Chapter 13 Morgan
THIRTEEN
Morgan
The quiet in my head had crept up on me.
It had been weeks since we’d arrived at Guardian Hall. Long enough that my body had stopped bracing for impact every time someone said my name. Long enough that Gabbi slept in decent stretches and smiled when she saw me, as if she expected me to always be there.
Then there was Cole.
My boyfriend.
And the cautious and gentle way he was dating me, taking Gabbi and me to places that were good for her.
Which was kind. Thoughtful. And maybe—
The thought turned sour.
Maybe he wasn’t really dating me at all.
Maybe he was dating a ready-made family.
The idea made no fucking sense in my rational mind, but it hit hard and ugly, and I hated myself for it.
It sounded selfish. Wrong. As if loving my daughter somehow disqualified me from wanting anything else.
I loved that he loved her. I wanted her on dates.
I needed her there. And still my head wouldn’t let it go.
Because, despite falling for Cole, all I could really see when I looked at him was this rich, successful man. This kind, steady man who moved through the world as if it wasn’t constantly trying to knock him flat. And then there was me. No job. No plan. Trauma stitched into my bones.
How could he want me?
I hadn’t spent any real time alone with him.
Not really. We’d kissed, sure—but there was always Gabbi.
Always a clock ticking somewhere in my head.
Did he even want that kind of time? Did he want me, stripped back and unguarded, or just the version of me that came with a baby and a story that made sense?
Fuck.
I was a mess, and I was losing control of my thoughts, and I hated it.
And all of this was in my head as I sat with Elena in the small counseling room, my foot bouncing although I’d already identified all exits, checked the windows, and already done all the things I used to do to make sure I was safe.
Elena watched me for a moment, pen resting against her notebook, not writing anything.
“You’re restless,” she said.
I huffed out a breath. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“You don’t have to.” She paused and then smiled. “How are things?”
I leaned back in the chair, then moved forward again. Still couldn’t get comfortable. “Things are fine,” I said, and the word sounded wrong in my mouth. Too smooth. Too easy. “Gabbi’s grandparents revisited yesterday, that’s the fifth time now.”
“You’ve been counting?”
I blinked at her. “No. Yes… no… She’s my daughter, and I don’t want… I want…” Fuck my brain. “At least there’s no more lawyers or waiting for bad news,” I finished.
Elena let out a soft mmm, and I stiffened. My brain started inventing problems, and I waited for her to ask me what I meant.
“Did her parents ask about Annie?” she asked gently. “About their daughter?”
I shook my head. “Yes and no. We talked a bit about her.”
“And the specifics of how you found her?”
“No.” The word came out flat. Final.
Elena let that sit for a second. “Okay. Then let me ask you—how did you find her?”
I looked away immediately. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“That’s okay,” she said, calm as anything. “We don’t have to go into details. But sometimes even saying a little can help take the pressure off what you’re carrying.”
I huffed out a breath. “It’s not pressure. It’s…” I trailed off, scrubbing a hand over my face. “It’s images. It’s there whether I talk about it or not.”
She nodded once. “That makes sense. Your brain is trying to process something it doesn’t know where to put yet.”
“I don’t need to process it,” I muttered. “I just need to move forward.”
“With Gabbi,” she said.
“Yeah. With Gabbi.”
Silence stretched for a second, not uncomfortable, just… there.
“And the images are getting in the way?” she asked.
I laughed under my breath, but there was no humor in it. “Yeah. You could say that.”
She didn’t push. Just waited.
I stared at a spot on the floor. “I don’t want to talk about how she was dead,” I said finally, the words coming out clipped.
“Or the needles. Or my daughter crying in a crib while people hovered around the place, grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. Like that mattered more than a kid. Like she didn’t even exist.”
The room went very still.
I blinked.
Then I let out a rough breath. “Yeah. So. Apparently, I am talking about it.”
Elena’s voice stayed soft. “You are. And you’re doing it in a way that’s letting you stay in control of it.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t feel like control.”
“It’s a start,” she said. “You chose what to say. You stopped where you needed to.”
I leaned back, suddenly tired. “It’s all wrong. The whole thing. I keep thinking—if I’d gotten home a day earlier or if I’d checked sooner, or if I hadn’t sent money that she probably used on drugs rather than on Gabbi… fuck!”
“That’s shock talking,” she said gently.
I frowned. “Shock?”
“Shock looks for logic where there isn’t any,” Elena said. “It tries to rewrite the timeline, so the outcome makes sense. So, it feels preventable.”
“It was preventable,” I snapped. “She shouldn’t have died like that.”
“You’re right,” Elena said. “She shouldn’t have. But that doesn’t make it your responsibility.”
I pressed my lips together, shaking my head. “Feels like it is.”
“That’s grief,” she said. “And guilt. They tend to show up together.”
I stared down at my hands. “I don’t even know what I feel about her,” I admitted. “We weren’t… it wasn’t like that. Not really. One night. Then, months later, she tells me I’ve got a child. Then she’s gone.” I swallowed hard. “I don’t get to have clean grief. I don’t even know what I’m grieving.”
Elena leaned forward slightly. “You’re grieving what happened. The way it happened. What Gabbi lost. What you didn’t get a chance to understand or fix. That’s all valid.”
I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “I just keep seeing it. The room. And Gabbi—” My voice hitched, and I forced it steady. “Gabbi crying like no one was ever going to pick her up.” I rubbed my hands together, grounding myself in the friction, forcing myself to stay here.
“That’s a traumatic imprint,” Elena said. “Your brain has tagged it as something important—something dangerous—and it’s replaying it to try and keep you alert.”
“I don’t need to be alert,” I muttered. “I already am.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s part of the problem. You’re stuck in that moment, even though you’re here now.”
I looked up at her then. “So, what do I do?”
“For now?” she said. “We work on reminding your brain that you’re not in that room anymore.”
I frowned. “How?”
She nodded toward the doorway. “Where’s Gabbi?”
“Asleep,” I said automatically.
“Safe?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Fed?”
“Yeah.”
“Warm?”
I huffed a breath. “Yeah.”
Elena held my gaze. “Then right now, in this moment, you’re not in danger. She’s not in danger. That matters.”
I let that sink in, slow and uneven.
“She’s safe,” I said quietly.
“You made that happen,” Elena said.
I shook my head. “I just… took her and ran.”
“You removed her from harm,” Elena corrected. “That’s not ‘just.’ That’s everything.”
I stared at the floor again, but something in my chest shifted, just a fraction.
“I don’t feel like I did enough,” I admitted.
“You don’t have to feel it yet,” she said. “We’ll work toward that. Right now, it’s enough that you did it.”
Silence settled again, but this time it felt… steadier.
Less sharp around the edges.
“I don’t want to see it anymore,” I said finally. “That room.”
Elena nodded. “We’ll work on that. Gently. At your pace.”
I exhaled, long and slow.
“Okay,” I said.
“How are you sleeping?” she asked instead.
“Not too many nightmares.”
“But?”
I hated when Elena did that with her open-ended single words. “There’s no but!” I snapped, then subsided into my seat, embarrassed. Of course, there was a but. “I feel like I’m… loitering here.”
That got her attention. Her eyebrows lifted slightly, and she finally made a note. “Loitering,” she repeated. “In what way?”
“Like if I stand still too long, someone’s going to ask what I’m doing here.
” I rubbed my hands together, the familiar friction grounding me.
“Guardian Hall is for people who need help. Real help. I did need it. I know that. But now I’m just—here.
Eating food. Using a big room. Taking up time.
” She didn’t interrupt me. Didn’t reassure me.
Let me dig the hole all by myself. “I keep thinking I should be doing something,” I went on.
“Working. Training. Anything. I can’t just sit around waiting for the next thing to go wrong. ”
“Is that what you think you’re doing?” she asked after a pause.
I frowned and considered everything I said. Hell, I’d said a lot. “What?”
“Are you waiting for something to go wrong?” Elena asked.
The answer came too fast. “Yes.”
She nodded, like that made perfect sense. “That’s not restlessness, Morgan. That’s your perpetual watchfulness looking for a new role.”
I stared at her. “Great. So, I’m gonna be broken differently now.” The self-hatred came fast and vicious, along with a gut-wrenching certainty that I was never going to get my shit together.
“No,” she said calmly. “You’re healing. And healing is boring. It doesn’t come with instructions.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Because I won’t go back to what I was. I wanted an education, but now I want to be a good dad, and fuck, I don’t know how to start something new without blowing everything up.” I winced. “Sorry for cursing. Again.”
She smiled at me. “I’ve heard worse,” she said and tapped her pen once against the page. “Okay, we need to break this down into stages, okay? We don’t start with what you want to do. We start with what you can tolerate.”
That stopped me. “I don’t understand.”
“What kind of working day could you manage, with childcare, without it costing you everything?”