13. Chapter 13
We are already mid-session when I realize something is different.
Sadie sits deeper into the couch than she usually does, spine no longer straight with quiet vigilance, shoulders no longer pulled in as if she’s bracing for impact.
Her boots are kicked slightly forward, toes angled out instead of tucked neatly below.
One arm rests along the back cushion and her fingers are relaxed.
She looks tired, but not the bone-deep exhaustion I am so used to in these sessions. It’s instead the kind that comes after effort, and after something pries open inside of you that you refuse to close.
Good.
It means the homework did what it was meant to.
I lean back into my chair, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee and continue to hold her gaze.
“So, how did it feel to write the letters?” I ask.
“Like ripping off a scab. I could see how it was necessary, it was just messy.”
“Did you finish it?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
She tilts her head back, eyes tracking the ceiling for a moment like she’s choosing her words instead of letting them choose her. “I didn’t feel better, but I felt lighter. Like I wasn’t holding my breath anymore.”
“Good. That’s usually how you know it mattered.” I bother to soothe.
Her gaze flicks back to me, something unreadable passing through her eyes. I do believe she is searching for judgement or correction. Unfortunately, she won’t find it.
“I read the first letter, but you also wrote a second,” I continue, tone casual despite the weight of what I’m asking. “The one to yourself.”
Her body responds before her mouth does; her shoulders pull in, her arm slips off the back of the couch, and she straightens slightly. She’s defensive without meaning to be.
“Yes,” she mutters.
“Did it feel different?”
“Yeah, a lot different.” She admits warily.
“Tell me how.”
Her nostrils flare at the demand, but her fingers twist in her lap as she tries to battle through the knee jerk reaction to be defiant. All good things, it means my little fox is slowly inching along down the correct path.
“That one felt embarrassing,” she finally breathes. “Like I was saying things out loud that I’ve spent my whole life pretending weren’t that big of a deal.”
I fight my own reaction to perk in my seat. “Why embarrassing?”
Her lips press together, but she drags the answer forward for me. “Because it’s easier to tell yourself you’re over something than admit you’re still carrying it. Especially when it happened so long ago.”
I chew the inside of my cheek and drop my chin into my hands, trying to mask my interest. “Would you be willing to read it?”
What brings you shame, little fox? How do I tear my teeth into and make it less so?
The question lands exactly where I intend it to, though. Her eyes are sharp now and measuring as they flicker with instinct. The urge to refuse and to protect the last piece of privacy she still believes she’s entitled to.
She must come to the realization that I will pick it free either way and with a small huff, she reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper.
“I hate you for asking,” she mutters low.
“I know,” I murmur.
She unfolds the page, smoothing it out over her knee as she takes a deep breath to steady herself. And I note that she doesn’t look back up to me again as she begins.
“Dear Sadie,” she reads. “You’re not broken. You weren’t difficult or dramatic or too much. You were a kid who needed someone to step in, and no one did.”
Her grip tightens on the paper and I rest my finger to my cheekbone where I sit relaxed, eyes boring into the flush that curls over her cheeks.
“You learned early how to read a room and decide whether it was safer to speak or stay quiet. That wasn’t weakness though, I want you to know that. It was survival, and you did what you had to.”
What did you have to do?
“You didn’t imagine what happened, and what happened to you mattered, even if no one said it. Even if it was easier for everyone else to pretend it didn’t.” She pauses, breath hitching.
I sit a little straighter in my seat again, because this isn’t entirely about mom anymore.
“You deserved protection from Peter and Heath. You deserved to say no and it be heard. You deserved a mother who didn’t… who didn’t let it happen.”
I go very still, and I don’t need it spelled out clearly to read between the lines of what she’s said to understand it.
Exploding right now won’t do me any good, nor would it help her.
So I grab that wild, bucking sensation in my chest and shove it down so deep that it snarls and snaps.
It pleads for the taste of copper on my tongue and the red to fall over my vision.
“That was harder. Saying it to myself.” She states, snapping me out of my own turmoil.
“Why?” I ask, a little breathless.
“Because that means I can’t minimize it anymore.”
Exactly. Now I need to learn to do something with it before I do something reckless instead.
“The two men,” I start, apparently ignoring my own advice to not push on it.
“Heath and Peter,” she drawls slow after a beat.
I wait, because if I ask the one question I want to know for certain, the rest will come out in a tidal wave. One I have no control over and I don’t want her caught in the crosshairs of it.
“Heath was around when I was little,” she continues. “One of my mom’s boyfriends. He got angry and loud, and… handsy.”
My jaw tightens before I consciously stop it.
“She didn’t stop him,” Sadie adds. “That was the first time I realized my mother wasn’t the only thing I needed to hide from.”
“How old were you?”
“Eight.”
The number lands a blow and my nostrils flare.
“And Peter?” I grit out, knowing damn well I’m losing the plot. That the reins of control are slipping free as I scramble for them.
She exhales slowly. “Peter was different, and… patient. He was even nice, and he made me feel special. Like I was older than I was.”
I don’t interrupt, because I’m too fucking busy keeping my fingers from snapping my pen in half.
“He groomed me,” she murmurs simply. “I didn’t have the language for it back then, but I do now. I only got away from him because I ran.”
“At seventeen,” I finish.
She nods and the pieces click together with sickening clarity. The patterns and the avoidance of connection. The way she keeps men at arm’s length until she doesn’t—and then chooses ones who feel dangerous because danger itself is familiar.
Something cold and heavy blankets me, and I recognize it as protectiveness.
It settles into my bones without permission, instinctive and immediate. The urge to locate these men, to catalogue their failures, and then remove them from this world as if they are a disease consumes me.
The thought is so natural it barely registers as aberrant.
I shove it down for now, not because it is wrong, but because it’s premature. What I want to do will take time and plans. Plans I can’t sort through with her in my office.
“How does it feel to say their names out loud?” I ask, trying to do my damn job.
“Not harmless, but less powerful, I guess.” She shrugs.
“That’s what naming does,” I tell her. “It gives shape to something that’s been allowed to live unchecked in your mind.
You didn’t fix anything today, Sadie, but you stopped pretending it was nothing.
And that’s how work actually begins. You have made excellent steps recently to step forward to the starting line. ”
I watch the tension drain from her shoulders at the praise, and I slap the part of me that wants to preen at the relief she finds in it.
“We’ll take this slowly with no details, unless you choose them. Today was about acknowledgement, Sadie, not excavation.”
Quit saying her fucking name.
“Okay,” she breathes.
I stand, signaling the end of the session, and she follows suit after a moment. As she slips her jacket back on, her bracelet glints beneath the cuff. I barely conceal my grin to find it there and the dangerous satisfaction that curls low in my gut.
I hold the door open so she has to brush past me and my mouth twitches at the soft scent of her soap as it fills my senses.
Fuck it.
The plan has got to move a lot faster, because I’m a patient man, but even I have my limitations.
She leaves my office unaware of the shift she’s triggered, unaware of the direction my thoughts have begun to take.
That’s fine.
Just a few more days.
For now, I have names.