Chapter 32
Natalia
“How are you doing today, Natalia?” Dr. Boyd asks, sitting cross-legged on her usual chair.
“Good,” I say, and I think I mean it. “I, um, I’ve been trying those meditations we worked on at night. They help me fall asleep.”
“That’s really good, Natalia.”
My lips flinch in a quick smile. “I haven’t really thought about that recently. I think that’s good. Is it?”
“Is it?” Dr. Boyd tosses back.
“I think so,” I murmur. “I do strangely miss it some times. Is that weird?”
She shakes her head assuringly. “No, many people miss it. It’s a vice. Self-harm is…like an addiction in itself. It’s your comfort—your blankey, your childhood stuffed animal. Something you lean into.”
I nod. “I do that. I mean, did—done. I—I do, do that.”
“Natalia, it’s okay,” she says. “Just because you’re in therapy does not mean you won’t feel the urges. Therapy is to help you work through them—to peel back the layers as to why. I only want you to be safe and well.”
I roll my lips in, sliding them against each other. “I never thought of it as an addiction before,” I rasp. “It makes sense though. And I feel like… I think I am?”
“You are what, sweetie?”
“Addicted to it?” I ask. I take a shaky deep breath and stare down at the weighted pillow on my lap, picking at the furry fabric with my nails. “I feel like after I started, I couldn’t stop. There were some days I didn’t need it, then some days I had to do it. I couldn’t function without it.”
Dr. Boyd nods, listening and acknowledging, and scribbles her pen across the notepad on her lap.
“I used to carry a razor in my bag,” I confess quietly.
She looks up from the note pad, her brown eyes soft as she looks at me. “Do you still?”
I swallow. I shouldn’t have said that, but I confess anyway. “Yes. Sometimes.”
“Why?” she asks gently.
“It feels comfortable. Like I have the option there if I need it.”
“Do you feel like you need the option lately?”
I shake my head. “No. Not lately.” I roll my lips.
“But I feel like I’m just waiting for the fucking shoe to drop,” I mumble.
“One day, I’m doing great—you know, I’m happy, I’m cured, I’m perfect.
Then there’s a crash and it’s bad again and I just feel like…
Like I’ve failed. Like all I’ve done is take one step forward but a thousand back. ”
“Healing is not linear,” she says. “You cannot expect to take a road without bumps or potholes. Either way, you’ll get to where you are trying to go, but it’ll require work. You’ll have to stop at a gas station, change a flat, adhere to stop signs and yellow lights.”
“I get it,” I mutter.
“Your path has bumps, potholes, and turns. Just like everyone else,” Dr. Boyd assures me. “If it didn’t, healing would be easy.”
“And probably much less painful,” I say under my breath, picking the lavender polish off my thumbnail. I’ll repaint them later.
“True,” Dr. Boyd agrees.
“Nothing philosophical to add about how healing is beautiful. That the pain is poetic?”
She shrugs with her mouth and shoulders. “I don’t think it is. I just think it fucking hurts. And most of all, I think it’s fucking worth it.”
“Pain is worth…the pain?”
Dr. Boyd shrugs. “Can be. Healing hurts, but when once you’ve realized how much you’ve healed it’s like—”
“Fresh air?”
“Maybe.”
“I want to breathe clean air,” I murmur. “I want to put in the work. I need to get better—I want to get better, Sasha. I’m tired of losing things and people and myself. Tell me how, please.”
“This,” she says, “is a good place to start.”
For the rest of our session, I hold on to the hope that one day I will have stitched myself up and remember that the pain was temporary after all.
#
I get Rowan’s text after my second therapy session of the week.
It was getting bad again but I was finding so much comfort in my melancholy.
In addition to everything else, I’ve been missing my dads tragically.
I’ve been so disassociated from everything for so long while putting a smile on my face like nothing was wrong, and I hated myself for it.
I get into my car and buckle my seatbelt before I read the messages and reply.
Rowan: Can you meet me at the restaurant tonight? After closing?
Natalia: Why?
Rowan: Say yes
Natalia: Why?
Rowan: Please?
Natalia: Fine
I’d like to pretend that my “fine” was a reluctant one, even if I typed it with a smile on my face, but I’d be lying to myself and that is something I’m working on. No more lying to myself, and no more lying to him.
It’s part of the healing, right? To allow things in or something?
I keep thinking about broken bones. Bones break, they can shatter and fracture and you’ll need a cast. You won’t be able to walk on it or use it the way you used to, but it’s because it’s putting itself back together. It’s healing.
Open wounds need stitches.
Broken bones need casts.
And some injuries need surgery.
This one needs some love.
#
It’s just after closing when I push the door of Beetlejuice open and the warmth encompasses me, instantly warming my freezing body.
Incoherent mumbles and beats come from behind the kitchen door, music obviously playing on the other side where Rowan is waiting for me.
“Sweetheart,” he breathes, a boyish grin stretching his lips.
He comes to me immediately, wrapping an arm around me and lifting me off the ground. He kisses my head and locks the restaurant doors before he sets me back down.
“I missed you,” he whispers before pressing a kiss to my lips—a quick peck.
“I—I miss you too,” I whisper back.
“What’s wrong?”
“I… You…” Am I an idiot if I say I want a proper hello kiss?
“Ahh.” He smiles and takes my face between his hands, and his lips are on mine. It’s the most salacious, deepest, slowest, meaningful kiss of my life. I don’t have enough adjectives in my vocabulary to describe it.
Once again, he has read my mind—seen right through me.
“Better?” Rowan asks against my lips.
Smiling like I’ve just had my very first, most epic kiss of my life, I nod. “Yes.”
“Hmm,” he hums, smug.
His smile is enough to change the world.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I breathe.
Rowan’s brows flinch and he sports a half smile now. “I’ve always looked at you like this.”
“No you haven’t.”
“I have,” he says. “You were just never looking at me.”
“I’ve always been looking at you, Rowan,” I admit quietly.
Rowan gifts me another kiss on my cheekbone and takes my hand in his, brushing his lips over my knuckles. “Come on, we’re making pasta.”
“Pasta?”
He leads us toward the kitchen where I find indigents laid out and waiting. “Fresh pasta—dough and everything.”
I smile. “Dough and everything?”
He nods. “Think you can handle it?”
I nod, maybe too fast, and my cheeks burn from my grin. “Yes. Yes. Let’s start.”
I skip over to the sink and wash my hands so quickly I splash water everywhere. Rowan laughs beside me as he washes his own.
Then we get started.
As we stretch and knead out the dough, his much bigger frame comes behind me and his arms stretch around me. He rests his chin in the crook of my neck, whispering his instructions and kisses my skin after each sentence.
“Are they ready?”
“Yes,” he says. “But now we let them dry for a bit before we cook them.”
“Okay, what’s next?”
His arms leave my sides and I’m cold. But then he’s promptly at my side again, holding cheese and a cheese grater. “Now we cheese it.”
I chuckle. “Corny as ever.”
“You love it.”
I shrug and sprinkle some more flour on the drying pasta to distract myself.
Beside me, he begins shaving the cheese and I can’t help but reach for a pinch to shove into my mouth.
“Natalia.” He laughs.
I reach for more. “I can’t help it! It’s parmesan—one of the best cheeses.”
Our laughter fills the room and I wonder if life would be like this with him—silence as love and comfort, noise as happiness and celebration. Two different types of songs but both as beautiful as the other.
“I know you were avoiding me because of what happened the other night. And the date,” he says and stops grating the cheese. “Was it…too much? The sex—”
“No,” I say stiffly. “It was fine.”
“Fine?”
I nod and continue my made up task.
“It was not just fine, Natalia.”
He puts down the parmesan cheese and the metal instrument. His presence alone demands attention and space. He drowns the room with his existence and it’s impossible to ignore, so I stop my task.
“It wasn’t fine, Natalia,” he says, his voice deep and husky.
“None of it with you is ever fine. I’ve had the best sex of my life with you.
” We snort at the same time. “I’ve had the best nights and days.
And even this is incredible. None of it is fine or normal or average. Not when you make me feel like this.”
“Rowan,” I breathe shakily, my heart so unbelievably full.
“Natalia, we aren’t just fine,” Rowan whispers, and I avert my gaze to keep myself under control. Those blue eyes are brewing up a storm and I won’t survive a hurricane. “I am not fine.”
“I—”
“Don’t tell me you are,” he begs. “Don’t.”
I almost ask what he means until I realize that fine doesn’t mean fine right now.
It means an entirely different thing. And I realize I am not fine when it comes to him either.
No, Rowan Asher drives me mad—to the brink of insanity with the way I feel about him.
Or maybe I am already past the point of insanity.
Rowan’s earnest eyes have me in a chokehold. “Natalia, the other night—after that date—”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” I murmur, turning away from him and attempting to focus on the pasta before me.
“I said you could talk to me and I meant it.” His arm comes around me and pulls my back into his chest. He pulls my hair over my shoulder and to the side, kissing the back of my neck. “So, I’ll tell you my secrets too.”