“Sometimes it’s just too much. That’s all. No more. No less.” I throw back the drink. The burn is well past gone, but it does nothing to dull the panicked look in my mother’s eyes that stays front and center in my mind.

“I don’t want anything from you,” she spits out.

“It’s money. Get yourself a hotel for the night. Take a shower. Sleep in a bed.”

“They did send you, didn’t they?”

“I get it. I hear you.”

“I know you do,” I murmur. Vince dealt with his own demons in his past when it came to his dad, and so I’m well aware he knows the hurt a parent can inflict.

But it feels different when that parent has no choice in the matter. Vince’s dad was an abusive asshole. My father chose my brother. My mother . . . didn’t have any say in the matter because her mind ate her whole . . . bit by bit. Day by day. Year by year.

“You got to see her?” he asks as he pours me another glass.

The bar may be no more than a dark hole in the wall, but the bartender gave us the bottle and has left us alone.

“Yeah.” I shake my head and replay the whole interaction in my head. “She’s never going to get better, has never wanted to, and yet every time I get that call, I hope that she has.”

“I’m sorry, brother.”

I shrug, too fucking angry that there’s nothing I can do differently. “It is what it is.”

“What about Nathaniel? Do you ever bring—”

“No. Not happening.” I purse my lips and don’t voice the fears that run rampant in my mind. The ones that have already built up a scenario that she’d see him and know who he was instantly. The son who escaped. The one she rarely saw. And then there’d be me, the son who took care of her as best as I could and she wouldn’t recognize me at all. “He doesn’t understand. He . . . she’s mine to take care of. Always has been.”

He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “No one does,” he says softly. “But just like me, that doesn’t mean he can’t be here for you.”

Fuck.

Fuck my mom’s sickness.

Fuck my brother.

Fuck my father for leaving his ex-wife to get sicker and sicker without caring a fuck about her.

Or me.

I close my eyes a beat and let the room spin. I hate this. The anger I still feel and that momentary dash of hope I get each time I see her. The one that says maybe this time will be different. Both are stupid fucking emotions.

“That’s the last one, Giz. We have the gala tonight.”

“Fuck,” I hiss out. Just what I fucking need on top of a shitty day.