Page 172 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

“Siena?” Andino asked.

Is this twenty fucking questions?

“Where is she?”

Andino swallowed hard. A nervous tic his cousin tried his best to hide, but never quite succeeded with his family. “John—”

“Where is she?”

His roar reverberated through the home. The sound made his head ache even worse, and his heart hurt like nothing fucking else. His soul was slipping from his fingertips, and he couldn’t grab it. He couldn’t hold on to it.

All he wanted was to hold on to it.

“Where is she?”

“We had no choice,” Andino said.

“No choice,” John echoed.

What did that mean?

What did that mean for her?

What did that mean for him?

What did that mean for them?

“They sent for her,” Andino said.

“We had no choice,” Lucian confirmed, “unless we were willing to have them come in on us unprotected, and we were not. Not with you in the midst of a mental break, John. We wouldn’t have been able to get some kind of backup here in time to help.”

John nodded, but the action felt robotic. Just an action his brain told his body to do, but not something he had actually wanted to do.

Silently, he turned around and left the kitchen. He wasn’t quite sure how he made it back up the stairs, but he did. Soon enough, he was in his bed once more. The blankets suffocated him, but he liked it just fine that way. He brought them tighter around himself, until he could barely breathe at all.

The darkness seeped in through his mind, and spread through his body like poison.

He didn’t want to move.

He didn’t want to breathe.

He didn’t want to see.

He didn’t want to feel.

He didn’t want to be.

This was what the mania was like when it finally broke.

A dark nothingness that settled deep within John’s body and psyche. A harsh emptiness that left him lonely, and so out of touch with everything, and everyone. His body ached, and his mind screamed into blackness.

A depression that almost nothing could fix.

Or, that’s how it felt.

John wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that before he felt a hand touch his shoulder over top the blanket. The blanket was tugged away just enough for him to see his father looking down at him.

Lucian tried to give him a smile, but it didn’t feel true. Nothing could be true.