Come To Me (Owned Book 3) (2 page)

If you were to look at a guy like me, though, you would probably have suggested therapy years before Lenny. I didn’t come from warm and fuzzy and as I aged, I never found even the smallest blanket. Still, the reality of the situation was, as long as I kept ties with GEM, my emotions had to stay locked tight.

You can’t exactly go on a mission and then talk about how it made you feel.

But we were in the present now, and without GEM I didn’t need to keep those pesky little emotions on lock all the time. When I came back from that catalytic mission, Lenny was ready to leave me. It took a hell of a lot of begging to get her to stay. What really kept her, though, was me promising to break ties with GEM. Still, thorns remained in our relationship. Years of lies and deliberate miscommunication made it nearly impossible to just start clean. So, this was how we were trying to clean up.

With fucking therapy.

“Well this week I mean it,” Lenny said, shooting me a glare.

“Sure you do,” I replied, not even trying to mask my irritation. Boys who cry wolf and all that shit. Lenny had cried “done” more times than I could count.

“Do you hear him?” Lenny waved her hands at me while talking to the therapist. “Do you see how disrespectful he is?”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do? You’re threatening to break up with me.” Irritation was giving way to frustration and frustration would break into all-out anger. It was the vicious cycle Lenny and I always spun. “Which, by the way, you promised to stop doing.”

“Did you know he still hasn’t divorced his wife?” she said to the therapist, ignoring me.

“That isn’t true.” Leaning back into the couch, I waved a finger at her. “The divorce was finalized this week.” I was sure Lenny was looking at me, but I refused to match her gaze. I kept my own out the window, wondering if we were paying for the therapist or the view.

“Well why did it take so long?” Lenny asked. I nearly groaned at her question. She knew why it had taken so long, knew Alice had refused to sign the papers. I could have told her the lengths to which Alice was willing to go, but that would open up doors I would rather keep closed.

“You’re deflecting, Lenny.” I pulled out my own mirror, shining the sun back at her. “You’ve been off your meds for months and you’re looking for anything else to talk about besides that.” It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you’re into metaphors and shit. When I discovered that Lenny was off her meds, I all but forced her into therapy. She said she wouldn’t go, not unless I went. So there we were, sitting on a too-plush couch, paying out of our nose for some parasite in a pantsuit to give us her opinion.

“I hear a lot of anger and resentment,” the therapist finally said.

“No fucking shit,” I spat. It was no secret I hated our therapist. I thought she was an overpaid, glorified listener. I didn’t think that about all therapists, just ours. She didn’t do anything save sit in her comfy chair, adjust her glasses, and occasionally hum and haw.

That wasn’t therapy; that was laziness. It took everything but a bulldozer to get Lenny here, though, so we were stuck with Dr. Doodles-On-Her-Notepad.

“And what is that?” Lenny asked. “You said you’d come to couple’s counseling and you don’t even try.” She turned to me, glowering.

“Oh, I’m trying Lenny.” I turned to her, teeth gritted. When our eyes locked, the tension was palpable. Her blue eyes, dark like the ocean at night, refused to capitulate. She’d been angry with me even before Grace. She resented me for hiding Alice. She resented me for my job. She resented damn near everything about me.

But we couldn’t talk about those things. Not just because I couldn’t talk about my line of work in therapy, but because our goddamn therapist said talking about the past was bad. So, we had to pretend the pile of regrets that had mounted like a heap of garbage in our life didn’t stink. We had to pretend our resentments didn’t exist when in fact, they were so large it was nearly smothering.

“I have homework for you both.” The therapist spoke again and Lenny broke her eye contact.

“What homework?” we asked at the same time.

“Have dinner together.” I nearly clapped my hands together in sarcasm.
Bravo, doc.
Dinner? We did that every night. “But don’t mention your problems. Don’t talk about Lennox’s mental illness, and don’t talk about Vic’s past transgressions. Eat dinner, talk about the weather or what book you’re reading. Just enjoy each other’s presence.”

I frowned. Lenny shifted uncomfortably. We let the weight of her homework settle, but neither of us said a word. When the time was up, she reminded us that our sessions were going to be postponed because she had to visit her family.

“It will be a month or two. I won’t know how much help they need until I get there. You have the number of the therapist I recommended?” We both nodded. We had the number, but we both knew we wouldn’t be meeting with her recommendation. We would let our relationship slip through the cracks, just as we had before.

O
n the drive home, Lenny kept her gaze outside. Dusk had settled a tawny burnt color across the sky and black night was seeping down from the heavens. It was winter, which didn’t mean much in California except the days were shorter.

“It’s difficult to talk to a therapist when 99% of our issues can’t be discussed, you know that Lenny,” I said, trying to spark a conversation between us. Lenny scoffed, keeping her eyes trained on the moving picture outside.

“You’re upset with my job, and we can’t discuss that with a therapist,” I pressed. The therapist said not to press things. She said when Lenny wasn’t in the mood to talk, I had to let her be silent.

We’ve already established I couldn’t give a fuck about our therapist, right?

“The world doesn’t stop and spin around you, Vic,” Lenny spat. I looked up at the darkening horizon, trying to settle the fire Lenny’s attitude stoked.

“I can’t keep doing this, Lennox,” I said. “Either get on meds or I’m done.”

“Okay, bye.” Before I could think, Lennox opened the car door and started to climb out. Wind whipped inside, pulling at my clothes and tugging at my hair. The gale was like an ear against a seashell. I swerved on the road, reaching out to grab her and pull her back in.

“What the fuck was that?” I yelled, pulling the car over.

“You said you were done.” Lennox shot daggers with her eyes. “I’m done too!”

“What is
wrong
with you?” I yelled. In response, Lenny ripped open the car door and slammed it in my face. I followed furiously after her. She jumped over the guard-rail and started descending the hillside.

“Nothing a little lithium can’t fix, right?” Lennox called out, her voice mixing with the whooshing of the highway. “Or Lamictal, or Depakote, or Neurontin, or Topamax, or why don’t we just skip the middleman and lobotomize me?”

“Lennox stop!” She was going to fall if she kept up at this pace. My feet slipped in the sand as I tried to catch her. She kept going, not even bothering to turn around. Wind caught her auburn hair, thrashing it up and swirling it around.

“It’s so easy for you to say ‘go on meds!’” Lennox jumped over a rock and started to run. “Do you know what the side effects of those drugs are? Tremors. Memory loss. Nausea. Vomiting. Diarrhea. Fatigue. Pain. Fever. Oh, here’s a fun one: death!” By the time I caught up to Lenny she’d already reached the ocean. She stopped short of the water, the tide nipping at our toes.

“And that’s not even…” Lenny bent over, catching her breath before standing up and facing me. “You know, some days, I would prefer death.”

“I know.” I reached out to touch her shoulder.

“No you don’t know!” She snapped away from me. “You have no clue. You think I’m suicidal because that’s what crazy people are: they’re suicidal. You don’t realize that the very drugs you want me on make me suicidal. I don’t want to die. I want to be normal. I want to stand in the sun and feel the rays and actually enjoy it. I don’t want to wonder why there’s a pit in my stomach that keeps expanding. I just want to feel…feel something real.”

Reaching down, she traced a small picture in the sand. The ocean washed it away before I could see what it was. “I love you Vic.” She turned up to me and tears were in her eyes. “I love you so much it hurts. But maybe it isn’t supposed to hurt.”

Silence settled, which for anyone else might have meant it was over. Lenny wasn’t anyone else. Lenny was a storm. Silence before a storm meant chaos and ruination. I stared at her as she looked out over the ocean and waited, preparing myself, battening down the hatches of my mind.

“Do you think I want to be like this?” She shot me a glare. “Do you think I like hurting the people I love? Have you even researched bipolar disorder?”

I opened my mouth to respond but then shut up. I hadn’t. I hadn’t done any research.

“What do you think the symptoms of bipolar disorder are?” She pressed, her mouth forming into a disapproving line.

I folded my arms. “That’s a loaded question.”

“It’s not.” Lenny sighed and sat down on the sand. After a few moments she said, “I promise I won’t get mad. I just want to know what you think it means to be bipolar.” Putting my hands in my pockets, I stared out at the ocean. We both were looking at the same thing, but I knew we saw something different. The sun had long since set and the only way to tell the difference between the water and the sky was the moon. It was all inky blackness. When I looked back to Lenny, she was staring at me, waiting for my answer. “You get mad and happy really easily, like there are two sides to you.” Lenny looked away from me and back to the ocean, tears in her eyes.

“Yeah, that’s what most people think, and it’s pretty fucking incorrect.” I shrugged, not sure what to say. “There are times when I don’t even know what I’m feeling. When I feel like an alien trying to live among humans. When the only way I know what I’m feeling is wrong is by the way people react to me. When every step and move I make feels like being in one of those fucking temples from Indiana Jones. I don’t do this on purpose. I don’t start arguments because it’s fun. I don’t hurt people because I like it. I just genuinely don’t understand.”

“Lenny…” She was only on the ground a few inches from me, but it felt like she was miles away. Tears fell freely from her eyes and I wanted to soothe her, but I’d learned over the years that sometimes I couldn’t do that. I’d learned that sometimes there was absolutely nothing I could do.

Fuck
.

How do you soothe someone when the ache comes from their own mind? It was almost impossible to know when I should wrap her up in blankets and when I should leave her the fuck alone. Maybe that was the problem with us, because lately I’d just been leaving her the fuck alone. All. The. Time.

I took my cue this time and reached down to comfort her.

Lenny slapped my hand away. “I’m not about to give you an entire list of symptoms like I’m freaking Web MD, but maybe you should look it up, Vic, before saying something as ignorant as ‘take your meds.’ For someone as smart as you are, you sound like a real ass. I mean, if I had a type of cancer, would you look that up?”

“I thought you weren’t going to get mad,” I pointed out, folding my arms again.

Lenny stood up and faced me. “Well I’m bipolar, right? So it’s what I do.” I geared myself up for another fight, because it was what we did. It was what Lenny and I always did. We were like ancient warriors, fucking and fighting. Instead she turned away from me and faced the ocean.

“I think I should stay at Lissie and Zoe’s for a while.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, syllables caught in the wind

T
he drive to Lissie and Zoe’s was silent and pressure filled. Not the good kind of pressure, either. Not the tension that wrapped around my cock, telling me to take her then or explode with unmet need. It was bad strain. It was cloying and suffocating.

“How long will you be here?” It was as if I was watching a movie I’d already seen. I knew the ending, I knew the bad parts, but I still wished I could change it.

“I don’t know Vic…” Lenny opened her door, all previous fire gone. I wished she would slam the door. I wished she would do
something
. At least then it meant she was fighting. Now…nothing. “I’m tired, Vic. I’m tired of us. I just need a break.”