Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
I’d always found it amusing that he had grown up to be a head-doctor while I’d turned into a head-case. I had a whole team of therapists and medical professionals I could have reached out to in regard to Gwen’s apparent superpower over me. Though Daniel would always be my first call. I must have sounded like a maniac on the phone, because he had already been standing on my front porch at eight a.m., ready to use his fancy degree to fan my flames.
It was only fair that he gave me a heavy dose of bullshit first.
I shot him a scowl. “You done cracking jokes yet?”
“Probably not.”
“Awesome. Should I bend over to make it easier for you to kick me in the ass?”
He set his coffee on the end table, managing to fit it perfectly inside one of the stained water rings. “All right. All right. Let’s just take a deep breath.”
“That’s the problem,” I rumbled. “I can breathe, and I have no idea how to stop it.”
“From a medical standpoint, I’m going to advise you not to stop it. The body usually revolts against asphyxiation.”
“But I know how to handle that. I’ve been suffocating for years. Then suddenly, last night, I wasn’t.” I shook my head. “No, no. That’s not true. I was definitely suffocating when I got home. But when I was sitting in that booth with her there…I, I…” I scrubbed a hand over my beard and fought to keep the emotion out of my voice. “I think she broke me. Forever.”
“Hey,” he said, all trace of humor gone. “I think you’re framing this wrong. This is black-and-white thinking. You’re assuming that because it happened once it’s always going to be that way. There is no truth to be found in always and never.”
It was a bald-faced lie therapists had been trying to shove down my throat for years. In my experience, always and never were far more factual than the torturous maybe and possibly. Those words implied that life was like a coin and every situation had two sides. Heads, everything works out. Tails, you fail everyone you love.
But my coin was one-sided.
It always had been.
That would never change.
Those were the facts.
I kept those thoughts to myself in order to avoid a twenty-minute lecture on faulty thinking patterns.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I asked.
He leaned forward and put his elbows to his knees. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time to change the routine.”
“No,” I clipped, the idea knotting my gut. “There’s gotta be another way.”
“There are a lot of different ways, actually. I get why you go there every week, and a few years ago, I agreed. But it’s time, Truett. You need to work on radical acceptance of the things you can and cannot change. Slicing the wounds open every week, even for just an hour, will never allow you to heal.”
I don’t deserve to heal. I didn’t dare say that out loud, either. He’d have been all over the big D-word.
To avoid eye contact—and his shrink clairvoyance—I started pacing again. “Fine, okay. Let’s pretend she didn’t break me. The Grille’s closed now. What if, when she opens up again, it’s not the same?”
“Then we’re right back to radical acceptance. You can’t change what happens to The Grille. You can only control how you react to it.”
If I had a nickel for every time someone had preached the same message, I could maybe, probably, find a coin that would finally land on heads. I wasn’t holding my breath.
Intertwining my fingers, I rested my cradled hands on the top of my head and continued the step-step-turn routine. “Blah, blah, blah. I could have gotten that shit off a pamphlet at the VA.”
“And if you had, I wouldn’t have needed to forgo my birthday blowjob and then cancel my morning patients so I could come here and repeat it to you again.”
Guilt consumed me. Not about the blowjob. Fuck that. But I hated to be a burden. My issues were my own. As much as I leaned on Daniel, I never wanted to interfere with his life. I was so fucking proud of the man he’d become. He had an amazing wife, two handsome little boys, and a successful career that afforded him a lifestyle we could have only dreamed about when we were younger.
Unlike me, he deserved every single bit of that and more.
Drawing in a deep breath, I finally sat down on the other end of the couch. My heart didn’t slow, nor did the panic leave my body, but I plastered on a smile. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
He patted me on the shoulder. “You know I’m here for you no matter what, right? Day or night. It doesn’t matter. I just wish I could drill a hole in your head and force this into your brain.”