Page 86 of Need You to Choose Me

“He said everybody needs an ally in their life to stay sane,” she answers. “And he’s right. You’ll always have me and Berlin, but Alex could be that reinforcement too. Don’t exclude him yet.”

Alex could be everything I’ve ever wanted.

Or he could destroy me.

I’ve heard the people you love the most are the ones who are the scariest to trust. Because they’re the one who could destroy you the worst.

When I lift my head, I see Alex appear on the other side of the entrance door. “He’s coming back. I’ll talk to you later. Thank you for the advice, and for not siccing the cops of me.”

I quickly hang up and tuck my phone back into my pocket as Alex slides into the car. For a full minute, he doesn’t say a word. He just sits there, staring out the windshield with his fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. The skin of his fingertips turns white as he twists his hand and lets out a long, deep breath.

Closing his eyes, he says, “She didn’t always struggle. There were…good times.”

I angle my body toward him, wanting to touch him but seeing the fragile paleness to his skin that makes me keep my hands to myself.

“She’s always had bouts of depression,” he explains quietly, staring at the hospital entrance. “I remember days when my father would take me out to the park and try getting her out of bed, but she refused. Then one day would turn to two that turned to three, and so on. That didn’t happen often, but it was at least two or three times a year. As time went on, she started acting outmore. Her episodes would last longer. She’d get mad easily, over the smallest things she never used to care about as much.

“One day, her and my dad got into it. I’m not even sure what, but probably something mundane. All I remember is that she started throwing things at him. The neighbors saw him rushing out the front door trying to block his face from getting hit. They called the police on her. He didn’t want to press charges, but the officers convinced him it would be a good idea if anything like that happened again. And it did.”

He takes a deep breath, that broad, muscular chest rising and falling with his deep exhale. “I’m not sure why he didn’t call the cops the second time. I guess he knew that she wasn’t acting like herself, but that it wasn’t her fault. They got into it about a bill or something. I don’t know. My dad shielded me from a lot back then because he didn’t want me seeing her like that. But it became hard not to because she started acting like that more often. Not sleeping. Being overly energetic. Getting irritable. It was…a lot.”

I frown. “That sounds hard.”

He dips his chin. “It was. I was lucky that my dad tried his hardest to deal with it on his own. He eventually got to the point where he needed extra help, so instead of letting her get arrested, he got the police involved to take her to a psych evaluation. She fought it, at first, but she ended up agreeing to go when Dad pointed out it was impacting me too. And she loves me. She always has. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly after.”

I don’t know much about that, but I’ve heard it isn’t easy. This time, I do reach out. I rest my palm on his forearm, so he knows I’m here, even when he won’t look at me.

His eyes drop to my hand, but not over to me to see the sympathy there. Because he doesn’t want that. And no matter how hard it is to wipe it off my face, I try. For him.

“She was given medication, but that became a fight to get her to take. Sometimes she’d do it. Sometimes she wouldn’t. After a while, Dad couldn’t do it anymore. He was tired of fighting with her, tired of taking the brunt of it when he was trying to help. I think he always loved her, but not enough to stay. And…” He pauses, wetting his lips. “And I can’t help but wonder if he’d still be alive if he had. Because he wouldn’t have remarried or gotten in that car to go on vacation with his new family. He would be with us. Helping Mom. Helping me.”

My fingers tighten around his arm. “You can’t do that to yourself. What-ifs are a dangerous thing to get sucked into, Alex. Thinking about all the ways life could be different doesn’t get us anywhere.”

All he does is lift one of his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. Because he left. And he asked me to come with him. He tried convincing me it was for the best. But what would happen to Mom? He didn’t want to deal with her, and he didn’t want me to either. But somebody had to, so I stepped up. I did what I could.”

This has been going on since I knew him? I would have never thought he was taking care of his mom and trying to make sure she was okay.

“I got her to take the medication and go to her appointments with the therapist,” he says, leaning his head back against the seat. “For a little while. She was doing better. Her episodes were less frequent. Therapy seemed to help. It was…good. Things were good. Dad and I would go out to baseball games and hockey games. We’d practice together. I spent some time with him and his girlfriend, who was a really nice woman. Life felt normal for a little bit. He got remarried and moved on with his life, so I tried to do the same.”

Alex shakes his head at something. “When I got into the frat at Lindon, one of the requirements was moving into the house.And it seemed like Mom was good on her own as long as she kept taking her meds, so I moved out. She seemed happy to me. Happyforme. She hadn’t had an episode in a while, so I assumed things were going back to normal. But then we got the call about Dad and his wife, and things took a turn for the worse.”

I fight the frown that tries weighing down my lips, choosing to stay quiet. No number of apologies or condolences can make him feel better or bring his father back, no matter how sorry I feel for him.

“The doctors think the trauma triggered her,” he murmurs. “It makes sense. She loved him. Still does. Losing him was like losing the part of herself that was…normal.”

“There’s no such thing as normal,” I tell him.

He finally looks at me. “Maybe there should be. Because then at least we’d have a baseline to get my mother back to it. She spiraled after his death. She almost missed his funeral because she wouldn’t get out of bed. It’s a miracle I got her to go. I know she would have regretted not attending. God only knows what she would have been like then. But after…it was bad, Olive. Real bad. And I couldn’t tell anybody because she was my responsibility. So, I dealt with her. When I was scouted, I got an agent who I knew could get me the best deal out there forher. Somewhere that would give me enough money to put her at the best psychiatric hospital there was before she completely destroyed herself. Somewhere that could monitor her and figure out the best medicines and therapies without causing more problems. That’s why I signed with the Penguins.”

He signed with a team for hismother? I’d always wondered why he chose Pittsburgh. He never talked about the team before. It was always Boston or New York. Those were his big dreams.

Now it makes sense.

My heart does a tap dance in its cage and swells so big that I think it might burst. “You’re actually kind of amazing, aren’t you?”

He blinks, brows crinkling. “For putting my mother in a mental institution?”

“For caring enough about her to get her the help she needs,” I correct him. I can tell this hasn’t been an easy decision for him, but it sounds like it was the right one. “My friend reminded me of something important about everybody needing an ally. Your mother has you, but who do you have? I wish I would have known sooner about this. I could have been there for you—been the person you needed.”

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