Uncharted Terrain

Prologue

Prologue

He saw his shrink on Tuesdays. Not because he wanted to, but because when he hadn’t been allowed to drive, his sister had taken him, and Tuesday was the day she sent her pre-schooler to daycare. Now that he’d gotten his licence renewed, he drove himself, thank God, but he’d stuck with Tuesdays because—well—it seemed fitting. Tuesdays weren’t Mondays. They weren’t depressing from the get-go. Or, if you were an optimist and considered Mondays to be a fresh start—because some people were fucking insane—then Tuesdays didn’t qualify as that either. They weren’t the middle of the week. They weren’t uplifting Thursdays. They weren’t party Fridays. They were Tuesdays. Boring and endless, and just far enough away from the next weekend that you sort of felt like it might never come.

Shrink appointments felt just like that.

They didn’t refresh him. Didn’t push the reset button on his life. They also didn’t depress him outright so much as they left him feeling—bogged down, lost, and a little bit angry, but also somewhat healed, since Dr. Leslie Jones really seemed to know her shit. Even when he really didn’t feel up to hearing what she had to say, he listened anyway. Whenever he settled himself on her leather couch, he felt like the heaviest man on earth, and like maybe, he’d never get back on his feet—which technically, after an hour of sitting, was entirely possible, given his fucked-up left leg. But by the end of each session, he was usually lighter. Like she’d managed to knock a little weight off his shoulders. It wasn’t much—but it was enough to keep him coming back to see her, week after week.

So, yeah, shrink appointments felt like Tuesdays, just like the number seven and knives had the same energy, and no, he wouldn’t elaborate on that.

“Tanner? Tanner? ” His shrink called his name, pulling him back to the present and his current predicament. Although she spoke firmly, her expression was sympathetic.

“I think I lost you there for a minute.”

“Right, yeah. Sorry,” he apologized, trying to pull himself together. He’d been doing this so often lately that it had become a well-practiced ritual. Sit up, square his shoulders, smooth down the front of his shirt, move his leg so the stabbing pains would be reduced to a dull throb, adjust the sling holding his left arm hostage, and finally paste on his sunniest smile.

“Where did you go?” she asked. Tanner wracked his brain for any clues as to what they were discussing before he’d zoned out, but he came up empty.

“Nowhere, really. Just—comparing knives and the number seven,” he answered, partly to placate her and partly because he was afraid of hearing her take on his Shrink-and-Tuesday analogy.

“Is that something you did often? When you were over there?”

He liked Dr. Jones. Really, he did. But he also wanted to drive an ice pick through his skull out of sheer frustration when she managed to ignore his diversions and get right back to business.

He sighed, knowing he couldn’t outwit her.

“I did a lot of things to keep myself busy. I don’t remember everything,” he replied with a shrug.

He knew he should not be so avoidant. He’d agreed to come here. He wanted to be here—well, not wanted in the same way he wanted a beer on a hot day after work but wanted to be here in an otherwise-I-will-blow-my-brains-out type of way. Yet, every time he sat on that damned couch, he consistently shied away from sharing his innermost thoughts with her. He used assholish, sarcastic remarks to avoid those questions like Neo avoided bullets in The Matrix.

“And since you’ve been back? What have you been doing?” Although she knew the questions and the answers by rote, she used this technique to warm him up to talk about his past. To get him to reveal details about what had happened while he’d been “away.” It was their usual song-and-dance routine, so, with a tired sigh, he played his part.

“Physiotherapy, mostly. And I started working for the family business again,” he replied with a shrug.

“And what does that involve?”

“I sell lawn care service contracts.”

“And how’s that going for you?”

He huffed out a laugh and leaned forward, wincing as something in his leg pulled. He stared at the floor for a minute before sitting back again.

“I was a helicopter pilot. I flew people in and out of war zones. Now, I sell lawn care services—how do you think it is?” he replied, wincing inwardly at how ungrateful he sounded.

“Unfulfilling,” she stated, and yeah, Tanner supposed that summed it up pretty damned well. He just shrugged.

“Well, since my pole dancing days are over,” he joked, patting his injured leg, “I’m just glad it pays the bills!” He summoned a smile that he hoped didn’t make him look like the Joker.

Dr. Jones nodded and scribbled something down, then she looked up and adjusted her glasses. Tanner knew exactly what was about to happen. She would have been a terrible poker player. She had tells. Lots of them really, but this one—adjusting her glasses right before speaking—always meant she was about to chew another hole in his ass. Oh, goody.

“As you know, I’ve spoken with your family about who you are—who you were —before everything happened. I do this because it gives me a feel for the person we’re supposed to be working our way back to. The descriptions varied—most people aren’t very good judges of character—but they all had some things in common. Do you know what those things were?”

Tanner shook his head. He couldn’t cross his arms because of his goddamned sling, which pissed him off every time he tried. He settled for wrapping his free arm around his midsection protectively.

“Everyone told me you were a passionate man. An emotional man, even. Someone who jumped in with both feet without thinking it all the way through.”

Tanner did his best not to react. He’d gotten pretty good at it. He’d had to.

“So, Tanner, when you talk to me about your unfulfilling job that merely pays the bills, I don’t see any signs of passion. Instead, I see a hard shell meant to protect you from something,” she explained, gentle and patient as ever. “I can’t help you if you hide behind a shell. Neither one of us likes empty platitudes; it’s a waste of time for us to pretend we do.”

Something about her last sentence irked him. As if he’d been personally offended by the notion of wasting time.

His next words burst out of him before he could stop them.

“What the fuck do you expect me to say? I fucking hate it, alright! It’s a mind-numbing job, and it makes me want to pull my fucking teeth out. But with a bum leg and a fucked-up head, what the hell else am I good for?” He positively seethed with frustration and anger. So, yeah, maybe she’d been right about him being a hothead.

She smiled with satisfaction.

“That right there is what I’m looking for, Tanner. I want you to let it all out.”

He responded to her praise and encouragement with a short bark of a laugh as his head fell back in resignation.

She scribbled something else in her notebook and calmly glanced up at him.

“Have you managed to get in touch yet with some old friends?” Her head was cocked like that of a bird dog listening for a duck call. Somewhere in her 50s and mild-mannered, she was also sharp as a tack, refusing to fall for any of Tanner’s bullshit. Even though he tried his damnedest to get her to do exactly that during every session. But it seemed defeat was imminent. Again.

“All of them are dead now,” he said, shrugging, because he’d made peace with that a long time ago. His men were dead. The guys he’d worked with—his home away from home—had died in the same helicopter crash that had completely fucked up his life, breaking his body and his spirit. During his darker moments, he was glad they were dead, wondering if maybe their fate was better than his own. He wouldn’t have wished this shit on anyone he loved. Ever.

“You said yourself you had friends in the city before you shipped out. High school friends. Childhood friends. Why haven’t you reached out to them?”

“They’ve moved on. I’m dead to them. No longer a part of their lives, so what would be the point of dragging them into this mess?” He refused to show any kind of emotional reaction under her penetrating stare.

“Perhaps they would like to have you back in their lives.” He knew damned well that her suggestion was really a thinly veiled order.

“Right—and people like stepping on Legos,” he replied, hoping she’d be distracted by his ludicrous remark and abandon her line of questioning.

She sighed and jotted something down.

“What about sex?”

Tanner knew her well enough by now to recognize her intent to shock him with that sudden transition, to make him inadvertently divulge information that she’d been planning to get out of him all along.

“Doc, I’m flattered, but I’d rather keep it professional,” he replied quickly, not wanting her to think she’d caught him off-guard, even as he mentally scrambled for a better defense.

“What a shame, since I almost exclusively go for repressed men with erectile dysfunction.”

Tanner huffed and shook his head.

“That was low, even for you, Doc.”

“Stop pussyfooting around then,” she responded with a pitiless grin. “Have you managed to get aroused? Have you done what we agreed upon? Did you try—”

“Okay,” he said, holding up both hands in surrender, as he felt himself flush with embarrassment. “I feel like I’m having the talk with my mother.”

“Would you rather I refer you to—”

“No,” he cut her off. “No,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I just—no. I haven’t—” He stopped abruptly and coughed while re-positioning his leg so it wouldn’t hurt as much. “I haven’t managed to get little T on board.”

“Did you try watching videos? Fantasizing about past lovers? Reading—”

“Yes.” He could feel the tips of his ears burning as he squirmed uncomfortably. Staring at the arm of the couch, he scratched at the grain of the leather with his index finger, unable to look at her.

“Doesn’t matter what I do—there’s nothing. No interest,” he mumbled as his blush swept all the way up to his hairline.

“Have you tried branching out?”

“Branching out?” he asked, looking up for the first time since she’d brought up sex.

“Branching out, yes. Looking into things you hadn’t considered before.”

“I really don’t think whips and chains are going to be my cup of tea,” he said, rolling his eyes, because he was pretty sure if he was ever cuffed to anything, ever again, he’d lose his fucking mind. For real this time. It would probably seep out of his nose and take off running.

“Branching out does not mean extreme. It could mean choosing different types of relationships, settings, and partners.”

He shook his head. No. That wasn’t the solution to his problem. He knew the kind of porn he liked. He’d devoted too much private time in high school establishing his preferences not to know what they were. But now, when he watched those videos of perfect women on their knees while pleasuring guys, he felt remarkably detached. Uninterested. Disconnected.

“Unless you identify as asexual, having a healthy sex drive is just as important as eating right and getting enough sleep,” she reminded him as she had many times since their first session.

“Yeah, well, I live on frozen dinners and haven’t had any real sleep in over three years. So—sex is gonna have to stay on the back burner for now.”

“Still having nightmares, then?”

He snorted derisively and vigorously rubbed his face in annoyance.

“What is the maximum number of rhetorical questions you are permitted to ask in a session in order to maintain your license to practice psychiatry?”

“As many as needed when my patients are unwilling to fully participate in their own recovery,” she answered with a too bright, TV commercial smile.

“It’s not just nightmares. I can’t get to sleep—and then when I do, I wake up for the stupidest reasons, and then—sure, yeah, I’ve had lots of nightmares,” he confessed, and it did feel like pulling teeth to discuss this ongoing problem.

“Why do you think it is that you can’t get to sleep?”

He sighed and returned to scratching at the grain of the leather couch. He was worse than a fucking cat, but he needed the distraction.

“The apartment is empty, but the complex isn’t. Feels like I’m alone again—but being watched—again.”

“Why not sleep at your sister’s place? She seemed more than happy to—”

“I’m almost 30 years old. I’m not going to sleep at my sister’s house forever like a fucking wimpy-assed loser. Besides, I kept waking up her kids when the nightmares—” he shook his head. “I’m fine. I get enough sleep to get by.”

She hummed and squinted at him, appearing puzzled as if he was a real moron who had missed something important.

“What?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

“You can’t sleep because you feel alone but watched from the outside. I assume that means it’s a feeling you heartily dislike.”

Tanner nodded.

“And yet, that’s exactly what you perpetuate in your life. You refuse to see friends. Refuse your sister’s help. You won’t let anyone in. Until you’re all alone with everyone observing you from the outside. Surely you can see the irony of that, Tanner.”

There was nothing intentionally cruel in her gaze or observations, but he grimaced anyway at her accurate assessment.

“I think I liked you better when we were flirting.”

Her faint smile at his comment dissolved into a contemplative frown. “Only because you know it could never be. Sex demands vulnerability, Tanner, and for that—you would have to let someone in.”