Chapter 33
CALLIE
Ilanded in Maddox’s consciousness with a forceful jolt. I was in a completely unremarkable beige office, feeling the heavy sensation of being gigantic Maddox-size again.
My first surprise was Dr. DeMille. If Maddox were to attend therapy at all, I assumed he would insist on a doctor who was also a gorgeous sex bomb, who conducted all her sessions in micro-miniskirts and with cleavage bursting out of her plunging necklines.
Instead, I found myself looking at a regular woman, dressed professionally.
At this point in the session, Maddox’s mind was swirling with recollections of how he would emotionally shut down with me during our marriage, and the layering of memories over memories was momentarily dizzying.
“When do you remember first going quiet like that?” Dr. DeMille asked.
The question yanked another memory to the forefront of Maddox’s consciousness: shutting down as a child when his father would start verbally ripping him apart.
Direct contact with that memory was searing. Maddox was so young, so tiny, and the language from his father so unbelievably vicious.
I felt immense relief when Maddox’s focus returned to the actual therapy session, as he connected for the first time that his father had taught him love and pain were the same thing.
The people closest to you were the ones who could destroy you.
So he’d learned to keep everyone at arm’s length, especially the people who mattered most. With me, real intimacy meant real danger.
It meant being seen, being known, being vulnerable to someone who could hurt him the way his father had.
As I explored his mind during this, I encountered only earnest sincerity. And pain, and regret, and remorse. I found none of the scheming and calculation I would have expected.
That being said, this was the session he’d chosen to bring me to. This could have been the only one that would play well out of the dozens of times he’d been.
But he had granted me a level of mind access that I’d never had before, so I might as well take advantage of it.
Seizing control of the wheel, I yanked us out of this stirring emotional breakthrough.
Sensing the memories of his other sessions, I focused in on one at random and zoomed myself into it.
And again, I found Maddox feeling only sincerity and an authentic desire to change.
This time he was realizing that, deep down inside, he saw himself as worthless because of his father’s treatment, and it caused him to seek external validation from things like fancy cars, an overly extravagant home, an impressive job title… and lots of other women.
I pulled myself out of that memory and snatched onto another session.
In this one, he was reflecting on the cheap emptiness of his other hookups, how he was compelled to have so many of them because the relief they brought was so short-lived.
He was disgusted with himself for becoming so fixated and compulsive.
The heaviness and magnitude of the regret staggered me, as did the fact that nowhere in his active awareness were thoughts of the curse. For any of these.
Flying out of that one, I hopped into another session. And here he was on the verge of tears!
But not good tears. Selfish and self-pitying ones. He was spiraling about how badly he’d fucked up his life, how he’d lost everything that mattered, how he didn’t know how to fix any of it, and feeling that he was just the most fucked man on the planet. Making it all about himself.
Grim satisfaction flared. This was exactly what I’d expected to find!
But then Dr. DeMille’s voice cut through. “What could you do that isn’t about fixing your life or getting something back?”
Maddox went quiet. I felt his mind working, struggling with the question. And then, rising slowly, the notion to… help people, maybe? Volunteer somewhere?
The simplicity of it seemed to stagger him. The idea that he could just give, for no reward.
As he focused there, the self-pity receded from his thoughts.
I stayed in that session a while longer, riding along as he kept circling back to the volunteering idea.
A homeless shelter, maybe. Somewhere he could actually be useful.
The more he talked about it, the more genuine it became.
Like he was discovering he could matter in a way that had nothing to do with who he fucked.
Oh my gods! He was legitimately serious about this!
But so far, I’ve only looked at his actual therapy sessions. Could he really be like this all the time now?
I rapid-fire started skipping myself through randomly chosen memories, and it was one moment of strength and kindness after another.
Focused and working at the homeless shelter.
Speaking up in a meeting to defend a female co-worker who was being talked over.
Offering support to a struggling new hire.
Helping a frail old man with his bags at the grocery store!
Okay, what about when he was alone? Maybe that’s when the dark side still came out to play.
I grabbed something from a late night. Maddox laying down in the basement, trying to get to sleep.
But sleep wasn’t coming, because all of his thoughts were of me.
How much he loved me, how much he yearned for me to forgive him, how much he knew he didn’t deserve it but still couldn’t stop himself from hoping for it.
His determination not to interfere with what I needed, no matter how much he wished to.
It struck me there was one thing I’d conspicuously avoided on this angry mad dash through his mind: any memories that had me actually in them.
So I ran through a line of those, times he’d been in my presence as he served dinner, or brought me my morning tea, or folded laundry in the living room while I read, or even while he was listening to me fuck other men down the hall.
The love burning in him in all these moments was powerful.
He was aching for me, in a way that consumed him completely.
In every memory with me, I felt his pull toward me like gravity, that desperate need to be close enough to touch, to protect.
His body remembered mine with a passion that went beyond sexual…
the curve of my shoulder, the sound of my voice, the particular way I moved through a room.
He wanted to wrap himself around me and shield me from everything, including himself.
It was tender and fierce and so overwhelming it felt like drowning.
Fuck. This was real. Somehow, under my nose, Maddox had completely transformed.
I had seen enough. I broke the link and slammed back into my own body.
I stood above Maddox, as he gazed up at me with the most loving, pleading expression. I had never seen him look so vulnerable or so open. His hot, desperate hunger for whatever small piece of me I might grant him was no longer hidden.
“Oh, Maddox,” I said, surprising myself when I heard the softness in my voice.
“Did that help?” he asked hopefully. “Do you feel any better?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
He opened his mouth to reply.
“So let’s not talk.” Magic flared from my hands, lifting him to his feet as I closed the distance between us, my lips finding his.