5. Kai
Kai
The words again leave me more firmly than I intended. Julia’s head lifts, and anger sparks behind her eyes with enough heat to transform her expression.
There you are, little ember.
“You don’t know that.”
“You were waiting for the police to identify your father’s body while continuing to work, barely eating, and sleeping beside your phone. You were functioning. That isn’t the same thing as being fine.”
“I didn’t fall apart.”
“Is that the standard you use?”
“It’s a useful standard.”
“For whom?”
She stares at me, and I can almost see the answer forming before she rejects it.
“Julia,” I say more gently, “you don’t have to make yourself small in here.”
Confusion replaces the anger brewing inside her. “I’m sitting in a chair.”
“You folded your arm over your stomach and pulled your sweater around yourself the moment the attention became uncomfortable.”
Her gaze drops as though she’s only just noticed the position of her body, and she uncrosses her arm too quickly.
“I’m cold.”
“The office is seventy-two degrees.”
“Maybe I have terrible circulation.”
“Maybe.”
She watches me for a moment, clearly waiting for me to challenge the excuse, but I let her have it.
I’m beginning to recognize the pattern. When a question gets too close, Julia doesn’t shut down completely.
She uses humor or a dry remark to put just enough distance between herself and whatever she doesn’t want me looking at too closely.
What interests me is that she still pushes back at all.
She spends so much time trying to make herself smaller, apologizing when she has done nothing wrong and folding inward whenever attention stays on her too long, but underneath all of that is a stubbornness she doesn’t seem entirely aware of yet.
It appears in the slight narrowing of her eyes when she knows I’ve caught her avoiding something, or in the sarcasm that slips out when she feels exposed.
Her thumb moves over the sleeve covering the bite mark again, and my attention follows it.
“What did biting yourself do for you?”
Her eyes drop to her hand. “It stopped me from screaming.”
The answer gives the mark context immediately, and somehow that makes my reaction worse. She hadn’t been looking for pain. She had needed the scream contained badly enough that hurting herself felt preferable to letting it out.
The thought that has been sitting at the back of my mind since I first noticed the mark returns with sharper edges.
Who taught you that your pain needed to be quiet?
Anger moves through me so quickly that the pen tightens between my fingers. It isn’t anger at Julia. It’s fury at the instinct itself, at every lesson that must have come before it, until her body learned that hurting herself was somehow safer than letting anyone hear what was happening inside her.
“What made screaming feel less acceptable than biting through your own skin?”
“I was on a bus full of people.”
“That explains why you didn’t want to scream. It doesn’t explain why hurting yourself felt safer.”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“No. You were reacting.”
“What’s the difference?” This time the question doesn’t come out as defence. It comes out as honest curiosity.
“Thoughts involve choice. Reactions are often learned.”
Her gaze holds mine. “Learned where?”
“That’s something we can work out together.”
She looks away first.
I notice the change in her breathing, the pressure of her feet against the carpet, and the way her grip has begun whitening her knuckles.
She’s reaching the edge of what she can tolerate during a first appointment, and even though part of me wants to keep going until she hands me every piece of herself she has spent years suppressing, the thought has nothing to do with what she needs.
Push harder. Make her give you the rest.
It isn’t professional curiosity. It’s hunger. I ignore it.
“We can slow down,” I say.
“I’m fine.” She says and I wonder who is she trying to convince more — herself or me?
“You’re using that word again.”
“It’s versatile.”
“It’s becoming meaningless.”
“That seems unfair to the word.”
“I’m sure it’ll recover.”
The corner of her mouth lifts, and the tension inside me eases with it, which is its own fucking problem. I glance at the clock and dislike how much of the hour has already passed.
“I want to ask about the ten years of estrangement from your father. Your intake says he stopped speaking to you after you refused to cut contact with your mother.”
She releases a quiet breath, perhaps relieved that I’m not asking her to repeat information without acknowledging that I already know it.
“That’s the simplified version.”
“What’s missing?”
“He said he couldn’t have a relationship with me while I continued defending someone who had ruined his life.”
“Did you believe she had?”
“No.” The answer is immediate.
“Why not?”
“Because he’d been cheating on her for as long as I can remember.”
Something enters her voice that doesn’t belong to the betrayal itself or the fact that the betrayal didn’t originate from her. It’s shame.
“How young were you when you first became aware of the other women?”
“I didn’t understand what they were. I just knew they existed.”
“Do you remember the first time?”
She hesitates before answering. “There was a woman at a skating rink.”
“How old were you?”
“Five or six.”
Her fingers tighten beneath the sweater cuff.
“He took me skating with someone from work. I thought she was nice. She held my hand when I fell and bought me hot chocolate afterward.” Julia swallows. “When I got home, I told my mother about her.”
“What happened?”
“My father became angry. My mother started crying, and they argued.”
“Did the argument stay between them?”
Her eyes settle somewhere beside my shoulder. “No.”
“What did they say to you?”
“My mother asked why I hadn’t told her sooner. My father said I was making things up because I wanted attention.” She says it quietly, but the words land hard enough to sharpen the anger already sitting beneath my ribs.
She was six years old, and two adults had taken their betrayal, humiliation, and selfishness and dumped it on a child because blaming her was easier than confronting each other. Fucking cowards.
“You told the truth,” I offer.
“I know.”
“You were a child.”
“I know.”
“But some part of you still believes that if you’d stayed quiet, the fight wouldn’t have happened.”
Her eyes snap to mine. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
The anger returns, though this time it sits over something far more vulnerable.
“I was six.”
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t understand what I was saying.”
“Exactly.”
Her brows pull together. “Then why does it sound like you’re arguing with me?”
“Because I’m not arguing with the adult sitting in front of me. I’m challenging the belief the child carried away from that space.”
The anger flickers before she looks down at her hands. “What belief?”
“That telling the truth creates damage.”
Her body stills.
The connection becomes visible before she speaks. The skating rink, her parents’ fight, the years of minimizing herself, and the bite mark hidden beneath her sleeve all exist along the same line.
“What happens when you need something?” I ask.
“I handle it.”
“What happens when you can’t?”
“I try harder.”
“And when trying harder doesn’t work?”
Her fingers curl around the injured hand. I look at the movement, and something possessive settles beneath my sternum. I want to pull her sleeve back, inspect every mark, hold her wrist between my fingers, and tell her she’ll never put her teeth through her own skin again.
The impulse is irrational, invasive, and entirely outside the boundaries of this room. I keep my hands exactly where they are.
“Is this where you tell me I’m deeply damaged?” she asks.
“No.”
“That’s disappointing. I was promised a diagnosis.”
“I don’t diagnose people after one appointment.”
“So I have to come back?”
“That’s generally how therapy works.”
“It feels like a subscription scam.”
“It is. Mara handles cancellations and emotional extortion.”
Another laugh slips from her, softer this time.
“What I can tell you,” I continue, “is that your reactions make sense based on what you learned as a child. That doesn’t mean they’re helping you now.”
Her expression becomes thoughtful. “What am I supposed to do instead?”
“For the next week, notice every time you say you’re fine when you aren’t. Notice when you apologize for needing something, when you make a joke because the truth feels too exposed, and when you start turning pain into something practical because practical feels safer.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It probably will be.”
“Another excellent sales pitch.” A soft snort escapes her and for some reason, that little sound pulls at something invisible inside me.
“I’ve never been accused of being inspirational.” I try to push it off with a joke.
“I find that hard to believe.” The words leave her before she seems to consider how they might sound.
A faint flush rises along her throat, but it reads more like embarrassment at having accidentally complimented a stranger than attraction. That makes her lower her gaze toward the bottle as if hoping the moment will pass without comment.
I let it. “I’d also like you to write down anything you remember about the panic attack. Physical sensations, thoughts, memories, and what happened immediately before and after.”
“Homework.” She deadpans.
“Observation.”
“Therapist language for homework.”
“Yes.”
She exhales dramatically but nods.
“Same time next week?”
The question should feel routine, yet the answer rises with a certainty that catches me off guard.
I want her back here.
“Yes,” I say. “Mara can schedule it before you leave.”
Julia gathers her purse and stands. The water bottle slips against her damp palm, and I rise instinctively when she bends to catch it. We stop inches apart.
Up close, her perfume is warmer than I expected, vanilla beneath something lightly floral, mixed with the clean scent of rain lingering in her hair. Her eyes lift to mine, startled by the sudden closeness, and every part of her body becomes still.