Under the Texas Sky

CHAPTER 50

TRENT

Can Karuna not afford a better chair than the one I’m currently sitting in? Week after week, I come in here, and this cheap-ass chair is still here. I stare across the desk at Karuna. Her eyes are on her notepad while she hastily scratches something down. Probably the name of a new book box she found online. That’s why she and Hunter got along so well. He supplied her with all things books, and she told him what books she liked so he could make sure to stock them.

Fuck, not only am I going to have to tell her that Hunter and I broke up, but I’ll also have to tell her Kian is back. I mean, not like back-back, but he is still here taking up more space in my mind than usual. That’s my own fault. Inviting him to stay and watch a movie with me was a recipe for disaster, but the sick part of me needs him. It always will.

“So…” she says, trailing off, the same as she does every session. After the first year of us working on my issues, it’s really made it to where it’s more like friends catching up rather than me spending hundreds of dollars on therapy for someone to try to fix my life for me.

She’s just a really, really expensive friend.

“Sooo,” I draw out, trying to stall the inevitable bad news that I’m about to plop down in her lap. We’ve made so much progress since I first started seeing her, but I’m starting to fall back down that dark hole, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to claw my way out of it again.

“Tell me what’s new.” She says this sweetly, but it has that authoritative tone underneath it meaning the only way you can get through your shit is if you actually talk about it. Karuna would never say that, though. No matter how much the temptation is there for her.

“You know, just the usual. Busy working, trying to find a hobby, being an adult. It’s very taxing.”

She quirks her eyebrow, silently calling me out on my bullshit. “The usual, huh? Nothing new with Hunter or Mitch?”

My heart squeezes in my chest, not because I miss Hunter, but I do feel awful about the way things ended between us. “Well…”

“You and Hunter broke up,” she deadpans, and my jaw drops.

“You–how–what?” I sputter, not sure which of those words are trying to come out of my mouth to form a full sentence.

She huffs, tossing her long, dark hair over her shoulder. Leaning forward, she rests her elbows on the table, and I know I’m about to get scolded. There’s something in her posture that gives me the same feeling as in school when I was called to the principal’s office.

“So, were you trying to lie?” She pauses for a minute, then continues. “I went into the bookstore.”

“Not lying, so much as maybe omitting the truth…” I say.

Which sounds horrible no matter which way I put it. And of course, she saw Hunter, and Hunter isn’t one to lie for any reason. So instead of keeping her in suspense, I decide to tell her everything. And by everything, I mean everything . The resort, the hotel room with Kian, Hunter, inviting Kian over, being turned on enough to want to have sex.

“Wait–You wanted to initiate sex?” she asks in the same clinical way a doctor would ask what your symptoms are.

I nod, embarrassed that I've divulged that secret. It’s something I’ve been self conscious about, and one reason she always asks me how me and Hunter are.

“Can you tell me exactly how you were feeling?”

I break down, in excruciating detail, every feeling from the moment I saw Kian standing on Mitch’s doorstep. I had never been so thankful in my life that Mitch’s overnight nurse, Katie, is one of the most paranoid people I’ve ever met, so she refuses to open the door for anyone. If she doesn’t know you’re coming, you’re not stepping foot in that house while she’s there.

Love. Longing. Lust. Want. Hunger. Sadness. Grief. The latter when he was leaving. The former from the first time I peeked my head out of the curtain that faces Mitch’s house and saw his curly hair blowing in the breeze.

“Trent.” Karuna reaches her hands out, and I meet her halfway. She clasps her hands around mine in a motherly gesture, and I have to blink fast to get rid of the tears building in my eyes. “That’s great news. Do you remember that night you called me?”

I know the night she’s referring to, and the amount of tears I shed over that night is embarrassing and not something I like to think about.

She continues anyway, because her motto is the more you talk about it, the easier it is to handle. Like lifting weights, your brain gets used to the trauma, and instead of feeling pain, you feel strong. Overcoming something like what I went through is not for the weak, and no one truly ever “gets over it,” but it gets easier to manage. Especially when confronting the demons instead of letting them live rent free in your head.

“You and Hunter had–”

I cut her off because I don’t want her to say how badly I failed at it. “I remember. I had a panic attack and ended up catatonic for so long Hunter almost called an ambulance.”

“You’ve come so far since then, and I’m so proud of you.”

She’s proud of me. Of me? What have I done except sit in this uncomfortable chair and cry about my issues for the past two years?

“You might not see it, but you’ve come so far from that angry, mad-at-the-world adult who showed up at my clinic two years ago. You’ve been through a lot, but you more than anyone should know that change doesn’t happen overnight.”

Yeah, I do know that.

“Can we please talk about something else?” I plead, not above poking out my bottom lip in a pout.

“Like what?”

“Anything. I will talk about anything.” Surely whatever else we talk about today will be less painful than all the other issues I’ve been dealing with.

“Okay, but we will be coming back to this in our next session. We need to be able to discuss why you’re feeling the way that you are. We don’t want you to fall back and not be able to get up.”

I like how she uses the word we, because while I know she means her , it makes me think about another person who should be by my side.