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“Why do you want to die?” I asked and immediately regretted doing so. It was such an insensitive question.
“That.” He blew out a long breath, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. I smiled as I watched him instantly pick up the beat of the song playing on the radio. “It’s not necessarily that I want to die. It’s just that peace of mind feels fucking unachievable and out of reach. I don’t know how to explain that… the lows are fucking low, Genevieve. I feel nothing, and I feel everything. I feel… fucking alone because it’s like the world just keeps fucking going—people just keep fucking going—and no one even notices. That fucking hurts, and it just sends me in this fucking spiral of thoughts that I can’t control of all the things I ever did wrong, all the people I’ve hurt… all of it. And it’s just too much. I can’t breathe, I can’t eat… I can’t make the world disappear, but I can fucking disappear. I can make it stop. And I just want it to stop.”
“Ian…”
“Then, on the other hand, the world is just so goddamn loud.”
“But what does that mean?” I’d heard him use that phrase, but it didn’t make sense to me
“It just is.” He shrugged. “Everything in my head moves so fucking fast that I can’t get a hold of my own fucking thoughts. People are loud, sounds are loud… everything is just so fucking loud. It all jumbles together, and I can’t seem to grasp any of it. And it fucking pisses me off. Everything pisses me off. People, work… you name it, it pisses me off. My highs aren’t real fucking high if you ask me. They’re fucking awful and dark, but anger and irritability are one of the ways that highs can be experienced. I’d rather have the fucking happy-as-shit way but whatever.”
“And you feel like one of those all the time?”
“Yes and no. I’m not stuck in the worst of it all the time, but I can feel the rise and fall toward them… think like a roller coaster. You have to climb to reach the peak and then you fucking fall. I can feel the climb, and I can feel the fall. I just don’t know how to fucking stop it.”
“And you’ve been like this your whole life?” I asked.
“Pretty much,” Killian said. “It started in my pre-teens. Everyone just called it puberty. Except puberty never fucking ended.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what, Genevieve? I’ve never known anything other than this,” he replied. “You’ve had stable emotions your entire life. I haven’t. This is normal for me. I didn’t fucking know it wasn’t supposed to be this way until I was hospitalized.”
“We’re both really messed up, aren’t we?” I muttered, making him laugh.
“Yeah, we are.” Reaching across the console, he took my hand and brought it to his lips. “But we can be fucked up together.”
“Yes, please.” Being fucked up with Killian was better than being fucked up alone. “We need a plan of attack. A way to handle all of this.”
“I knew you’d say that.” A small smile turned his lips. “How about we start with a fucking checklist? Write down all the things we talked about?”
“I can do that,” I replied. Killian wasn’t one for making checklists, but he respected the hell out of my need to make them.
“You ready for today?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted softly. With his doctor’s appointment out of the way, we were splitting up for the rest of the day. I was supposed to go to Olympia with Raven and Cade while Killian and his brothers handled the house. The doors would be opened and stay open.
That single thought made my pulse race.
“Hey.” He tugged my hand until I looked at him. His lips brushed against my knuckles once more for reassurance. “We’ll be okay.”
“Will we?”
“We can’t keep the rooms closed off forever, Genevieve. Not if we want to try to move forward with our lives,” Killian reminded me gently. I hated that he was right. Unease made my stomach churn and made my anxiety spike. I didn’t like how things were, but this was terrifying, even with him handling it. “It’ll be okay, princess. I promise.”
“I don’t want to…” I chewed my lip, uncertain of the way to express what I was trying to say. He sat patiently at the stop sign as I worked it out—thankfully, there was no one around. Though, he’s probably fight anyone who made a thing out of it.
“What don’t you want, Genevieve?”
“I don’t want to forget him… I won’t forget him,” I corrected myself. What was I even trying to say? “I can’t forget him.”
“You don’t want to pretend he never existed,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. I nodded. Maybe that was what I was trying to say. “We can find a way to honor his memory, but we can’t leave the room that way. Eventually, we’ll have…”
His voice trailed off, and his gaze drifted out the window. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was going to say. In the pit of my stomach, I had a feeling. It was something I wondered about from time to time.
“Do you… do you want to try for a baby? One day?” I asked hesitantly.
“I’ve thought about it,” he admitted. The lack of emotion in the words resonated with me. “More than once. And with us back together and me leading the pack, it’ll be something that gets brought up. By everyone.”
