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“I knew,” Genevieve said. “Or I sort of knew. There were signs, and I just tried to ignore them with everything else going on. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. That’s a me problem. Not you,” I told her. “When I left, I stopped caring and just kept drinking. Roan and Maverick were stuck taking care of my dumbass. I did a lot of stupid shit to try to deal with the fucking pain. Truthfully, I don’t remember most of that year, which I’m not fucking proud of.
“On the one-year anniversary of…” Fuck, I didn’t want to say the words. “… his death, I gave up. I just… couldn’t take anymore. I took my gun, locked myself in Brady’s house, and tried to kill myself.”
Her embrace turned damn near suffocating as she let out a tiny sob. I matched her intensity, needing it just as much as she did.
“Roan saved my ass. I don’t fucking know how, but he did. And then Brady tossed my ass into a psych ward to get help.”
“You needed it,” Genevieve said.
“I know,” I replied. For as much as I hated that place, I had needed to be there. “I was diagnosed with bipolar type two and given medication to help. I take an antidepressant with a mood stabilizer and have an anti-anxiety to help with the fucked up thought spirals I go on sometimes. And for sleep when I’m too riled up to fall asleep.”
“And that helps?”
“Sort of. This past month has been fucking awful.”
“With me?”
“With us,” I corrected. “I never dealt with any of my shit. It was easier to throw myself into work than deal with it.”
“And now?” she asked. “How are you doing now?”
“A fucking mess,” I told her. “After our last fight, I… I left town and ended up in a bar. I drove black-out drunk down to Brady’s and tried to kill myself… planned to kill myself. I passed out before I could.”
“Your text messages.” Genevieve leaned back to look at me. Yeah, those. I didn’t remember sending them, but I sure as hell saw that I sent them the next day. I swallowed hard as she put the pieces together. “That was only a few days ago.”
I nodded. Her fingers tangled in my hair as her forehead touched mine.
“I’m not okay, Genevieve,” I admitted painfully. Goddamn emotions. More fucking tears spilled over. “I haven’t been for years.”
For most of my fucking life really.
Chapter 83
Killian
We took a break for donuts—well, I took a break for donuts because I needed fucking donuts. Did I need to be eating my fucking feelings? Probably not, but I’d run it off later.
As we sat in silence, her gaze was fixated on the window, and I watched the wheels turn in her pretty little head. Admittedly, I was throwing a lot at her—a lot more than she’d probably been expecting. While I wanted to take her calm quiet as a good sign, I fucking knew better. She needed time to sit with it. Emotionally supportive aside, I knew hearing everything I’d gone through and tried was a lot for her. Her heart was too fucking big for it not to be a lot.
When I caught her staring, I put down my donut and gave her my full attention. I knew that look on her face as she chewed her bottom lip. She was contemplating the best way to ask a question.
“Go ahead. Ask the question you want to ask” I said.
“Did you really kill a man?” Genevieve asked. I faltered. Not the fucking question I thought she was going to ask.
“I’ve killed ten,” I replied carefully and watched her eyes widen. Hot in the bedroom, not as hot outside of it once reality kicked in. She needed it explained in depth. Whether she accepted it after that was a different story. “What I need you to understand is that they were either reactive kills to violence or proactive to the information given.”
“Is this what you do now? Your job. Do you kill people?”
“Yes and no.” I sighed. “I’m a bounty hunter, which means I collect dangerous people. But there’s more to it than that. The man I work for has a squad of individuals trained to handle magical creatures—creatures doing unspeakable fucking things to humans and others. The goal is to always bring them in alive. But hunts go wrong. Shit hits the fan. Every time someone died, there was a reason for it. And every person that I’ve killed pushed the fucking question of whether or not they were human. Technically, you and I aren’t fully human. Most of what I hunt aren’t, but they use being human as cover to get by and often do more damage that way.”
“Oh.” She tugged that sexy bottom lip between her teeth, and I resisted the urge to bite it myself. The last thing I needed to do was be thinking with my dick. Instead, I reached out and ran my hand over her ponytail.
Wrong fucking thing to do. All that did was inspire more thoughts I didn’t need to fucking have. I dropped my hand, keeping it to myself. I was riding a lot of fucking emotions, and sex was an easy escape—a fucking rush that tipped the scale of how crappy I felt. I didn’t need to chase that high. Not right now.
“Can you still love me?” I asked.
