Page 176 of John + Siena: The Complete Duet

And not one John wanted to have.

“My turn,” he said.

“Go ahead.”

“Mafia, or otherwise?”

The therapist flashed a grin that spoke of years long gone, and a younger man. “Otherwise.”

“Hmm.”

“Your father tells me you’ve met a woman—love, he said. He believed you to be in love.”

“Just how much have you talked to my father?” John asked.

“More than you care to know. Old friends, so to speak. You don’t recognize me at all, do you?”

John’s gaze narrowed. “For business, or otherwise?”

“I diagnosed you, Johnathan, after your first severe manic episode.”

Jesus Christ.

John could do nothing but stare at the man. Leonard simply stared right back, unmoved. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt knowing that he was staring at the man who had changed his life forever with a simple diagnosis. He didn’t know whether to be grateful, or something else entirely.

“It’s been over ten years,” the therapist said, tipping his head to the side a bit as he eyed John, “and of course, you were in a very bad place. They opted not to treat you in a facility back then, and so I referred them to someone who would go in-home.”

“It’s been a little over thirteen years, actually, and I begged them not to put me in a place.”

“I know. Now, about the woman.”

“Siena,” John murmured. “Yeah.”

“Do you think the change in your emotional circumstance and just her in general might have … had an impact on edging you toward the hypomanic stage?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“If anything, she held me back for longer,” John admitted. “I feel like I fucked up at the end with her—that she’s going to feel like I didn’t do enough to keep her with me after everything she did for me. At first, when I realized they had sent her back to them, I was still in a state of suspension; between the manic break, and the heavy depression. I should have gone after her. I should have—”

“Should or could?”

John met the therapist’s gaze. “I wish I had.”

“You checked yourself in here being suicidal, and low functioning. You were fresh off a mental break, and certainly not in any position to be going to war with anybody for a woman, John.”

“How do I tell her that?”

Leonard raised one thick brow. “I don’t think you’ll have to tell her anything. If she is a good woman, she will understand your situation.”

“She is.”

“Pardon?”

“A good woman,” John clarified.

Leonard smiled. “Then, you’ve talked yourself out of that problem. Haven’t you?”