Chapter 25 #2
The memory was a sharp, sweet pain. Not just the stolen kiss at the lake, the first and only touch that had ever felt right until Gael.
But the aftermath. The way Elias’s face had turned to stone when they were dragged apart.
The Director’s profound, cold disappointment that had somehow hurt worse than anger.
The cube. The crushing, lightless silence.
The cold concrete against his cheek. The mantra they’d forced him to recite until the words lost all meaning and became just sounds, just pain.
They said they healed him.
The thought rose, clear and cold.
They said he was clean. Born again.
He looked around his pristine apartment.
He looked at the life he’d built after; the career, the polite distance from his family, the silent, solitary nights.
This wasn’t a life born of healing. It was a life built on a foundation of ash.
It was a careful, hollow sculpture erected around a central, screaming void.
I wasn’t dirty to begin with.
The realization didn’t come as a thunderclap.
It seeped in, cold and quiet, like water finally finding a crack in a dam.
The shame, the fear, the self-loathing; they weren’t symptoms of a sickness he’d been cured of.
They were the sickness itself, a poison he’d been injected with and told was medicine.
He was just… different… just…
He stopped. The word sat on the threshold of his mind, a shape in the fog.
It was a simple word. A word worn by brave people on TV, by cheerful couples holding hands in neighborhoods he never visited.
It was a word that had been screamed, wept, and whispered in his direction until it had become a monster, a condemnation, a death sentence.
He wanted to say it. Just in the silence of his own head.
He knew, with a certainty, that came from the book, from Penny’s serene smile, from the way Gael looked at him as if he were something desirable, that he had to.
If he wanted to move. If he wanted to one day have a sliver of the quiet, unashamed happiness he saw in Penny when she spoke Chloe’s name.
His fingers, gone cold, fumbled with the book. Tucked in the back, on a plain, cream-colored card, was a phone number and a name:
Dr. Jasmine Vance, LMFT.
Specializing in LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy and Post Traumatic Stress Disorders.
He stared at the digits. They blurred. His heart began its familiar, frantic knock.
I can’t.
But another voice, newer, fragile, whispered: Truth. Honesty. Even a small one.
He grabbed his phone. His hands were shaking so badly he misdialed twice. On the third try, the line connected. A ring. Then another.
“Hello, you’ve reached the office of Dr. Jasmine Vance. This is Maya speaking, how can I help you?”
The voice was warm. Professional, but infused with a calm, melodic kindness.
“I… I…” Samuel’s throat locked. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’d like… to schedule… an appointment. Please.”
There was a pause. “Of course. I can help you with that. Are you a new client?”
“Y-yes.”
“Wonderful. My name is Maya. What’s your name?”
“Samuel. Samuel Ruiz.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Samuel."
He managed, through stuttering sentences and long pauses, to schedule an appointment for the next afternoon. Maya’s voice remained a steady, soothing presence on the other end, guiding him through the logistics with infinite patience.
When she finally said, “We’ll see you tomorrow at four, Samuel. Dr. Vance is looking forward to meeting you,” he felt a bizarre mix of terror and a relief so profound it made him lightheaded.
“Th... thank you,” he whispered.
“Take care of yourself until then. We’ll see you soon.”
The call ended.
He took a big, shuddering breath. It felt like the first full breath he’d taken in years.
He closed the book and placed it carefully on his bedside table, the card sitting on top like a promise.
It was early, hours before his usual bedtime.
But a wave of exhaustion, dense and total, crashed over him.
He changed into soft sleep pants and a t-shirt, routines performed on autopilot, and climbed beneath the cool duvet.
He lay in the dark, staring at the faint light pollution painting his ceiling a soft orange. The fear about tomorrow was there, a buzzing undercurrent. But beneath it was something else. A tiny, fragile sense of… hope. He had done something. For himself.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand, a stark, blue-lit vibration in the dark.
He reached for it. The screen glowed. A message from an unknown number.
His thumb hovered. Then he tapped.
Good night, Samuel.
-G.
The air left his lungs in a soft, punched-out rush. Gael. The world narrowed to the glow of the screen, to those four words. He read it again. And again.
His hands shook as he typed back, his thumbs clumsy.
Good night, Sir.
He sent it before he could overthink, before the shame could rise up and stop him.
It came anyway, of course. That tiny, sharp voice in the back of his head, the ghost of the Director, of his father.
But as he stared at the screen, at the two messages sitting there in their own little universe the voice grew tinier. It was drowned out by the warmth pooling low in his stomach, by the memory of a firm hand on his jaw, a voice telling him to breathe, a gaze that saw his fear and didn’t look away.
The shame was still there. It might always be there, a scar on his soul. But for the first time, it wasn’t the loudest thing in the room.
∞∞∞
The office building was modern but nondescript, a glass and steel box nestled among other glass and steel boxes.
Samuel stood on the sidewalk across the street, his heart performing a frantic, arrhythmic tap dance against his ribs.
He’d been here for ten minutes, caught in a feedback loop of walking to the crosswalk, stopping, turning back, pacing.
You don’t have to do this. You can just go home. No one will know.
But Gael’s voice echoed in his head. Truth. Honesty.
He crossed the street.
The lobby was calm, done in soothing shades of sage and cream.
The receptionist, a young woman with a friendly smile, Maya he suspected, took his name and directed him to a waiting area with plush chairs and a trickling water feature.
Samuel chose the chair farthest from the door, his back to a wall.
He sat with his knees pressed together, his hands clenched on the briefcase in his lap.
He felt like an imposter, a spy in the land of the unwell.
Everyone else here looked… normal. A young woman flipping through a magazine. An older man checking his watch.
A door down a short hallway opened. A woman emerged, smiling at the older man.
“Robert? We’re ready for you.” As Robert stood and followed her, a different woman appeared in the doorway.
She was older, perhaps in her late fifties, with a cap of soft, silver-grey hair cut in a neat bob.
She wore elegant, dark-rimmed glasses and a simple, comfortable-looking sweater over tailored trousers.
A freckled young man with flaming red hair followed her out, pausing for a moment as they exchanged a few words before he waved at Maya and made his way out of the office The doctor’s eyes, a warm hazel, scanned the waiting area and landed on Samuel.
“Samuel?” Her voice was exactly as he’d imagined; melodic, calm, carrying a natural warmth that didn’t feel forced.
He stood up too quickly, his briefcase tumbling to the floor. He fumbled for it, his face heating. “Y-yes. That’s me.”
“I’m Jasmine,” she said, her smile deepening into something that reached her eyes, creating gentle crinkles at their corners. “It’s so nice to meet you. Come on in.”
He followed her, his footsteps echoing too loudly in the hushed hallway.
Her office was nothing like the sterile, intimidating space he’d feared.
Bookshelves lined one wall, filled with volumes whose titles spoke of trauma, resilience, identity.
A large window looked out onto a small, private courtyard garden.
There were two armchairs, angled toward each other but not directly confronting, upholstered in a soft, navy blue fabric.
A large sofa to the side. A box of tissues sat on a small table between the chairs.
The air smelled faintly of lavender and old paper.