Chapter 40 Thea
CHAPTER FORTY
THEA
TWO WEEKS LATER
“You’re circling it,” Dr. Burgas says softly. “Whatever happened … you keep stopping right before you say it.”
I look down at my hands, clasped tightly in my lap.
My pinky plays with the fabric of my leggings, while the rest of my fingers dig into my palms. I breathe slowly, but it’s shallow.
It’s always the same. Dr. Burgas tells me I’m circling, which is her fancy way of saying I’m not telling her everything, but I can’t.
Won’t. I already put someone in jeopardy once by trying to expose EV, and I won’t do it again.
Plus, I’m not sure I could put it all into words. How do I explain that the person who cracked me open doesn’t want me? That he wants me to move on without him.
The office is too warm. It’s stifling, and my skin itches. Dr. Burgas’s diffuser hums on the stubby bookshelf behind her desk, dispersing a thin fog of lavender-scented mist that’s supposed to calm me. Yeah, that doesn’t work. Neither does the therapy.
After a week of not leaving the house, I finally opened the envelope Slade gave me.
I’d hoped there was a note, something I could cling to or read because I miss his voice.
But it was cash. Loads of it for groceries and bills, despite the fact that he bought me my childhood home, which I don’t want, and paid for my last college semester, which I don’t need to attend.
Classes have started, but I haven’t gone.
I guess that’s why I’m here. I need help.
The clock on the wall is round and a pale teak-wood color. It’s barely ticked as the hands shifted over the course of the hour, and I find it utterly annoying.
“I can’t.” My voice cracks, not because I’m depressed. I’m angry. With him.
Dr. Burgas sits across from me. Her pen quit writing twenty minutes ago, and she tries for the third time to coax something from me.
Glasses sitting low on her nose, her hair pulled into a slicked-back bun, she looks at me like I’m broken and fragile, which raises the hair on the back of my neck.
She can’t know? Right? “But you can,” she says.
Leaning forward, she drops her pen in favor of steepling her hands together.
“I need to know if I’m going to help you carry this burden, Thea. ”
It sounds great in theory. The idea of opening up, telling her I was sold by my father, kidnapped by the very men she probably voted for—assaulted, tortured, and through all that fell in love. I snort out loud.
“What is it?”
Is it weird I don’t want to share? I don’t want to be told that I experienced some Stockholm syndrome like Slade wants to pretend to make it easier.
He wasn’t my captor or abuser. He saved me.
Gave all the girls something to ease their time.
My grief, my guilt for the other girls, for Piper, my love for Slade—if I work through that, does that mean it will go away?
I shake my head, my throat too tight to speak. The couch creaks under me when I shift, moving to sit on my hands.
I can’t try to theorize him away—I don’t want to. He’s the only thing in this that’s real.
Dr. Burgas exhales, slow and steady. She’s annoyed, though I’m sure she can’t actually say it out loud. “Then tell me how it feels. Don’t tell me what happened. Tell me where it sits in your body?”
And now I hate her. Just for a second.
She’s good.
“I can’t breathe sometimes, like there’s a weight set on my chest when I sleep, so I don’t. I rewatch the same movie because it’s his favorite. I eat cereal every night for dinner, not because I’m lazy, but because it was our thing.”
She nods, keeping quiet because it’s the most I’ve said in the past three sessions.
“My house is dark. I miss the light from all the windows. It’s loud here. The traffic, neighbors yelling, the soft, constant hiss in the walls because I’m pretty sure there’s a leak somewhere. I miss the lapping of the lake, the calming water.
“It’s not right to feel so much, this much for someone and not have them. And sometimes … sometimes I think it might just kill me. I’ve never wanted anything more. Never had much direction in my life, but he’s the path I’d choose each time.”
Tears roll down my cheeks, and I’m grateful I gathered my hair into a rat’s nest on top of my head. I look toward the bookshelf lined with books with names I couldn’t imagine pronouncing, then bounce to the ceramic holder full of tissues she gestures to, yet I ignore.
“So, this is about a guy?” Dr. Burgas sighs, like maybe I’m just another young, sappy girl torn up about a breakup.
But she doesn’t know.
“No,” I whisper. “It’s about the love of my life.”
I’m not sure you’re supposed to feel worse after therapy, but I do.
I went back for my fifth session today, and as I shut the door to her office and descend the steps to the sidewalk, I want to vomit.
Especially after I told Dr. Burgas that I finally went into my mother’s room.
She wanted to know how it made me feel. Well, Dr. Burgas … like crap.
It felt like trespassing. Like I was breaking some unspoken rule by stepping inside when I couldn’t for so long after her passing.
Why courage struck me at two in the morning when I couldn’t sleep is beyond me.
Dr. Burgas said it wasn’t courage at all, but my nervous system finally exiting survival mode long enough to tolerate the memory of the space.
Their room was exactly the same, but everything in me knew it wasn’t hers anymore. Just like I’m unsure the house is really mine.
The Chicago air is slightly cooler, so I greedily suck it in and head to my car.
A black town car sits across the street, and I glance at it before it pulls away from the curb and drives off.
When I reach the driver’s side door, my phone dings.
I take it out and open the message from the grocery store, texting me that my pickup is ready.
Thank God. I’ve been out of Frosted Flakes for three days now.
Once inside my vehicle, I turn it on, pulling up the grocery app on my new phone and clicking the button that says I’m on my way.
When I click out of the app, Tristan’s response to my apology sits unopened on my phone.
I don’t need to read it, but I can see it from the preview on my lock screen.
It’s okay, Thea. I’m doing well. I hope you are, too.
It’s quiet closure I’m not sure I deserve.
An email from my college advisor pings through confirming our appointment for tomorrow.
In my last therapy session, Dr. Burgas somehow talked me into two things I’d been avoiding—texting Tristan and scheduling that appointment.
I refused at first, but the words my mother used to say made me think twice. “Bloom where you’re not meant to grow.”
I’ve done it before; I can do it again.