the spot between my shoulder blades guaranteed to offer comfort when she rubbed small circles. I let out a sound of frustration.

“I hate this.”

“I know, baby boy.”

“It’s not fair,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “We shouldn’t have to be doing this.”

“I wish I could understand what you’re going through, Killian,” Mom replied, her voice quiet. “Do you remember what I used to tell you when you were younger?”

“When?” I asked. “And what time? I earned a lot of fucking talking to’s growing up.”

“I’ll let the swearing slide for now,” she told me. “I used to tell you that the best thing you could do for yourself was to dedicate yourself to trying. Through all the hurt, you had to keep trying. If you did that, eventually you’d get there.”

“I remember. You said that about pretty much every hobby I ever tried picking up. What does that have to do with this?”

“This hurt is never going away, baby boy.” No fucking shit. “Losing a child stays with you forever. I can’t begin to imagine how helpless it feels—how much it has to hurt. A parent should never outlive their child. I wish I could take it away for you, but I can’t. What I can tell you is that you’re going to get through this. It won’t go away, but it’ll become easier to bear. When that happens, I don’t know, but it will. And until then… well, until then, it’s okay to let it hurt. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to ask for help. And some days it’s okay to just not do a damn thing while you let yourself feel it all.”

“I can’t do that,” I said. “There’s so much shit going on right now.”

“You don’t have to solve all the world’s problems in a single day, baby boy. You’re allowed to live in your feelings until they become easier to bear.”

“I’m afraid to stop,” I admitted. And I was. Stopping always led to a spiral. I couldn’t spiral. Not now. Not after all the promises and conversations with Genevieve. I couldn’t do that to her. But stopping the spiral? I’d never been able to do that shit. “She’s counting on me. Everyone is counting on me. What if… what if I can’t fucking handle it? What if… what if I can’t crawl out of the fucking hole again?”

“Killian, look at me.” Mom ran her fingers through my hair, making me look at her. A soft smile broke the seriousness of her face. I pressed my lips together to hold back the fucking feelings. “There’s no hole too deep that you can’t crawl out of, baby boy. I know you think you’re alone, I know your thoughts get the better of you, but I promise you’re not. You have a small army of people in your court who want nothing more than to be there for you. All you have to do is let us.”

“You say that like it’s easy.”

“It’s not,” she replied. “The hardest thing you’ll ever do is admit that you need help. But we’ll always be there. Whenever you need us. All you have to do is ask.”

Yeah, I sucked at that shit. But I didn’t fucking want to. I leaned into her, tired and emotional and just not wanting to do a fucking thing. Her arm tightened around me

“Can you stay?” I whispered. “Can you stay with me?”

“Of course, I can, baby boy.”