I won’t even be able to—”
“Okay, wait, they sedated you?”
Tears filled my eyes. “This is why I’m so scared to go against him. You have no idea what it was like when it all went down. I made a mistake, got high, got arrested, but my father was way scarier than the cops. He bailed me out and immediately drove me to a psych ward. The things they did to me there were far more humiliating than anything they did at the county jail.”
“What did they do to you?” he whispered, his arms tightening to the point it was hurting me.
“Tyler, it’s okay… I’m not there now.”
His grip loosened a little, but he didn’t let go. “Will you tell me about it?”
“If you want to hear it.”
“I do.”
“It’s a terrible story.”
“I can handle it if you’re okay talking about it.”
I was quiet for a little bit, gathering my thoughts. It was hard to talk about, but for some reason, telling Tyler felt okay, like he would somehow take some of those painful memories from me. “They sedated me when I first got there, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I finally got my wits about me, I wasn’t wearing anything but a hospital gown. Not even underthings. They’d drugged me so much I lost an entire week. Then they kept me locked up twenty-two hours a day in a padded cell. I got to see a therapist one hour a day and a regular doctor for another hour a day, but the rest of the time, I was alone. I was only allowed to shower every other day, and I couldn’t have any of my normal things, like shampoo or conditioner. It felt worse than prison.”
“Oh, my fucking god.”
“I was there for almost six months. After six weeks, they started letting me see my dad, and he would tell me how my behavior had begun to mirror my mother’s and how sorry he was he hadn’t seen it sooner. That he would take care of me now, and once they found the right medication, I would be okay. He’d make sure of it. And as they gradually allowed me to get my life back with reading and the ability to walk around outside, I actually believed he was doing what was best for me.”
“And now?”
“Now he’s doing what’s best for him. I’m perfectly capable of managing my meds. I know I need to exercise and get enough sleep. I haven’t touched drugs since the night I was arrested. I rarely drink more than a glass or two of wine. I’ve never had another incident, never missed a dose of medication, never dropped the ball at all, but he won’t loosen the reins because he would lose his access to my money and the prestige it gets him. That’s his true motivation. It wasn’t until he started forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do that I realized how manipulative he is. And, of course, stopping me from doing the things I want to do.”
17
Tyler
I couldn’t remember the last time I was as angry as I was when Ariel talked about her time in the mental institution, or whatever the hell they were called. People who were mentally ill weren’t necessarily criminals, and a scared teenage girl who’d made a dumb mistake shouldn’t have been treated that way. My deep-seated need to protect her reared its head with a vengeance. Letting her go back to her shithead of a father felt almost criminal, and as we laid there in the darkness, I couldn’t fathom it. I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t understand what bipolar was even though I’d tried to read a little online.
Ariel hadn’t had any weird moods or anything that set off warning signs. We hadn’t known each other long, but I didn’t know what I was looking for either. If our tryst at the club had been some sort of outlandish behavior for her, then half the women I knew were bipolar because a lot of them would have sex with me in a club, in a bathroom…pretty much anywhere I wanted.
“Are you mad?” she whispered after a moment.
“Not at you.”
“I’ve spent a long time learning to hide all my emotions, to be completely obedient. In the beginning, I was scared, thinking that something was horribly wrong with me. But I’ve done a lot of research the last few years, and with the medication I’m on, there’s