Page 12 of Rook

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.

CHAPTER FOUR

Tessa

I slept like the dead.

It was the kind of sleep where you wake up and aren’t sure what decade it is, let alone the time of day. After weeks of a few stolen, restless hours here or there, it was more needed than I could have known while still operating from my survival mode.

That post-sleep haze was to blame for why I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone for a long moment or two as I did long cat stretches in the bed, the covers falling away from my body to reveal the stolen white tee I was wearing, along with a pair of simple cotton boxers.

It was all that stretching that had my intruder clearing his throat.

“Sorry,” Rook said, holding up a hand as I shot up in the bed, my heart racing. “I was worried. I knocked and called several times…”

“Oh,” I said, my air rushing out in relief. “I really do sleep like the dead,” I told him.

He looked good.

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