How could he want me?
I hadn’t spent any real time alone with him. Not really. We’d kissed, sure—but there was always Gabbi. Always a clock ticking somewhere in my head. Did he even want that kind of time? Did he wantme, stripped back and unguarded, or just the version of me that came with a baby and a story that made sense?
Fuck.
I was a mess, and I was losing control of my thoughts, and I hated it.
And all of this was in my head as I sat with Elena in the small counseling room, my foot bouncing although I’d already identified all exits, checked the windows, and already done all the things I used to do to make sure I was safe. Elena watched me for a moment, pen resting against her notebook, not writing anything.
“You’re restless,” she said.
I huffed out a breath. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“You don’t have to.” She paused and then smiled. “How are things?”
I leaned back in the chair, then moved forward again. Still couldn’t get comfortable. “Things are fine,” I said, and the word sounded wrong in my mouth. Too smooth. Too easy. “Gabbi’s grandparents revisited yesterday, that’s the fifth time now.”
“You’ve been counting?”
I blinked at her. “No. Yes… no… She’s my daughter, and I don’t want… I want…”Fuck my brain. “At least there’s no more lawyers or waiting for bad news,” I finished.
Elena let out a softmmm, and I stiffened. My brain started inventing problems, and I waited for her to ask me what I meant.
“Did her parents ask about Annie?” she asked gently. “About their daughter?”
I shook my head. “Yes and no. We talked a bit about her.”
“And the specifics of how you found her?”
“No.” The word came out flat. Final.
Elena let that sit for a second. “Okay. Then let me ask you—how did you find her?”
I looked away immediately. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“That’s okay,” she said, calm as anything. “We don’t have to go into details. But sometimes even saying a little can help take the pressure off what you’re carrying.”
I huffed out a breath. “It’s not pressure. It’s…” I trailed off, scrubbing a hand over my face. “It’s images. It’s there whether I talk about it or not.”
She nodded once. “That makes sense. Your brain is trying to process something it doesn’t know where to put yet.”
“I don’t need to process it,” I muttered. “I just need to move forward.”
“With Gabbi,” she said.
“Yeah. With Gabbi.”
Silence stretched for a second, not uncomfortable, just… there.
“And the images are getting in the way?” she asked.
I laughed under my breath, but there was no humor in it. “Yeah. You could say that.”
She didn’t push. Just waited.
I stared at a spot on the floor. “I don’t want to talk about how she was dead,” I said finally, the words coming out clipped. “Or the needles. Or my daughter crying in a crib while people hovered around the place, grabbing whatever they could gettheir hands on. Like that mattered more than a kid. Like she didn’t even exist.”
The room went very still.
