Page 151 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

His posture softened.

As did his expression.

Siena took that as a good sign.

“My meds aren’t important right now,” John eventually said. “What I need to know is what happened last night.”

“You showed up here.”

“Nothing else? I didn’t say anything? I didn’t tell you anything?”

“No, all you really wanted to do was fuck, actually.”

John shook his head, and pulled the shirt on. “I need to know what happened last night.”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then what fucking use are you?”

Siena sucked in a hard breath. His words stabbed at her skin, and cut out her heart. He might as well have just punched her in the chest, and ripped her heart out from between her rib cage. It would have hurt just the same.

“I’m sorry,” John quickly said. “I didn’t mean that.”

And yet, even when he apologized, he was still getting dressed. He didn’t look at her, or see how badly his words had hurt when they made their impact.

He didn’t know at all.

His impulse control, judgement, and empathy was gone out the window.

Entirely.

“I know.”

And she did know.

But it still hurt.

It still worried her.

Then, John’s words came out in a ramble. A mess of thoughts and feelings that Siena could only stand there and listen to, but not do much else. It was more than he had said to her in a long while.

Too long, really.

She thought it was probably the most honest thing he had said in a long while, too.

“The bitch kept messing with my meds,” he said. “First it was I needed to try this, and then try that. Up this dose, and then lower that dose. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. All the meds put me in this goddamn fog that I couldn’t get out of. I would be sleeping twelve hours a day, and I could barely think when I was awake. I told her—I told her again, and then I would tell her again, but all she would do was tell me to give it time. Like I had to let the fucking meds do what they had to do, and let them settle. She wasn’t even fucking giving them time to settle.”

John scrubbed a hand down his face. “She didn’t seem to want to fucking listen to me when I said the one was enough. The Lithium worked for me for the last three years when I was in lockup. She kept saying this wasn’t lock up. I felt like her fucking lab rat.”

Siena came a little bit closer to him, being careful and mindful in her steps. She didn’t reach out, or try to touch him despite how much she wanted to. And oh, how she wanted to.

Her heart ached for her to touch him.

Her fingers itched to feel him.

All of her wanted all of him.

Even like this.