He’s correct. His purring’s rougher, more like a growl, but given my frozen state, it’s grounding. I go limp in his arms, shaken like I’m in a personal massage chair.
“She’s lost weight.”
“Because she won’t eat anything,” Rickon says, passing me the mug of peppermint tea before draping a blanket over me.
I drink a little to please him. My darling Rickon hasn’t left my side since I broke down in the parking lot. But I can’t force much down. What’s the point when it’s all going to fall apart?I know I agreed to the calmative medication after that episode, but how am I supposed to put the shattered pieces of myself back together when my brain’s stuffed with cotton wool? At least the meds blunt the painful edges a little.
Or a lot.
But even if I can’t care, my instincts still demand I save Zack.
I close my fist in Callisto’s shirt. “Reverse the charges. None of it matters if Zack—” My mouth dries up, refusing to finish the thought. If Zack dies, I die. End of story.
Callisto flinches. “Red . . .” He hesitates, thumping heart speeding up under my ear. “I can do that, but then he walks free. And we don’t have any guarantee Zack or you will be safe after that. He deserves to be in prison for what he’s done to you, Red.”
A sob bloats my throat, but I can’t cry or swallow it down. It lodges there like a heartburn that won’t go away.
He clicks his tongue and tightens his hug. “I’ll protect Zack. I’m making a deal with his cellmate to watch his back, okay?”
Nothing’s okay until I have Zack back in my arms. I return to watching raindrops, exhausted.
Samantha materializes like she’s walked through a teleport and clears her throat. “You have a visitor, Red.”
My brain comes up with three reasons not to move from Callisto’s lap, but strangely, my body moves automatically. Probably a vain hope that somehow Zack’s here.
But it’s not Zack sitting in the cozy meeting room the nurse leads me to.
It’s the liar. Dr Leanne Gunry.
Her frizzy hair catches white highlights from the ceiling lights as she sets up two desk easels and lays paint tubes out on the plastic-covered table. Dr Woods sits to one side, legs crossed as she worries a finger across her bottom lip. “I don’t think she’s ready, Leanne—” She snaps her mouth shut as we enter.
It’s ridiculous, looking at my two therapists in the same room, one resembling a boardroom director in a silk blouse and pencil skirt, and the other broken free from a high school drama class. A laugh rises in my chest but can’t break through the numbness.
“Hello, blessed girl,” Leanne says in her usual cheery way, ignoring the other psychologist. “Will you come have a chat with me? Your alphas and friends are welcome as well.”
I walk over to the table, drawn by a compulsion I can’t explain. My hand drifts across the line of paint tubes, itching to neaten the uneven row. Perhaps Rickon is rubbing off on me more than I realized.
Instead, I pick a tube up, uncap it, and then lift it high. I watch with a dissociated disinterest as my fingers squeeze, creating a wriggling, falling line of paint, right over Leanne’s head and shoulders. Rickon gasps behind me.
Her smile doesn’t falter. “Prussian blue. Nice choice! Does it remind you of his eyes?”
I twitch. After staring at her for a moment, I mutter, “You lied. I wasn’t doing good.”
Leanne takes the dented tube from me, grabs my hand, and runs it through the paint dripping down her neck. “Get some of this on your canvas. We’re going freestyle today.”
Someone ties an apron around me, and when I sit, Rickon’s beneath me on the chair. He wraps his arms around me like a seat belt and purrs faintly as Leanne strokes my flesh paintbrush across a canvas.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? The contrast between white and blue. Like innocence and experience.” Leanne resettles her easel beside mine, and then grabs a paintbrush and dips it into her hair. “I want to show you something, Red.”
With a few expert strokes, she creates a blue mountain, the white canvas spaces giving the impression of snow among bluelines and patches of shadow. “Ever seen big mountains?” she asks as her brush whiskers over the grainy surface.
“Only in pictures,” I murmur, sticking and unsticking two paint-covered fingers together.
“Mountain climbers get lots of praise for scaling these heights. And sure, they’re doing an amazing feat that requires training and experience. And help from others. But not everyone can be a mountain climber. Because . . .”
I watch, entranced despite the mental fog, as her brush moves down, coaxing a handful of pine trees in the middle ground, and then dipping to the front right-hand side with a series of tight, jagged lines to create a ravine.
“It’s just a quick sketch, but hopefully you get the idea,” Leanne says as she leans back.
