Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“Cuffs?” Rage surges in my chest, but I have nowhere, no one, to direct it to.
“Yeah.” A smile eases some of the distress sketched into her face. “I’ll never forget her putting a coat over me, covering me up. Like even in the midst of all this chaos I was causing, I deserved some dignity. She got me to the hospital, called my aunts. They came and took me home. I ended up staying in the hospital for about a month while I stabilized and we found the right meds.”
“So you were going through all this shit,” I finally force the words out. “And I was in my fucking apartment sulking because I saw you kissing some guy in a bar.”
“Monk, you didn’t know.”
“I should have been there for you. If I’d known…” I drop my head into my hands. “Vee, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was ashamed.” Tears wet her cheeks and her mouth trembles. “And scared that even if you could forgive me, that I might end up like him. Like my dad and we might end up like—”
“Your parents?”
“Yeah,” she says with a grim twist to her mouth. “This thing ruins marriages and credit scores and friendships. I’ve accepted this. I manage it, but it’s not easy. I’m not asking anyone else to share it.”
“You mean you’re not letting anyone else share it.”
“It’s not some privilege.”
“You are.” I brush a knuckle along the curve of her cheek. “Baby, you’re the privilege.”
“You’re romanticizing it,” she says, pulling back from my touch. “Half the men with this diagnosis attempt suicide at some point. Ninety percent of marriages end in divorce. Ninety, Monk.”
“Are you asking me to marry you?” I dip my head to try and catch her eyes, try to lighten some of the heaviness in the air. “It’s kind of sudden, but I’ll think about it.”
“Stop joking. It’s not funny.”
“It’s also not the end of the world.”
“It could be the end of something.” She huffs out a humorless laugh. “I read about this exoplanet that is falling apart as it orbits its star. They refer to it as a doomed world. It orbits the star so close that its surface is scorched. It’s vaporizing in space. Sometimes I’m afraid if you get too close, that would be us. That I might destroy you, both of us.”
“You think this diagnosis destroyed what we had, but that wasn’t it.” I lock our gazes. “Bipolar isn’t our issue. Trust is. Or rather a lack of it. You not trusting me to accept this, to stay through it, and me not trusting you after what I saw that night.”
“You didn’t know.”
“If I had known you were going through this, nothing would have kept me away from you. What you experienced, it’s some scary shit. The thought of you not even knowing what was happening in your own mind, in your body, how scared you must have been. At least now I know, and this diagnosis can tell me what the challenges are and how I can help.”
“You won’t always be able to help.”
“I know that, but I’d be with you. Do you have any idea what that means to me?” I tilt her chin up and kiss along her jaw. “Let me do this with you. Let me have you.”
She drops her head to my shoulder and grips my shirt, her fist tight around the cotton, anchoring us together.
“Bipolar has taken a lot of things from me,” she finally says. “Even though I’m terrified, I want you too much to let it take you away from me again. So maybe we could keep seeing each other as long as you—”
“Are you saying you do want this to be a relationship?”
“I’m saying you don’t have to worry about me being with anyone else.”
I frown, noting, but not understanding why she’s making that distinction. “Is there a but, an and, a qualifier? Why are you saying it that way?”
“I just don’t want you to think it can lead to… more.”
“What does that mean? ‘More’?”
“I know you, Monk. You try to come off all hard, but you’re a romantic. At some point, you’ll want the fairy-tale ending, the wife, the kids.”
“You don’t want that?” I ask, not challenging her idea of me because on some level it’s true. It’s the same thing my father said.
“I’m not doing that.” The look she levels on me brooks no argument. It’s set in her concrete will. “No husband. No wife. No kids. That’s a recipe for disaster.”
“Disaster? Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”
“You haven’t sat through the support group meetings I have. Haven’t heard a woman distraught because she had an episode and her husband is divorcing her. Using her diagnosis to get sole custody. Telling the court she can’t be trusted with her own kids. It goes bad fast. I never want that with someone I care about. I want to leave the door open so he or she can easily walk away if things go south, because they very well may at some point.”