Chapter 42
Iwas feeling better. Lighter. More like a human and less like a gaping wound with mental health issues.
The zip line had shown me that things could be a boost of dopamine for me without being life threatening.
And the girl screaming beside me had been a huge bonus.
The fact that she’d clung to me and cursed at me and laughed like I was someone safe, someone fun, had made me feel almost normal.
Even afterward, when the internet spiraled out over the mystery girl in my video and people started calling her my girlfriend, she didn’t bolt.
She just sent me a screenshot of the comments and said, “So… do I get to steal your hoodies now?”
In the back of my mind, I knew I was paying her to spend time with me.
That this was technically still a session.
But it felt real. She felt real. Like she wanted to be here.
Not because she had to. Not because it was her job.
And that confused the hell out of me. Because I knew it wasn’t very stable to cry your eyes out on a woman’s couch one week and then get turned on while watching her zip line the next.
But somehow… here I was. Healing, even though I didn’t want to. Wanting her, even though I shouldn’t.
When I showed up to our next session, I brought her a coffee.
I didn’t know what kind she liked. I just remembered she’d once said she liked it iced, sweet, and “embarrassingly girly,” and for some reason, I wanted to be the one who remembered that.
Who showed up with her favorite things. She blinked at me when I handed it over.
“For me?” she asked.
“Nah,” I said. “For the other life coach in my life.”
She smiled so wide it hit me in the chest. We were running out of sessions.
I could feel it like a clock ticking down the time under my skin.
Other than broaching the subject lightly the other week, I hadn’t really asked her yet—if she’d see me after this.
If I’d still be allowed to want to be around her once the job was over.
But it was starting to feel like a real question. Like maybe, somehow, she’d want it too.
She’d spread art supplies across the small table in her office. Not like a teacher laying out a project, but like a friend who already knew what would make me sit down and stay awhile. Charcoal pencils. Watercolors. Blank paper. No instructions.
“I know it’s ironic, but this is the part of life that I hate,” I said, dragging a chair over. “The end.”
I didn’t mean the session. Or the art. I meant the countdown to the end of this.
Us. The way it felt like something was slipping away from me before I had the guts to really grab it.
Iris sat across from me, curling one leg under herself like she always did.
She didn’t push. Didn’t make it clinical.
She just said softly, “Have you thought about what you want things to look like after session twenty?”
I stared at the page in front of me. Drew a line. Then another. I didn’t know what I was drawing yet. Maybe nothing.
“I guess I thought I’d be gone by now, so I never thought about it.” My hand stilled. I waited for the dread to claw up my throat like it used to. But it didn’t.
“But I won’t be,” I said finally. “Gone, I mean.”
Her voice was gentle but direct. “Do you still think about it?”
It was the question we’d danced around for weeks. Dressed it up in metaphor. Skipped over it with humor. But now, sitting here with a charcoal pencil and her eyes on mine, I didn’t feel the urge to lie.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not in the way I used to.”
Iris nodded slowly, her expression unreadable in the best way. “That’s progress. Even if it doesn’t feel like it yet.”
We sat in the quiet for a while. I added more lines to my paper. They were starting to look like something. Mountains, maybe. Or scars. I wasn’t sure which.
“What if I’m not ready?” I asked. “What if I say I’m not better yet and need to continue our sessions just so I don’t lose this—lose you?”
She didn’t react with surprise. Or pity. Just understanding, with the hint of something else hovering beneath the surface.
“You’re allowed to not be ready for change,” she said, almost purposefully not addressing what I was really trying to say. “Plus, the goal of healing isn’t to be better. It’s about learning to stay with yourself, even on the days when it hurts to exist.”
I swallowed hard. “Is it bad if I still need you?”
Her voice was a little quieter when she replied. “Needing someone isn’t bad, Danny. It’s normal human nature… to need.”
I tapped the pencil against the page, thinking. Not drawing anymore. Just… bracing myself.
“What if I wanted more?” I pushed further, trying to sound casual while I helped her understand. “Hypothetically.”
Iris didn’t look up right away. She kept brushing color onto her page with a little sponge, soft swirls of blues and greens.
“More from what?” she finally breathed out.
“From life. From… people.” My throat tightened. “From you.”
That made her pause. Her hand holding the sponge stilled.
“I mean—hypothetically,” I added quickly. “If someone had, like, been basically feral for a few years and suddenly started wanting to be… less feral. Would that person wanting someone else to… stay. Would that be crazy?”
She looked at me now. Not with professional curiosity. Not with caution. But with something softer. Warmer. Like she already knew what I meant and had been waiting for me to say it.
“No,” she said. “That wouldn’t be crazy at all.”
I blew out a relieved breath; a shaky laugh followed it. “Good. Because the hypothetical guy I’m talking about would be so screwed if it was.”
Her lips quirked. “And would this hypothetical guy happen to draw like he’s been doing it in secret for years?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not. I’m just impressed.”
“You’re deflecting.”
She smiled. “Maybe a little.”
We fell into comfortable silence, and soon my page wasn’t just a mess of color anymore.
It was a field—wild and sweeping. Grass that bled into a lavender sky.
A fence in the distance. Not a live wire or anything threatening.
Just… a place that said you can stop here for a while.
A place someone might call home if they were brave enough to admit they wanted one.
I didn’t realize I’d drawn it until I stopped and put my pencil down.
Iris leaned over, and I could feel her body heat again.
Her shoulder almost touched mine. Her eyes traced every line like they were pieces of me.
“Danny,” she breathed. “That’s… beautiful.”
I laughed under my breath, half-embarrassed, half-shocked. “I was just messing around.”
“You weren’t. You made something gentle.”
“I’m not gentle.”
“You could be,” she said softly. “If someone let you.”
I looked at her then. Was painfully aware of her closeness.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“I love it.”
She touched the corner of the page, like she didn’t want to smudge anything, but I wanted her to.
I wanted her to smudge me. I shivered, not even really understanding what that meant, I busied myself with cleaning up the art supplies and then we moved to the couch.
Not for any specific reason, really, we just naturally migrated there.
As if we’d done this a thousand times already.
She curled one leg beneath her. I stayed upright at first. But then the silence filled in around us again, and I let myself sink back beside her.
My arm brushed hers. She didn’t move away.
I watched her for a second before speaking.
I memorized her profile and the soft way she breathed.
I remembered the way she looked at my drawing like it had meant something I’d never managed to say aloud.
“Do you think I’m too crazy for you?” I finally felt bold enough to spit it out. I’d stood in the middle of a tornado for God’s sake; I could do this. Her eyes turned toward me, wide and searching.
“Danny,” she corrected, “you’re not crazy.”
I gave her a crooked smile. “That’s not a no.”
“You’re complicated. You’ve been through hell.” Her voice dropped with her admission. “But no. You’re not too anything for me.”
I felt something shift in my chest. Something heavy and terrifying, and stupidly hopeful.
“I still don’t know what happens after this,” I said.
“Maybe you don’t have to know yet.”
She was close. Our shoulders were almost touching again.
“I’m afraid,” I admitted quietly.
Her eyes flicked up to mine.
“Of what?”
I forced a breath through my nose. “Of not… seeing you every week. Of going back to whatever I was before this.”
I expected her to reassure me with some non therapisty-sounding logic. But she didn’t. She just nodded slowly, her gaze soft and impossibly kind.
“I think I’m afraid of that too,” she admitted.
That stopped my heart for a second. “What do you mean?” I asked too fast.
She smiled like I’d caught her saying something she hadn’t meant to say out loud. But she didn’t backtrack.
“I mean,” she said, “I’ve seen a lot of clients. I’ve worked with a lot of people. But you… you matter to me more than anyone ever has.”
Her voice dipped lower. “More than you probably should.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“I thought maybe I’d imagined it,” I said.
“You didn’t.”
The ache that bloomed in my chest wasn’t sad.
It was something else. Something rarer. It was what hope felt like when you hadn’t felt it in so long you forgot how heavy it could be.
It was then that I finally let my shoulder lean into hers, just barely.
Just a feather touch of her warmth, but it was enough to ignite every nerve ending in my body.
“I think I have to do it,” I said. “Before I can really move on. I need to confront him. I keep thinking I can move forward without doing it, but… I can’t. He’s still in my head. And if I don’t face him—if I don’t say what needs to be said—I don’t think I’ll ever be free.”
She looked at me with that unblinking steadiness she always had, like she could hold the weight of anything for me.
“I’ll take you,” she said.
“What?”
“Next session. If you’re sure. I’ll go with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t have to do everything alone anymore.”
That cracked something wide open in me. We sat in comfortable silence again, but this time, my hand brushed hers on the cushion between us and she didn’t pull hers away.
DANNY
She said she’ll come do something important with me next week
CARTER
That sounds ominous
DANNY
Yeah. Just a thing I need to take care of before I finish up therapy.
CARTER
Pretty sure you’re not in therapy, my guy
DANNY
You know what I mean
DANNY
PS she said I matter to her and her hand was like…ON mine. Like FULL PALM TO PALM CONTACT
CARTER
Omg. Not the fucking hands again.
CARTER
you are aware that is not even first base. right? Like you’re not even in the stadium yet.
DANNY
stfu
CARTER
I knew it. You’re in love.
DANNY
I am NOT in love.
DANNY
I am mentally unwell with a soft spot for a woman who wears cardigans and knows how to validate my trauma.
CARTER
that’s literally the same thing, buddy.
DANNY
Also like what if she touches me again and wants more than just hands and I freak out.
CARTER
What if she breathes and you spontaneously combust
DANNY
It’s entirely possible.
DANNY
She smelled like vanilla today.
CARTER
Bro.
CARTER
Ask her out.
DANNY
I can’t ask her out yet.
DANNY
I’m still technically her emotionally wrecked PAYING CLIENT
CARTER
Okay, but after that…you’re gonna marry her, right?
DANNY
I will deny this entire conversation in a court of law
CARTER
Sure.
CARTER
Just remember to invite me to the wedding, Mr. my eyes needed a minute to adjust. I opened a new document.
Just a blank page. I stared at the blinking cursor.
My fingers didn’t move. Not at first. Then I started typing.
Slow to start. Then faster. When I was done, I didn’t stop to reread.
Didn’t pause to second guess. I just shocked myself by falling back to sleep, the cursor blinked on the first sentence.
If you’re reading this…