Unbearable (the TORQUED trilogy Book 2) (15 page)

“What? Are you fucking kidding me? Don’t you think that’s something you should have told me before now?” Pissed off, I don’t even think before I grab a glass on the counter and throw it against the wall in the kitchen. Mom jumps at the sound but now she’s staring at me like she doesn’t even know who I am, which seems hilarious since I feel like I don’t know who she is either. “How the hell could you have kept this from me? I get that I didn’t need to know at ten but how come you didn’t tell me when I was older or better yet at some point during my six-year relationship with Berkley. I’m twenty-six now. Fuck. This changes everything about me and relationships I have with women.”

Mom rolls her eyes, not seeing the significance behind my words. “It doesn’t have to change anything, Tyler. I get that you’re upset but please calm down.”

I laugh. Calm? Is she serious?

My dad walks in, having heard the glass breaking and stares at me, his stone-cold blue eyes narrowing. “What’s going on?”

“Did you know about this?”

Mom gives him a look. “I told Tyler….”

So he knew. He fucking knew too. My own father, a man himself wouldn’t think to tell me something like this?

“You fucking knew and didn’t think to tell me?” I wave my hand around in front of them. “I’m your only son and no time in the last sixteen years did you think it would be a good idea to tell me that I’ve been taking seizure medication that probably made me sterile? You didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell me I could never have children?”

Mom chokes back emotions and stands, reaching out to me but I back up near the door holding my hands up. She’s the last person I want comfort from. “Tyler, honey, you don’t know what it’s like to watch your child suffer day after day. To be so afraid for their safety that you insist they are never alone in a room because what if he has a seizure and falls and hits his head or chokes.”

I can imagine how scary it must have been for her, I can, but it changes nothing. My mom’s voice filters my thoughts, distancing me from the past and back to the present. “The fear is so consuming that you begin to feel hopeless because what if the doctors never find a cure, or what if we aren’t doing enough to help you? God, Tyler, you have to understand that when we finally found a medication that worked. It felt like we’d been given a miracle. At the time, we didn’t care about anything but making sure you had as normal a life as possible. We weren’t focused on ten years from now. We were focused on ten days from now. As time went on and you stabilized to the point you could live like a normal child again, we rejoiced in the victory and put the risks in the back of our mind. The last thing we wanted to do was take your future away from you but I’ll never regret putting you on it. It saved you.”

Normal. Fucking normal. Words I desperately wanted to be but now knew I never would. It’s not even all about the medicine; it’s about them not telling me and basically finding out Berkley cheated on me and had no intention of even telling me.

“Damn it, Mom. It’s not about the fucking medicine!” I shout, only to have my dad glare, his silent way of letting me know I’ve crossed the line yelling at my mother, but they crossed the line and that’s all I see. “It’s about you keeping this from me for sixteen goddamn years. I can’t have a family! Do you have any idea what that feels like?”

“Tyler.”

My throat threatens to close, my pulse soaring. “No. You don’t get to say anything else.” I storm toward the front door but turn one more time to see both my parents standing in the living room looking at me with apprehension.

“I can’t be here right now. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to be here again.”

I’d walked out of my parents’ house after those words, slammed the door and headed to Murphy’s where I’d began my quest to give myself liver damage and sleep with Raven. Honestly, deciding to take Raven home with me that night was a decision I will never regret. Those six months with her before feelings started fucking everything up, made pushing the shit my parents had dumped on me that day into the back of my mind possible.

AFTER WORK, I head straight to Murphy’s bar. I know I’m going to potentially run into Berkley, which would not be a good thing considering I would like to punch her for being a lying, cheating bitch but she’s a waitress here sometimes, and I need a fucking drink in a bad way.

I find a stool at the bar and drop into it exhausted. I’m the kind of exhausted where I wish I could go home and sleep but know there’s no way it’s going to happen with all that’s going on in my head right now.

Zack approaches me bracing himself with his hands on the bar. “You look like you need either a good drink or a blow job.”

I stare at him as if he’s crazy. “Women complicate shit that doesn’t need complicating.”

“Okay, drink it is.” He laughs. “What can I get you?”

“Whiskey.”

He takes a minute to look at me and reaches for the whiskey and a glass but doesn’t pour it. “You really do look like shit, man.”

I drag my hands over my face. “You have no idea.”

“Girl problems?”

I’m not in the mood for talking. With anyone. “Can you just get me the whiskey?”

Zack nods. He knows I’m not going to talk about it. I set my phone down on the bar and immediately my mind moves to Raven and the fact that I want to call her, even if it’s just to hear her voice. A message pops up from Lenny.

Lenny: Hey, you were looking kind of rough today. Just checking on you. You doing ok?

If she only knew.

Me: I’m fine.

The truth is, I’m so far past fine I don’t even know how to find fine again. All this shit with Raven and Berkley and my parents are weighing on me. For the first six months with Raven, I didn’t think much about what happened with my parents and the whole Berkley thing. I focused on having fun and enjoying being with someone in the simplest of terms. But now she wants more and the fact that I can’t give her more pisses me off and throws everything back up in my face.

I’ve grown up knowing there’s certain things in my life and my body I would never have control over. I’ll be taking seizure medication for the rest of my life. Even without forgetting my meds, I still have them on occasion.

My point is, for years I’ve struggled with not wanting anyone to know. Mostly because I’m out of control when they happen, vulnerable to everything and everyone around me. For the longest time I had a hard time just thinking I was normal, because truthfully I wasn’t. I had to rely on pills for my brain to function properly and not drop to the ground in front of anyone.

And then after my breakup with Berkley, my mom tells me the medication I thought made me as close to normal as I could be took away any chance I had at having a family.

Just as I’m going over this in my head, fucking Berkley shows up.

I reach for the glass Zack must have put in front of me while I was having my pity party and down the amber liquid. I can’t remember how many I’ve had but the burn of the whiskey making its way down my throat is a relief.

An hour later, I’m still sitting at the bar when Zack asks, “Another one?”

I stare at the glass long enough to know I don’t need another, because I can’t tell whether the glass is full or empty.

“Nah, I’m done.” I throw down enough cash to cover my drinks and get up to leave. Just then, Berkley comes to stand in front of me, way too close for my comfort.

“What’s with you and Raven?” Berkley asks suddenly, her hand over mine like she’s ready to be there for me should I want to open my heart to her. That’s long gone. It left when I found out she cheated on me.

“It’s none of your business.”

“Can’t you just talk to me and look at me? I just want to talk. We were together for six years it’s the least you could do.”

The least I could do?
What a fucking bitch.

“So I’ll ask again… you and Raven? I mean, I’m happy for you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I heard you and her were dating. I mean, she’s a little young for you but whatever.”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“I’m just trying to have a conversation with you, Ty.” She lifts her hand and rests it on mine on the bar. “I just want us to be friends.”

I rip my hand away from hers. “Friends? We were never fucking
friends
. Maybe that’s part of our problem. We went from fucking to living together and never became friends.”

“You can’t say that,” she snaps, scowling at me, her words so sharp she probably wishes they could cut me. “You were happy when we were together.”

“Maybe so but friends don’t go behind friend’s backs and fuck around after six years.”

She’s shocked by my words because all this time she thinks her reasoning for our breakup was justified. She miscarried and needed to find herself. It wasn’t the truth.

Standing, I brush my body along hers. “Fuck your friendship. You wanna be friends, go suck Rawley’s dick. I’m sure he’s up for it.”

My gaze hardens, letting her know I’m serious and then I walk away, toward the door to where Rawley’s grinning, two chicks on his arms.

“What the fuck are you smiling at?”

He holds up his hands after slipping his cell phone in his pocket. “Nothin’, man.”

Nothing my ass.

I think about texting Raven when I leave because in the reality of all this, she’s the only one who hasn’t fucked me over. She’s honest and pure and loves me simply because she does. There’s nothing wrong with that either and in a way, it helps that she does.

I want that night with Raven for the first time back, that overwhelming sensation of her underneath me. I want that feeling I had of being completely at ease with her. Undoubtedly, I’m regretting not talking to her these last few weeks.

Fuck. I need her.

My life sucks.

No, really, I know that’s dramatic but those are my thoughts after the incident with Tyler. I mean, fuck, he drove an hour to get me at two in the morning, I puked on him and then told him I loved him and begged him to make love to me.

I can’t make this shit up.

And then I texted him the next day and haven’t heard anything from him. So naturally, I’m a nervous wreck the week before Thanksgiving and fuck up my marketing management final.

I’m walking back to my dorm room after class, a coffee in one hand and my phone in the other. Last year when I had a bad day, I texted Tyler and he’d come to my dorm or I’d sneak into his apartment late at night and everything would be better the next day.

Now that’s changed.

Staring at my phone, I want to text him when a message pops up from Rawley with a picture. Sliding my thumb over the screen, I open the message to see it’s one of Tyler at the bar and he’s sitting on a stool at the bar with Berkley, her hand over his. It’s like a fucking punch to my throat.

Rawley: Thought you should know….

He thought I should know?

I don’t reply at first because I’m honestly too shocked to even consider replying. At both Rawley and Tyler.

Me: Dude, why would you even send that to me? Are you trying to break my heart?

Rawley: No. Tyler does that on his own. Wanted you to know he’s still seeing her.

Me: You don’t know off one interaction that they’re seeing each other.