Page 28 of Dearly Unbeloved (Spicy in Seattle #3)

ROSE

I force myself to bite down on the egg roll, but it tastes like sawdust. Sierra didn’t ask me what I wanted, just ordered all my favorite things from my favorite Chinese takeout place, and even though I have zero appetite, I don’t have the heart to push it away.

Not that I think she’d let me. Sierra seems determined to feed and hydrate me—if the protein bar and mini Gatorade she forced into my hand while we waited for the food to be delivered are anything to go by.

She’s right that I’m not used to being taken care of like this.

I started getting these “foggy spells,” as I call them, when I was sixteen.

By that point, my brother and sister had long moved out, and my parents had never been the kind of parents to comfort us when we were sick.

So, I just learned to get on with it. There’s never been an alternative.

I know it’s not normal, that not everyone has days, weeks, months where just the thought of basic tasks like showering or brushing their teeth feels like climbing a mountain.

Just like I know it’s not normal to struggle to enjoy anything, to not get excited about anything, to dread the thought of speaking to people.

But knowing that doesn’t give me the motivation to do anything about it. I’ve gotten used to the world being dull and desaturated, and now anything bright and shiny is just overwhelming.

“Drink.” Ice clinks against the plastic cup as Sierra presses the iced jasmine tea into my hand.

I sigh and take a sip, wincing when all I taste is the paper straw. I hand it back to Sierra and she takes a long sip, sighing happily.

“God, that’s good. Here, try this. It’s a little spicier than the chili garlic sauce.”

I open my mouth to decline, but Sierra just uses it as an opportunity to pop a cube of her Szechuan tofu in my mouth. The force-feeding is a little much, but I dutifully chew and swallow. It’s fine. I can tell it’s spicier, but it still doesn’t taste of much.

“I’ve had enough for now,” I say, setting down my chopsticks and wiping my mouth with a napkin. Sierra flicks her gaze over my face before nodding.

“Okay.”

She piles the containers back into the bag and sets it on the floor beside the bed before standing up and leaving the room.

Disappointment settles over me. She said she wanted to take care of me, and feeding and hydrating me is that, I guess, but part of me wanted her to stay.

Bright and shiny things might overwhelm me, but I’ve become somewhat desensitized to Sierra.

It’s not like she’s under any obligation to stay, I suppose. And I’m used to? —

She walks back in, a bunny in each arm, and drops them gently on the bed. They had their dinner in their enclosure when our takeout arrived. Rabbits, we quickly learned, are surprisingly speedy and good at stealing human food, so they’re no longer allowed to eat with us.

Sierra climbs back under the covers beside me and tosses a shiny red package my way. “You have to open your fortune cookie. I don’t make the rules.”

She tears into her own cookie and snaps it open. Her eyes widen as she reads the fortune, a laugh that sounds somewhere between amused and pained falling from her lips.

“What does it say?”

“Sometimes the rose is true love’s prize,” she reads out, shaking her head.

I frown. “What does that even mean?”

“No idea.” Sierra folds the paper and sets it on the nightstand. “Open yours.”

I crack open the cookie, flinching at the crumbs that fall over my blankets. I’m not an eating-in-bed kind of person. The waxy paper is rolled up, so I smooth it out and read aloud. “Pain loses its potency when we share it with others.” Well, shit.

Sierra snorts. “Thank you for that segue, little fortune cookie.” She sits back against the headboard and pats my pillows.

I sigh, tearing off tiny pieces of the cookie and giving them to the bunnies before placing the rest on the nightstand out of their reach and sitting back.

Sierra slings an arm around my shoulders, twirling her fingers through the knotted ends of my hair.

I can feel how tense I am, every muscle on edge like I’m about to be attacked.

“Hey,” Sierra says, tugging me in closer to her so I’m basically lying on her chest. From this angle, she can’t see my face, and it’s easier.

“We don’t have to talk about what has you feeling like this.

Don’t get me wrong, I think we should, because I agree with your fortune cookie.

But if you’re not ready, I’m not going to push you. ”

“I don’t know if I want to talk about it. I don’t even know where I’d start,” I admit, and Sierra runs a soothing hand down my back.

“Those are two different things, honey.”

Honey . It no longer sounds sarcastic when she says it. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting used to it, but I don’t mind it so much anymore.

“If you don’t want to talk about it because you don’t want to talk about it, that’s a fair reason. But not knowing how to do something isn’t a reason not to try.”

In theory, she makes sense. In practice, I’ve never been good at doing anything less than perfect.

“But what if I do a bad job?” My voice cracks, and Sierra tightens her hold on me.

“A bad job of talking? That seems unlikely. And even if you do, you have nothing to lose. Because you don’t care what I think, right?”

“Right,” I confirm, though the word tastes bitter as I force it out. “Um. Okay, well… Where should I start?”

“Start with this morning,” Sierra prompts.

I tell her about struggling to wake up, struggling to turn off my alarm, or put my feet on the ground.

I tell her about forcing myself out of bed to feed the bunnies and practically running back to my room, because every second out of the covers felt like my body was in attack mode.

I stumble over the words at first, but once I start talking, it’s hard to stop. Everything just spills out.

Sierra listens, silently, as I tell her about almost failing my eleventh-grade English class because my brain was too foggy to understand the book I was supposed to be writing my final report on.

I cried and begged my English teacher not to fail me, to give me more time, and she just gave me an A, promising me I’d shown her enough great work to pass the class.

At the time, I wondered what I’d done to deserve her kindness, but I later remembered she’d had both Xan and Jazz in her class, and she probably knew how my parents were.

I tell her about how my girlfriend in my freshman year of college broke up with me because I went radio silent for a whole week, and refused to tell her why—my parents were out of town and there was nothing to incentivize me to get out of bed when I woke up feeling like death.

I tell her about the constant fear of judgment, the panic that someone would see through me and tell my parents, and the picture of me they had would crumble.

My only job was to be the perfect sibling, the easy sibling.

Xan was the leader, set to take over my dad’s company.

Jazz was the fun one, always meant to break away and spread her wings.

But I was the perfect one. The youngest, the brightest, the most likely to elevate the Cannon family name to new heights.

Until I cracked. Until I woke up one day and realized that no amount of begging and crying to my med school professors was going to get me through.

I didn’t have it in me, and it was easier to tell everyone I was dropping out because I didn’t like it than it was to admit there was something wrong with me.

I don’t regret dropping out. I just wish it wasn’t because of that.

There’s no judgment on Sierra’s face when I finally stop spilling my heart out and risk looking up at her, but her expression is heavy, and guilt instantly floods me.

I don’t want her to worry about me. I don’t want anyone to worry about me.

This is my cross to bear, and it’s not anyone else’s problem.

“Thank you,” Sierra says, running her fingers through my hair.

I squint at her, confused. “Thank you?”

“For telling me that. I know talking about shit like that isn’t easy.” The way she says it, it sounds like she’s talking from experience. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Yeah.”

Sierra hesitates, worrying her lip with her teeth, before speaking. “The scars on your thighs?—”

“They’re stretch marks,” I say, on autopilot.

“They’re not, and that’s okay. No judgment. I’m only asking to make sure you’re safe. That it’s not something you’re still doing or want to do.”

Fuck. The stretch mark answer has been serving me for almost a decade, and no one has ever called me out on it. Not that I show my upper thighs off to just anyone.

I rub my face, taking a moment to shield myself from Sierra’s gaze. How the hell does this woman, who doesn’t even like me, see right through me, time and time again?

“It’s been a long time,” I say, finally. “I was seventeen, and you know what seventeen’s like.”

“That I do,” she replies wryly. “So, you haven’t wanted to since?”

I shake my head. It’s not like I haven’t found other ways of self-harming over the years, intentionally or not.

Pushing myself through med school for so long, skipping meals, canceling on my friends one by one, just waiting for them to cut me out of their lives altogether, working too much, drinking too much, taking pills I was offered at parties without asking what they were, running.

Running was the one that really stuck—pushing myself past the point of comfort at the gym or on a track until I could barely walk.

Now, I force myself to stick to a strict routine on my home treadmill because the second I deviate, I slip back into hurting myself.

I know how I come across—controlling, immovable, rigid—but I’m just trying to stay sane.

“I’m guessing you’ve never spoken to your doctor about any of this?” Sierra asks.

“No,” I answer quickly. “They’ll just throw medication at me, and I don’t want that.”

“Why?”