Chapter 28
DOVE
“Dove?”
A slim woman with slightly silvering dark hair, maybe in her forties, pokes her head out of the office door. Her blue eyes meet mine through her dark, thick-rimmed glasses, and she smiles when I look up from my magazine.
“Good guess,” I grin.
She chuckles in the waiting area of her small midtown office, empty but for me, and opens the door a little wider. “Please, come in. Can I get you tea or coffee or anything?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
She nods, ushering me in before she closes the door.
The inner office is brightly lit, with big windows that have partial views of Central Park two blocks away.
The walls are gorgeous blonde wood and white paint, giving a very Scandinavian aesthetic.
Green plants and a few potted flowers dot the space.
I choose a soft, sage-green couch and Dr. Turov settles into a leather armchair across from me, one ankle resting on the other knee, notepad and pen in her lap.
She smiles. “First, congratulations on your wedding. Nikolai was telling me it was lovely.” She pauses. “Well, aside from the obvious.”
My mouth twists as I nod. “Thanks.”
“I know you’ve been to therapy before, Dove,” Dr. Turov says gently. “So don't worry, I’m not going to patronize you and ask how being arrested at your own wedding made you feel,” she chuckles.
Then she clears her throat. “I’ve read your medical history…” She looks up from her notes. “We’re not going to talk about your substance abuse today, either…unless you want to, of course.”
I shake my head. “No, I'm good.”
She glances at her notes again before she looks up at me. “Two years sobriety is very impressive, Dove.” She smiles at me. “I hope you realize that. You beat nearly impossible odds, and you should feel very proud.”
My face heats as I smile awkwardly at her. “I…guess I do?”
Dr. Turov smiles. “Good.” She takes a breath. “Today, I just want to establish a baseline. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”
I shake my head.
“Do you feel in control of your life?”
I laugh abruptly, then catch myself. “Sorry,” I mumble. “I mean… I just got married as part of a business arrangement.”
Dr. Turov nods, zero judgement in her eyes. “I work quite closely with a lot of people in the mafia world, Dove. I get it. How do you feel about the marriage?”
I shrug. “I… I don’t know. Different now than I did before.”
“Different how?”
I look down at my hands. “I guess…not as angry or trapped as I was before?”
She nods. “Was that due to a shift in your own thinking, or was it external?”
“I think it’s…” I shrug. “I guess it’s that Bane—Nikolai Antonov’s son, my husband…” I make a face. “You already know all that.”
She just smiles.
I take a shaky breath. “Did you know Bane used to date my dead best friend?”
She hesitates just long enough to let me know she does.
“Nikolai told you?”
She smiles. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss what I talk about with other patients, but, yes, I’m aware of the history between Bane and your friend Lark.
” She takes a deep breath. “I think we’re wading into far deeper waters than we’ll have time for in just this short session, but is that something you want to talk about in future? ”
“Yes?” I frown. “No?” I laugh a little. “I don’t know. I mean, it bothers me, but it also doesn’t. Or I guess, it bothered me more before. Now, I think she’d just get a kick out of the fact that I’m married to the guy.”
Dr. Turov smiles as she nods. “Good, give me a little more of that. What do you feel when you look at Bane?”
I know what I should feel. Fear, maybe. Guilt, definitely. Apprehension that he unlocks this vicious, dangerous side of me. And yet—
“Safe.”
The word drops completely uninvited from my lips. Once it’s out there, though, warmth spreads through my chest and a smile creeps over my lips.
“I feel safe with him. I feel…protected. Desired, needed, built up, heard…” I stop abruptly as the words just start pouring out. Heat floods my face and I bite my lip, looking up at her. “Sorry, I…”
“How does it feel to say all that out loud?” she asks softly.
“Good,” I swallow. “Great, actually.”
And that warmth inside my chest takes hold, growing, welcoming me into its embrace as I realize how true every single word is.
“I haven’t felt those things in…” I sigh. “I don’t remember if I’ve ever felt them.”
Dr. Turov flashes a genuine smile at me.
“I’m truly happy for you, Dove. I think you deserve to feel all those things, especially with someone you’ve just married.
” She glances down at her notes, then the wall clock.
“We don’t have a full session today: this is just an introduction. But if you’d like to keep seeing me—”
“Definitely,” I say quickly.
For sure. I feel more open right now in the fifteen minutes I’ve been here than I have in ages.
“Me too,” she grins. “Now, quickly, I do want to ask you about the meds you’re taking.
” Her brows knit as she glances at her notepad.
“I’m going to be honest with you, I’m a little shocked by what you’re on, and especially the dosages.
” Her brow furrows even deeper, her nose wrinkling a little.
“Two hundred milligrams of Zoloft, six of risperidone, twenty of Lexapro, along with buspirone and lorazepam…” She looks at me with concern. “Sixteen hundred of lithium?”
I smile weakly. “Is that…a lot?”
Dr. Turov exhales slowly, puffing out her cheeks as she sits back in her chair. “Honestly, Dove, I’m amazed you can even carry on a conversation, being on that much lithium. And all of it together…I worry about interactions.” She frowns. “How do you feel without them?”
I choke out a small laugh. “I…don’t know. I’ve been medicated since I was…I'm not sure. My whole life, I assume?”
Dr. Turov nods slowly, her brows pinched, tapping her chin with the end of her pen. “I want to try something a little unorthodox. Are you game?”
“Definitely.”
She nods. “Good. I want you to stop.”
I frown. “Stop…?”
“All of it. All your meds.”
A blink. “Like…cold turkey?”
“Christ, no,” she laughs. “I’m going to write you up a schedule for slowly weaning yourself off them over the next couple of weeks.”
I frown. “What will that do?”
She smiles. “That’s what we're going to find out. But in my professional opinion, you are hugely over-medicated right now, and I’d like to see what work we can do together without the meds, or at least a lot less of them. How does that sound?”
It sounds fucking great.
It’s dark when I open my eyes. Confusion whips through me like a winter chill, shaking me as I try to focus.
I’m—
My pulse skips.
I’m home. Not at Bane’s place, but home-home, Dad’s house, standing in the doorway of my carriage house.
The chill twists and claws under my skin as a panic begins to set in.
How the fuck did I get here?
It’s dark out, and the carriage house itself is also dim, leaving me standing in the shadows on the doorstep. I shakily pull out my phone to glance at the time.
What the…
After I left Dr. Turov’s, I went to the Mercury to get in a little conditioning.
I didn’t have rehearsal, because it’s Saturday, but I wanted—maybe needed—to run, and the theater has a great gym with treadmills down in the basement.
After that, I met Brooklyn and Evelina for a meal.
We laughed that we didn't know whether to call it late lunch or early dinner, and Evie came up with Linner because Dunch just sounded awful.
That was at four-thirty.
It’s now eight o’clock, and I’m quickly realizing I don’t know what the hell I just did since leaving the two of them.
How I left the restaurant.
How I got here.
A cold sensation drips down my spine.
What the fuck is wrong with me.
I’m about to turn and get the hell out of here when I pause. I frown as I step into my carriage house. Then I stiffen as cold fury washes over me.
Are you fucking kidding me?!
On the one hand, I’m married now and living with Bane, and I’m never going to move back here.
On the other, this was my space for so long. It was the soft place I landed when I came back to New York after rehab. Where I collected myself, and put myself out there again. Where I started painting as a means of self-therapy.
It was my sanctuary.
And now, it’s not.
At all.
Folding tables and boxes fill the space inside, with giant posters and banners with the bullshit silver and fairy-peach PetalGlow Essentials logo tacked up everywhere.
Piles of shitty leggings and tops cover the tables, and boxes and random bottles of vile-smelling oils litter the ground and trail up the stairs to the loft above.
I'm still confused about my timeline, or what I’m doing here, or how I even got here. But through the swirling fog, fury ignites in me.
Mother.
Fucking.
Felicity.
The urge to destroy everything I’m looking at, or burn it all to ash, rises in me. But then the fog in my head swirls again, and I find myself grabbing the doorframe.
Fuck this.
Something is wrong with me, and I need to get…
A smile spreads over my face.
Home. I need to get home to Bane.
Where I feel safe. Where I feel everything I never thought I’d feel for that man, including some big emotions that I’m not quite sure what to do with yet. I don't know how to process them.
But I do know I’m going to hold onto them for dear life.