Page 129 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

“So, the kitchen?” he asked.

“The kitchen,” Catherine said before going back to whatever Cross had been showing her.

John left the two of them behind as he navigated the halls and rooms of the mansion. He never understood why his grandparents didn’t sell their large estate. It was far too big for them, yet they held strong and refused to let it go.

He had hoped that by the time he found Siena, his anger from earlier would have lessened. That wasn’t the case at all—more than ever, he just wanted to get the fuck away from his family. Quick, fast, and in a hurry.

John crossed through the dining room to get to the kitchen, but the sound of his mother’s voice carrying from the kitchen made him slow down.

“You have to understand what he’s like in those times,” he heard his mother say.

“He’s told me,” Siena replied.

“John saying one thing, and actually experiencing one of his episodes are not the same thing.”

“No, I get that, I just meant—”

“In his mania, he can be reckless in everything from his choices, to his behavior. He can blow through thousands of dollars in an hour, and the next day forget where the money went. We used to have boxes of things show up on the doorstep when he was a teenager because he would steal one of our credit cards, and order things online.”

Jordyn let out a sigh, adding, “And relationships—romantic ones—can be difficult for him to navigate when physical attraction adds to his mania.”

“I don’t understand,” Siena admitted.

John hated how quiet she sounded. Like the entire conversation had her backed in a corner, and she didn’t how to fight her way out of it. He should have explained more to her, so that a conversation like this one didn’t take her entirely by surprised.

It pissed him off, too.

How dare his mother do this? How dare she corner Siena and air out all of John’s history like it was her right to do so?

It wasn’t.

Siena could come to him.

Not anyone else.

The conversation in the kitchen continued with his mother saying, “Hyper-sexuality means physical expressions of attraction can often be confused for other things. And it only adds to his reckless behavior—like a high he chases. If he can’t get high, he can do things that make him feel high. It’s another way for him to self-medicate.”

“He’s not like that, though.”

“Not now,” his mother said sharply. “But I can see it—his father can see it. This is how it starts. Snappy conversations, and up and down moods. He seems productive. He bounces from one thing to another, and it looks like he’s getting so much done.

“He rarely sleeps, and he focuses on the strangest things. This is how it starts, Siena. And I don’t think you understand how it ends. It ends with the energetic him turning into a manic version of that—the snappiness and up and down changes into nastiness.”

“He’s not nasty—not to me,” Siena said.

“Yet. Not yet. His sisters? They grew up fearing John, and his mood swings. He destroyed their things, and he would call them names. Threaten them, or worse. Now, they barely speak to him despite the fact those episodes were years ago. They can’t let it go because it was awful for them. Apologies and ownership do not take away two decades worth of destruction that mania has caused in their lives.

“He becomes someone else,” Jordyn continued. “A nasty version of himself that lashes out because he wants to hurt someone else. It’s a dangerous game to play with him if you don’t know what to look for, and if you don’t understand what you’re doing. And this is how it starts. All the signs point to where it’s going, but you don’t know that because you haven’t lived an entire life with my son like we have.”

“He’s not like that right now,” Siena said, repeating her earlier sentiment.

“Now,” Jordyn echoed. “Are you helping him, or hurting him? Do you even understand the difference, Siena?”

“I—”

His mother didn’t even give Siena a chance to reply.

“That’s what I’m trying to explain to you. It’s hard to tell with John because one thing he does may look like this to you—it may seem okay—but to him, it’s something else entirely. It means something else entirely.”