Chapter 19
KELSEY
“How are you feeling right now?” The therapist asks for the fifth day in a row.
Ryder hired a therapist to talk out my trauma as soon as we got back home. Is it helping? No. Can I say that? Also, no, because they’ll just push more antidepressants and anxiety pills on me.
“Fine.” I sigh, continuing to twirl a small section of my hair between my fingers. I’ve started to do that more recently.
Therapist Ansley sighs as if this is a complete waste of her own time and she isn’t getting paid a fortune to put up with me for an hour every day.
“Hun, I know you don’t want to talk, but it is going to help you.
” She searches around the small room that’s filled with two plush armchairs and a coffee table.
“Have you written in the notebook I gave you?”
Ah, of course. The classic ‘write your feelings down’ notebook, that never works.
Why do they still recommend them? “No,” I reply dryly.
Ready to get the hell out of here. I glance up at the clock above her head and watch the seconds tick by until the session is over.
“There’s three minutes left, can I be excused now? ”
Ansley stares at me, lips thin. Her mouth opens, and she sighs heavily. “Next session, I expect one page filled in that notebook. This will only work if you put in effort, and everybody here wants to see you heal.”
I drop my gaze to my shoes, finding them more interesting than this conversation.
“Do you understand?” She presses.
“I understand that you have no idea what I’ve gone through, so talking to you about anything isn’t going to solve shit for me, now is it?”
Her posture straightens, and I watch her jaw clench and unclench as if picking her words just right to prevent me from exploding anymore.
“That’s the thing, Kelsey. I want to be able to understand and help you. I can only do that if you talk to me.”
Snatching my phone off the coffee table, I make a beeline straight for the door. Fuck this.
“Kelsey!” She shouts from behind me, but I ignore her.
An hour of staring at her old, withered face every single damn day is absurd.
Okay, she probably doesn’t deserve to be called old and withered, but damn it!
She’s a nice lady and obviously has a shit ton of patience if she’s dealing with my bullshit this well.
Ryder arranged this little office in the basement, where his gym is. It’s just a little closet that he had some guys come in and lay carpet, repaint the room, and add warmer lighting. I guess it works for its purpose, but I hate it.
“How’d it go today?” Hayden’s voice startled me. I had been in such a hurry to leave that I hadn’t noticed him lifting weights in the corner of the gym.
“Good.” My eyes dart to the wall before returning to his, hoping he doesn’t question it further.
“Liar.” A playful smirk curves the side of his lips, and my eyes roll so hard it’s a wonder they didn’t get stuck back there.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Nope,” I say, popping the p. “Where’s Ryder?” I say, trying to deflect the conversation.
“Upstairs last I saw him.”
I purse my lips and nod my thanks, then high-tail it out of the basement before being bombarded with more questions I don’t want to answer.
Taking the steps two at a time, I get a woft of bacon and coffee.
It makes my stomach churn as a wave of nausea hits me.
Ever since I started my new meds, my stomach has been uneasy, and I haven’t eaten much.
Granted, I didn’t eat for two days after we got back from my nerves.
Which still makes me wonder if that’s what made Ryder hire Ansley.
“Mornin’,” Ryder greets me too enthusiastically when I emerge from the basement door.
He’s been like that since we got back. It seems everyone treats me like a ticking time bomb.
They’re too scared to talk about it and wait for me to talk.
I don’t see the point in talking when we’ve all seen the footage and know exactly what happened, down to every detail and word.
I’ll be fine if everyone could just move on.
“Hey,” I say, wrapping my arms around my waist.
“I’m making breakfast, hungry?”
“Nah, not really. Just water, please.”
“You really should try to eat something, anything.” His eyes lift to mine, and butterflies swarm my belly. “I can make you something?” He continues.
“I promise, I’m okay. I don’t think it would stay down if I did eat.”
The muscles of his jaw click. I can tell his patience is wearing thin, and he wants to argue, but like everyone else, he’s afraid they’ll break me.
I hate it. This treatment from my friends has to be the worst of all this.
Hell, I think I prefer the asshole Ryder over this pitiful, guilt-filled Ryder.
“Well, how did your appointment go?” Really? That’s how he chooses to change the subject?
My eyes roll on an exaggerated inhale. “Pointless. Same as the past 4 days.” I reply, giving a tight-lipped fake smile.
His cheeks puff out as he exhales, palms flat against the granite counter, and my spine straightens.
“It only works if you…”
“No!” I interrupt. “It doesn’t help. I know what happened, I know how I feel.
The only problem I have is that all of you walk around me as if you’re scared to treat me like normal without me exploding!
” I hadn’t realized I was yelling and that I had stood up from the stool.
My head snaps up straighter, correcting myself.
Maybe I am a little on edge, but my point still stands.
Ryder’s brows raise as he stares at me pointedly. A knowing smirk played across those beautiful lips.
I nervously twirl a small piece of hair between my fingers, “I’m fine.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. Okay?”
“I don’t know, I guess it depends.”
“Log some things that have been bothering you, maybe some memories for your next session, and if you can make progress, I might consider telling Ansley her services are no longer needed.”
My interest piques at that. That’s tempting, but…
“But,” He continues, and I roll my eyes.
I knew there’d be a but. “If I do that, you have to promise to talk to me when I ask.” He had walked closer.
I must’ve been too deep in thought over his proposal to have noticed.
His hands land on my hips, a devilish smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
I take a step back, putting some distance between us.
“What? You think I can’t do it.” I’m not asking, I know what he’s insinuating with that smug ass look.
“I didn’t say that.” He counters.
“You think I can’t, that I’m too stubborn, right? That’s why you made that deal.”
His head cocks to the side, crossing his arms over his chest, making his muscles push the black shirt’s sleeves to their limits. I bet if I listened hard enough, I could hear a seam pop. “I would never say you can’t do something.”
I flinch at his words. Not because they were bad, but because I think he truly meant that. “You mean that?
“With every fiber of my bitter black soul, yes.”
My eyes roll, “Your soul isn’t bitter or black.” Other than killing a few people to get to me, he’s harmless. I think. I cringe because what man can kill that many people and sleep peacefully at night? I shake that thought from my head.
He laughs, smoky and deep. “You have no idea.”
Those were his last words before he spun me around by the shoulders and urged me up the stairs to get ready.
Throwing up my signature messy bun after blow-drying my hair, I stalk out into the hall.
I nibble my inner cheek, contemplating whether I should pop into Jessie’s room for a bit.
She seems more depressed and spacey than I do after getting back.
Would she even want to see me? It feels strange even thinking that Jessie wouldn’t want to, considering we had been inseparable in school.
I ease up to the door, hesitating before knocking.
When she doesn’t answer, I hold my ear to the door. It sounds empty, but I haven’t seen her leave, and she didn’t have any plans that I knew of. I wrap my fingers around the gold knob and twist. To my relief, it was unlocked.
“Jess?”
A sleepy grunt was my response. When I edged around the corner, I found Jessie sprawled across the bed, her arm hanging off the bed, and her blankets lying haphazardly around her and the floor.
“Just doing a life check on ya,” I say, huffing a laugh, but it was more from relief than comedy.
“What time is it?” She mumbles groggily.
“Uhh, good question.” I haven’t kept track of time in days. Ryder gave me a new phone, but I haven’t turned it on since he set it up. It would be too overwhelming to answer my social media or explain everything to my parents. “Shit!”
“What?” Jessie snapped up onto her knees. Had I said that out loud?
“It’s nothing.” I lie, but when Jessie gives me that look, “It’s my parents. I need to call them soon, I imagine they’re worried shitless about me.”
“Bitch, you scared me! You can’t yell things like that after what happened.” Had I yelled that? Oops.
“Sorry,” I grimace. “Anyway, do you know what Ryder has planned for today? He said he’d tell me after I got cleaned up.”
“Yeah, the race tonight.” Yawning, she stretches her arms above her head, then moves the blankets off her legs to stand. “You gonna go?”
“I don’t think Ryder is giving me a choice,” I say, propping my hip against her dresser.
I grab a picture Jessie had stuck on her mirror.
It’s of us from about a year ago at the state fair.
We had taken it in one of those photo booths and had been high as a kite that night.
You can see it in our eyes as they were blazing red.
I smile faintly at the memory. I never would have imagined this to be Jessie’s life, and well, now mine.
“I think you’d have a lot of fun. But you’ll need to stick with me and security.”