I told my dad I planned to educate myself so I didn’t do more harm than good the way I had in the past. It looked like I needed a crash course in BPD as quickly as possible. There wasn’t a single part of Remy I didn’t want to know inside and out.
Remy
MY HOUSE WAS a mess. I couldn’t remember the last time I took a shower. My limp and lifeless curls indicated it was far longer than it should’ve been. All I’d had to eat the last few days was the occasional breakfast bar and cup of coffee. My days and nights were totally reversed. I was always a night owl, but right now, I was going to sleep when the morning news came on and waking up when the evening news was starting. The only calls I’d answered in over a week were from Hyde and my current client.
Letting my place get messy and missing a few meals was nothing new. Neither were the late-night hours. All those things came from working odd jobs, at odd hours, and living a hand-to-mouth kind of lifestyle. Plus, my mind was never exactly tidy and neat. My insides often matched the outside environment. It wasn’t exactly healthy, but it was a good indicator that I needed to tighten the reins and pay closer attention to where I was mentally and what I was doing physically for things to slip away from me the way they had.
It wasn’t that my current project was so important or interesting enough that I put everything else on the back burner. I liked the client a lot, and she was a return customer, so of course, I wanted to keep a good working relationship with her. But what I really needed was to keep my mind busy and my hands occupied while Hyde was away. And since I’d worked so hard for the last few days, I was nearly done ahead of schedule, so I would have a few days free and could devote that time to him and Hollyn now that he was back in town.
I was nervous when he left for the mountains. His job sounded dangerous, and he was pretty far away if something happened to him or to his daughter. It made me realize that any past relationship we might’ve had would have faced the pressures of the Army. Worrying about a mountain collapsing on him or him getting caught in a sudden avalanche was one thing; the idea of him being shot at and hunted down as an enemy was another. So, I stayed busy to keep most of my worst thoughts at bay. Loving and worrying about Hyde had always been the biggest challenge to my mental well-being. The difference today was that I now knew how to listen to my heart instead of the constant whisper inside my mind telling me things from our past I now knew were not true.
For being so big and imposing, Campbell was a very intuitive guy. I’d only met him once, briefly, and that was all it took for him to ask if I wanted him to forward any updates he sent Hyde to me as well. I didn’t realize how badly I’d need that small peace of mind until he offered. It might be taking some time for me to find my footing with Hyde, but there was no stopping his little girl from stealing my whole heart. I adored Hollyn. She was just a bright spot on any day. She was so expressive and so easy to read. I no longer felt like she was an alien being I needed to approach with caution. I missed her almost as much as I missed her father.
Hyde assured me Campbell wouldn’t mind if I stopped by to see her as long as I gave him a heads up if I was coming over. Ultimately, I decided against it. I wasn’t sure I would be able to leave her alone if I went and saw her, and I didn’t want to step on Campbell’s toes, especially now that Daire was done with her guard duty. He finally had a chance to do his job without a babysitter of his own. I didn’t want to disrupt his flow or the schedule he had in place for the baby. And in all honesty, he was a bit scary. He was even quieter than Hyde and twice as gruff. I was impressed my cousin didn’t cower in fear every time he tried to scare her off, or when they butted heads about something. I wasn’t so sure I could keep my cool if I was alone with him the way she had been. I wasn’t intimidated by much, so when I was, I knew to heed the warning signs.
I could tell Hyde was disappointed I didn’t rush over to see him once he got back to town. I didn’t mean to be short with him, but he was obviously my biggest distraction, and he tended to overshadow everything else. I needed to keep my focus on the task at hand, so I could, in turn, give him my undivided attention, and not let either my professional life or my personal life suffer. I couldn’t balance multiple things of importance the way other people could. I could only cope by giving my all to one thing at a time due to my borderline personality disorder.
I finished the last of what needed to be done around seven the following morning. After double-checking everything, I emailed it to the client for final approval and then crashed hard. I didn’t wake up until almost six in the evening. By the time I showered, picked up most of the mess I’d let accumulate, and checked in with my brother, who’d been threatening to send a search party looking for me if I didn’t respond to him, it was well past dinner time. Hyde called a couple of times while I was asleep and had left a handful of messages asking if I was all right. I felt a bit guilty for dropping off the map when he just got back, but I was doing my best to adjust to suddenly being accountable to someone else. My tendency to lose myself in one thing or another was probably another reason I’d been single for so long. Many of the guys I’d dated couldn’t handle being shut out and ignored when I had something else that needed my attention. They never seemed to understand I would eventually be done with whatever I happened to be creating at the time, and once I was, I would be free to focus on them again.
It never occurred to me that Hyde might feel the same way.
I figured he was used to my weird intensity and that he knew me well enough to know I was better when my hands weren’t idle. However, the tone of his messages got more and more frustrated the longer they went unanswered.
Instead of calling him back, I gathered a few things I would need to spend a couple of days at his house and headed over to the nice residential neighborhood in the Highlands. It was past the time he usually fed Hollyn and got her ready for bed, so I stopped at one of the dessert bars that popped up downtown while I was occupied and grabbed something sweet so I didn’t show up empty-handed. Hopefully, red velvet cake was enough to get me inside since it was Hyde’s favorite.
I parked my car on the street in front of his house, shivering the entire way to the door because the temperature felt like it suddenly dropped twenty degrees. It was going to snow soon. I could practically smell it in the air.
I knocked on the door, wondering what I should do if he flat out didn’t answer it. We weren’t exactly at the ‘exchange keys’ part of our relationship. Hell, I wasn’t even sure if we were at the stage where we’d agreed to be exclusive. I wasn’t sure I was ready to admit that he was back to being the most important person in my life. I was terrified to let that happen again, so I knew all the uncertainty came from my end. I used to be so confident in how I felt about him. I always knew he held my heart in his hands. Even when he crushed it. It was odd to be leery of my feelings while he seemed so sure of his. The reversal of roles was taking some getting used to.
Hyde eventually opened the door. His short hair was damp, and all he had on were those sinfully sexy sweatpants that hung low on his hips and showed off his ripped abs and even the nearly- impossible-to-get indent of muscle above his hips. His nearly perfect face did most of the heavy lifting, but his body was no joke either. He actually looked a lot healthier and more filled out now that he was home.