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CHAPTER THREE

Rook

“Not partying?” Riff asked, coming down from his room to grab snacks for him and Vienna.

“Hm? Oh, no. Not really feeling it,” I said from where I was leaning against the kitchen counter, staring out at the living room but not really seeing anything until Riff started speaking.

Everything sharpened into focus at once. Raff was doing body shots off of three giggling girls who were laid out across the pool table. Colter had a girl on his lap, whispering in his ear as his hands rested on the ass her skirt was barely covering. Coach was trying to teach two tipsy girls a yoga pose, leading all of them to lose their balance and topple into a tangle of limbs.

“Nancy?” Riff asked.

“Yeah.”

“Sucks, man. Thought you were up in your room. Heard the TV on.”

“We have a girl crashing there. I found out she’s sleeping in her car, so I offered her my room for the night.”

“A club girl?” Riff asked, scooping some of the leftover sausage pasta Detroit had made.

“Nah. I’ve never seen her before. She was at The Bog and decided to tag along. She offered to marry me.”

“Come again?” Riff asked, his gaze cutting to me.

“I told her of this asinine idea Colter had for me to get married, so there was someone to check on my mom. She offered to marry me and do it.”

“Why?”

“The whole living in her car thing, it seems.”

“It’s not the craziest idea I’ve ever heard. If it could give you more direct access to your mom and her condition.”

“I can make someone else her power of attorney. One of you guys. Or the girls.”

“Nah, man,” Riff said, shaking his head as he stuck a bowl into the microwave.

“Why not?”

“Because Nancy could find out. And if she linked one of the girls to one of us, then she would link us to you. Then your ass is going back inside.”

Damn.

He was right.

“Besides, getting married might endear Nancy to you. Though you’d really have to sell it if you expect her to buy it. I’m not saying you should absolutely do it. Just saying it’s not as stupid a plan as it might seem at first blush.”

With that, he took his food back upstairs to his woman, leaving me with a lot to mull over.

The party grew wilder until, eventually, Colter, Raff, and Coach each took a girl upstairs.

The other three, not wanting to abandon their friends, curled up on the sectional in the living room.

“Don’t,” I whisper-yelled at Cat, snatching him off the back of the couch as he eyed the blonde who was out cold, her head resting on her two fists. “Why do you have to be such a dick, huh?” I asked him, depositing him on his tree stand, then rubbing behind his ears.

Once I was sure he wasn’t going to launch himself at them again, I carefully draped blankets on them, turned the music down, and considered going to see if one of the other bedrooms was empty so I could catch some sleep.

But it was right then that Detroit came walking in, still dressed for and sweaty from the gym.

His gaze swept over the girls, then me, a question etched between his brows.

“Is it morning already?” I asked.

“About six.”

“And you’ve already been to the gym?”

There was a morning person, and there was Detroit.

“From the looks of you, you haven’t been to bed.”

“Guilty. You cooking?” I asked as he made his way toward the kitchen.

“Found a recipe for a quiche, but made with a potato crust. Been wanting to try it out. You heading to bed, or you wanna make yourself useful?”

I was no chef. I had no imagination when it came to what went well together or anything like that. But given my mom’s delicate mental health my whole life, I’d learned from a young age how to feed us.

I still had a nasty burn scar on my wrist from the first time using the oven. And this raised white spot on a fingertip from where I’d sliced it off while cutting up veggies with a too-dull knife.

“You’re pretty good with that knife,” Detroit said as I sliced up some bell peppers.

“My mom’s favorite meal was unstuffed bell peppers,” I said, remembering how much I learned to hate that meal when she would go through phases where it was the only thing she would eat. Now, fuck, I’d kill to be able to make it for her one more time, to let her know that I hadn’t completely abandoned her, that none of this was my choice.

“Sounds good. She was lucky to have you.”

“We were lucky to have each other.”

That was the thing with a loved one who struggled with their mental health. Outsiders only saw the bad. The manic episodes or the depression that made it impossible for them to work, bathe, or get out of bed.

But there had been good times. When the meds were working and my mom was stable. When I got to be the kid, not the caretaker. When my mother doted on me and did her best to make up for the weeks or months when I had to step up and be the adult.

I once came home from school in March to find she’d put up the Christmas tree, had bought and wrapped presents, had baked cookies. Because she’d been in such a deep depression all winter that we’d missed the holiday entirely.

For my sixteenth birthday, she’d somehow managed to scrape together enough money to get me the computer that I’d been drooling over for a year, all the while sure we could never afford it.

I’d learned sometime later that she could only buy it because she’d sold the diamond bracelet her own mother had bought her for her sweet sixteen.

The highs were as high as the lows were low. Long months when I was doing all the housework, shopping, and cooking while also making sure my grades were up and I behaved at school so no one ever had any reason to check in on my home situation and take me away.

I’d been placed in foster care twice when I was little while my mom was put away against her will to regulate her meds. I never wanted that to happen again.

More so than the work, or the caretaking, it was the loneliness that could weigh on me in those down times.

It was what first made me get into computers. Then through computers, hacking. And the whole hacking community that I learned so much from that would, after a lot of trial and error, allow me to provide a nice life for us. Even as a teenager.

There were no more worries that we were going to get evicted, or that the heat or electric might get turned off, or that my mom’s health insurance would lapse, making getting her very expensive meds impossible.

“Sorry you haven’t been able to see her, man. I know that’s weighing on you. Praying for you that Nancy finds that cold, shriveled thing she calls a heart.”

So did I.

Detroit was just pulling the quiches out of the oven when my phone started to ring in my pocket.

Everyone who would need to contact me was in the clubhouse.

Except, of course, for Nancy.

Or, as it turned out, the hospital.

They almost never called me, only gave me updates when I called directly, defying Nancy’s order to have no contact at all.

But there was a nurse at the facility who took pity on me and didn’t report it. She’d only called me once before. When my mother had somehow found a sharp piece of plastic and used it to try to cut a vein in her arm open.

My stomach was in knots as I swiped the screen and brought the phone to my ear as I strode through the common area and out the front door, needing quiet as the club girls started to wake up and talk about hangovers and coffee.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Rook. This is Amy from—”

“Is she okay? She didn’t try again, did she?” There was no stopping the panic in my voice.

“Your mom’s… okay,” Amy said, her voice careful. “Last night, she slipped back into psychosis. She’s dealing with delusions and hallucinations right now. I just… I thought you would want to know. The doctors are adjusting her meds to try to even everything out. But… I know you would want an update like this.”

She’d slipped fully into psychosis a few times since she’d been in-treatment. I always knew it was a possibility. Severe bipolar was complex and ever-changing. Sometimes, she could cycle so fast that it made her lose her grip on reality. That was what had sent her inside in the first place.

“Did she try to hurt herself? Or anyone else?”

The short pause told me everything I needed to know.

“Yes, to both. She did need to be restrained temporarily.”

“Fuck,” I sighed, reaching up to rake a hand through my hair. I remembered how big a phobia she had of restraints because of a stint in a treatment center when she’d been a teen, right after her symptoms first started and her parents and doctors had no idea what was going on with her.

“It was for a very short period of time,” Amy assured me. “She was quickly sedated and taken out of them. And I… I’m not sure she’s even going to remember.”

That was her delicate way of letting me know just how lost in the psychosis my mom was.

I’d only ever seen her in full psychosis once. Back right after she was scammed out of her money and had her heart shattered by the asshole she trusted.

Even as an adult, that shit had been terrifying to witness. And the helplessness of not being able to do anything for her had sent me into a spiral.

I’d always thought people were bullshitting when they claimed they “saw red” and didn’t remember their crimes.

Until I went through it myself.

“I know it’s not ideal. But her team is doing everything they can for your mom.”

“I know,” I agreed. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course. It’s not right that you’re being kept away,” she said. “There are so many people here who have families who can visit, and they choose not to. Then there’s you, who wants to be here, and you can’t. It’s wrong.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, feeling hopeless, helpless. Which was probably why the next words escaped me. “Could I possibly put my wife on the visitation list? Just so my mom has someone to check in on her?”

“Oh, you got married?”

“Recently.”

“Congratulations. Of course I can. Did she take your last name?”

She didn’t even know she was marrying me.

“Yes. Her first name is Tessa.”

Hopefully, she was still interested in the arrangement.