Chapter 86

Ramon POV

“So what do we do?” I demanded. “Give up? Send everyone away to deal with their problems alone?”

“No,” Rafael said. “We get help. Real help. Professional help. We stop trying to handle everything ourselves and we admit that some things are beyond our ability to fix.”

He was right. I knew he was right. But the thought of admitting that—of accepting that I couldn’t protect and fix everyone I loved—felt like failure.

“I don’t know how to help him,” I admitted quietly. “Lake. I don’t know how to make this better for him.”

“You can’t make it better,” Rafael said gently. “That’s not your job. Your job is to be there, to be steady, to be safe. The making it better—that’s going to take time and therapy and probably medication. But Ramon, you need to prepare yourself for the possibility that Lake might not be able to do this. The relationship, the bonding, becoming part of this family—it might be too much too fast given everything he’s been thro