“I got out,” I manage. “Six months ago. I’m still trying to figure out how to be a person again. But I found people who—” My voice cracks. “People I love. Who love me back. And I thought that might be enough.”
“But?”
“But he’s back.” The admission feels like bleeding out. “Not in my life, exactly. But close. Too close. And I’m finding out that I’m not as okay as I thought. That whatever he did to me is still in there, still running in the background, and I don’t know how to make it stop.”
Silence. The kind that invites more, that doesn’t rush or push or demand.
“I hurt someone,” I say. “A few weeks ago. During—” I can’t say it. “I dissociated. Became someone else. Someone he made. And I didn’t even realize what I was doing until it was over.”
“You hurt one of the people you love?”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
“And that’s what brought you here.”
Another nod.
Dr. Reiner leans forward slightly. “Chris. Can I call you Chris?”
“Yes.”
“What you’ve described—the conditioning, the dissociation, the loss of control—these are symptoms. Treatable symptoms. They don’t define you. They’re not who you are.”
“They feel like who I am.”
“I know.” Her voice is gentle but certain. “That’s what trauma does. It convinces you that the worst version of yourself is the truest one. That the person you became to survive is all you’ll ever be.”
My throat closes. The pressure builds behind my eyes, in my sinuses, spreading until my whole skull throbs with it. I know this feeling—the one I’ve spent thirty-eight years outrunning. Boys don’t cry. Longos don’t cry. Operatives sure as hell don’t sit in therapists’ offices and fall apart.
But I’ve seen Wyatt cry. At the safe house, when we finally talked about what happened between us. He’d looked right at me while he did it, tears on his face, voice steady. Like it was just another thing a body does. Like it didn’t diminish him at all.
If he can do that—if tears don’t make him less?—
The first one spills over before I can stop it. Then another. I stop trying.
“It’s not true,” she continues. “The fact that you’re here, that you made that promise, that you’re trying to protect the people you love by getting help—that’s who you are. The person who sat in that chair and told me the hardest truth you know. That’s you.”
I don’t know if I believe her. But I don’t leave, either.
She hands me the box of tissues and waits for me to collect myself. Then she asks her next question.
59
Nina
Wyatt’s been in my kitchen for twenty minutes, opening the refrigerator, closing it, pulling out ingredients and putting them back. In my old apartment, those first months we were together, he never hesitated like this. He’d show up with groceries and a plan, make my cramped galley kitchen feel like it had always been waiting for him. He’s not usually the indecisive one.
He’s holding a block of parmesan now, and I know it’s not about dinner. He’s waiting too. He’s just better at keeping his hands busy while he does it.
I’m curled on the couch with Nikita, pretending to watch a British baking show while actually watching the clock.
Chris’s appointment was at four. It’s almost six now.
“He’s fine,” Wyatt says without turning from the fridge. “First sessions always run long.”
“I know.” I scratch behind Nikita’s ears. She purrs, magnanimous. “I’m not worried.”
Wyatt glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
