Epilogue
Two years later
“So, you had another bad day,” Doctor Renald said, leaning back and smirking at me in a way that always made me feel at home and tempted to slap her.
“Yes,” I ground out with a huff. “I did.”
“And?”
“And what?”
She gave me a knowing look. “And how do you feel about that?”
“I feel like...they’re going to happen,” I said, grinding the words out because, despite believing them, I hated saying them out loud. “And that it doesn’t mean I’m a bad or broken person. I’m just...not right. And I’m probably never going to be completely right.”
“And?”
“Ugh, and there’s nothing wrong with being a little fucked in the head.”
She laughed, her eyes sparkling with a light I had once thought I wouldn’t find in my life again, but...I had. “You’re goddamn right. And one day?”
I rolled my eyes. “And one day I’ll actually believe all that, but right now it’s perfectly okay to fake it ’til I make it.”
“Good,” she said, glancing at the clock over her shoulder. “Now, quick...how are things with you and Isaac after your bad day?”
“He...he was great, and you know it,” I said with a shake of my head. “He’s always been great. He still won’t let me talk about myself a certain way without giving me hell and making me feel worse.”
“Well, some people have to be shamed into not being ashamed,” she said in that ironic tone that told me she was both serious and not. “Or I guess I should say there’s nothing wrong with being held accountable for your own bad actions, including, no, especially when they’re against yourself.”
“Well, he manages that just fine,” I said with a scowl.
She smiled. “And the mix-up?”
Ah, yes, the way my brain once couldn’t decide the difference between my late wife and son, and Isaac.
The way I had locked up all the things about them, that pain and love had become mixed up in my head in ways I didn’t know if I’d ever untangle them completely.
In the way that Isaac had felt like a replacement for my family, even though there was no one-to-one replacement possible.
“Better, as usual,” I said.
“Good, it takes time. Don’t start beating yourself up because you screw it up sometimes; we all screw up, Clay. You know this.”
“I do.”
She got on my nerves, but she was also exactly what I needed.
I had wondered why Dr. Ramirez had stepped in after I’d been discharged to recommend her.
I was so curious about it that I’d been doubtful of her ability to help me.
That was until I’d confronted her about it during our third session, and she’d gotten up and grabbed the pictures on her desk.
There was one of her, younger and with another woman who looked like her, but a little older.
The other was of her, and two people who were clearly her parents, and another had been her with her husband.
Her sister, her parents, and her husband, her late husband.
They had all died, she’d explained, in an accident on the highway, and she had been in the vehicle with them.
It was winter, and the roads had been bad as they’d traveled back from a wedding for a friend of her sister.
The roads were slick and well...tragedies happen every day, and we always think it won’t be us who suffer through them.
She’d lost her entire family that day and had been forced to go through weeks of recovery from her own injuries.
“Good,” she continued, either not realizing I’d drifted into my thoughts or choosing to ignore it; I never could tell the difference with her. “And how goes the feelings of wanting to throw yourself off a bridge?”
“In general, or just today?”
“In general, we both know you thought things would be easier for everyone if you were just gone.”
That was true. “In general? Good. Right now, I couldn’t bear to break my family’s heart, or Cade’s, or Gina’s family, or...Isaac.”
She smiled knowingly. “And where is Isaac right now?”
I sighed heavily. “With Iris.”
“That’s Gina’s mother, right?”
“Yes,” I said with a heavy sigh. Iris was one of the strongest supporters of helping me after her daughter and grandson had died in a fire.
I still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was my fault.
She had been right there with my own mother, arguing that I needed help and support, and that if it came from outside them, so be it. “Gina would be so smug right now.”
“Because her family loves him?”
“Yes.”
“You told me once that she would have loved him to pieces.”
“Oh my God, if those two had met when Gina was still alive, she would have adored him. And he would have loved her,” I said, eyes drifting to the side and fighting back the tears that stung. “They would have been the best of friends.”
“And now he’s a vital part of your life, and you love him.”
“Yeah, definitely.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you met him so late then.”
I stared at her. “What?”
She grinned. “Because at least this way you don’t have to worry about your wife leaving you for a gay man, and she doesn’t have to worry that you were going to leave her for a man that lights you up so much inside that even a bitter bitch like me can see you’re so much happier having that stubborn, manipulative, loving, caring, wonderful man at your side. ”
“Did you just…” I began, but I couldn’t even pretend to be indignant. Her fucked up humor had been as much a help for me as it had been a way for me to trust her. “Fuck you.”
“I think you should save that for the man who’s waiting for you at home,” she said in one of her rare moments of gentility and grace. And then her voice switched back to its familiar, welcome irreverence. “After all, our time is up. So go on, get home.”
I was being dismissed, and why not? Nothing that happened today was going to be fixed with a few words and sharing how I felt.
I was going to need to remember what she had taught me; what my life over the past several years had taught me.
I was never going to be normal, or well, I was just me.
Messy, emotional, lost at times, but me.
And someone was waiting at home for me.
It was that thought that carried me forward more than anything else I had talked about over the past hour.
It was what kept me from steering the car toward the nearest solid object that would guarantee the end of what plagued me.
I was never going to escape the pain, not completely, but it was like I had been promised something that had not grown easier with time but. ..more acceptable.
Our apartment was not going to win any awards but pulling up to the plain building and seeing that the sliding door to our balcony was open made me smile.
Stepping out of my truck, I could hear Isaac’s voice floating down to me as he sang.
It was a song of heartache and want, but it was filled with yearning and love as well, exactly the sort of thing I would expect of him.
Mounting the steps was easy, and stepping through the door, I heard the song he was singing as it washed over me. I closed the door softly and took off my shoes, so I didn’t get in trouble for tracking dirt into the apartment.
Stepping out from the entranceway, I stopped as I stared at the pictures over and around the TV.
There was Isaac with his parents, and another with his siblings.
There was me with my sister and my parents, grinning at the camera.
There was Isaac and I standing on the edge of a building as we smiled at the camera, Isaac in that private, secretive way, and me grinning like an idiot.
And there too was me with Gina and Mikael.
Isaac had never wanted me to forget them or ignore that they had been important to me, but that wasn’t a surprise if you knew Isaac.
They had a spot on the wall, just like Gina’s favorite sundress still hung in our shared closet.
Just like how that silly stuffed lion of Mikael’s had been carefully maintained over the years as it sat on a shelf next to the sliding glass door.
It had been Isaac who had done the research, made the calls, and was given all the information before he’d come to me with the idea to have them properly cleaned.
The smell of smoke had been thick on Gina and Mikael’s favorite things, even years later.
But it had been Isaac who had carefully arranged for them to be safely cleaned, and they no longer smelled of the fire that had taken my first real loves from me.
I stepped closer to the source of Isaac’s voice and recoiled when I was met with a pointed, narrow face.
God, I loved that man and his love for all living things, but a fucking snake?
“Hi,” I said to Mildred, the rescue Isaac kept insisting wasn’t venomous, but goddamn...no one wanted to come home to a large snake dangling from a light fixture.
Her tongue flicked, and I took that as permission.
I walked back to our bedroom, where he was happily folding laundry.
I knew I had about twelve hours before he went back to Arete, not as a guest, but as a Guide.
Apparently, Reggie had decided to extend the offer to Isaac to join their team, though Luka and Cade had played a part in making that offer happen.
But really, who better to help someone in dire need than someone like Isaac?
Yes, his time learning to lie to people who wanted him to lie, even when they didn’t want to admit they wanted to be lied to, helped him develop a lot of the skills that would come in handy, but.
..he was also one of the gentlest, kindest, and hardheaded people I knew.
It was a perfect fit for a group of men who were broken and desperate but needed someone to help them.
He was still singing when I walked in and saw him swaying his hips naturally, not because he was trying to seduce anyone.
I’d never realized before that he was the sort to sing for the sake of it, but after I’d been released from the last facility and he had started coming around, as a friend at first but little by little—
Well, he could sing. He could sing beautifully, maybe not in a way that was going to top charts, but it was enough to make me stop and listen without hesitation.
He could reach highs, and he could reach lows, but it was the way he could break your heart and lift it at the same time that truly made me listen.
And then I interrupted it by wrapping my arm around his waist, laughing when he yelped in shock and then slamming him down onto the bed.
It was exactly where he had been piling up the laundry, but I didn’t care.
What mattered was the shock on his face, followed by recognition and a smile as he ran his hands gently down the side of my face with that silly little smile of his.
“Hi,” he said with a chuckle. “Get your reality check for the day?”
“I did,” I said, nuzzling his neck and inhaling deep, taking in the scent of him, of home. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he said as he wrapped his legs around me, maybe to seduce me, maybe to express how happy he was; who cared? Lust was passion for us, and passion was a dramatic way of showing how happy we were to be with each other, as each other. “Are you okay?”
“I am...for now,” I said, because I had sworn long ago that honesty, true honesty, was the only way we could get through everything that was wrong with me.
“Feel like being okay together?” he asked, and while he meant it genuinely, I could feel him hard beneath me and chuckled as I kissed him fiercely.
“You’re goddamn right,” I said, and I went about removing all those annoying clothes.
We were okay now, great even, but we weren’t always going to be.
There were going to be times when I wasn’t okay, or he was unhappy.
Sometimes we could talk about it; other times, I would go stay with Cade because I was so fed up or felt like I was losing my mind too much. But right now? We were great.
With him, I could take each day at a time. And maybe—
Well, maybe that was the key to being me, and to us being us.