“Everything isn’t fine,” I say. I probably shouldn’t assume, but her persistence feels eerily similar to my own with the wayshe brushes off moments of importance and doesn’t care to give names to things that hold weight.
There’s something bothering her, something that’s hovering just under the surface. I’m going to figure out what it is if it’s the last damn thing I do. “What is it, Emory?”
“I… I’ve been having nightmares. I was late because I didn’t sleep well last night, and I dozed off for a few minutes before I had to leave to come here.”
My brows furrow and worry settles at my temples. “What kind of nightmares?” She just looks at me, her head tilted the slightest bit. “About your accident?”
“Yes…” When she trails off a second time, I know there’s more to it than just her trauma coming back to make itself known.
“What else?”
She sucks her lip into her mouth again, but I don’t let myself get distracted. Not this time. Not when we’re on the brink of something important that could help her move forward and heal. “My fiancé was there. His mother, too. I was lying in my bed, and I couldn’t move. I fell to the floor, and I-I?—”
When her breathing picks up in panic, I say, “Breathe, Emory.”
She audibly inhales a deep breath, her chin quivering from the fear that looms in her memory. Whatever this nightmare was, it had to have felt real and vivid enough to get this kind of reaction out of her.
“There you go,” I offer when she calms down a minute later. My foot taps gently on the floor, restless over not being allowed to go over there and offer her the comfort she so clearly needs.
I’ve always done a decent job at keeping my patient’s problems at an arm’s length. Years of being in the mental health sector has given me a lot of practice in distancing myself. Andyet, there’s something about her that makes me want to do the complete opposite. That has me wanting to rush to her side.
She shakes her head, not in a way of saying no, but in a way that says she can’t make sense of why these people were in her dream.
“They, um…”
“We don’t have to rush this. Take your time.”
She drops her gaze to her fumbling hands again. “They were there, and they weren’t helping me. I couldn’t move, but water was about to fill the room. They just kept saying that it was my fault.”
I don’t react or say a word.
“They think—believe—I went out there to kill myself.”
“Could it be that their thoughts on what you experienced are negatively impacting you?”
I can see that’s what’s happening, but I want her to hear it from herself. For her to look back, reflect on what happened and what people are saying about it, and make the link without anyone interfering.
Her pretty green gaze looks up at me, her cheek sucked into her mouth like she’s biting down on the sensitive flesh as she thinks. “I think that’s obvious, isn’t it?”
I shrug. “Perhaps it would be to some but not to everyone.”
“They’re supposed to be in my corner,” she says, emotion inflicted into her words. “They’re supposed totrustin me, and yet, they don’t. When the only people I have to lean on look at me, I can see it in their eyes.”
“What do you see, Emory?”
I love how she’s not afraid to look at me when she’s laying her heart out on the line. I wasn’t sure we’d get here this quickly, but I’m not complaining. My fucking soul lights up at the knowledge that I’m the one being blessed with her vulnerability.
Because if what she’s saying about the people in her life is true, then that means no one else is getting it. I’ll happily accept it and selfishly keep it. So long as she wants it that way.
“I see their disgust, their doubt.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “Like I’m this burden, and that my words don’t matter enough for them.”
My heart fuckingcracksfor her.
Goddamn this Bronson dude.
My hands itch to break something, but I know how important it is to keep calm and collected, which is why I curl my hand into a fist and simply rest it on my lap as I say, “Your value isn’t dependent on what others think or say about you. It’s only determined based on what you think of yourself. You went through a traumatic experience, one that not many people will understand. Sometimes others lean into certain ideas and reasoning to save themselves the heartache, for them to make sense of what’s happening around them in the world and preserve their own mental health. That doesn’t have to mean anything more than that.”
She scoffs softly. “You’re making excuses for them.”
