Elena held my gaze. “Then right now, in this moment, you’re not in danger. She’s not in danger. That matters.”
I let that sink in, slow and uneven.
“She’s safe,” I said quietly.
“You made that happen,” Elena said.
I shook my head. “I just… took her and ran.”
“You removed her from harm,” Elena corrected. “That’s not ‘just.’ That’s everything.”
I stared at the floor again, but something in my chest shifted, just a fraction.
“I don’t feel like I did enough,” I admitted.
“You don’t have to feel it yet,” she said. “We’ll work toward that. Right now, it’s enough that you did it.”
Silence settled again, but this time it felt… steadier.
Less sharp around the edges.
“I don’t want to see it anymore,” I said finally. “That room.”
Elena nodded. “We’ll work on that. Gently. At your pace.”
I exhaled, long and slow.
“Okay,” I said.
“How are you sleeping?” she asked instead.
“Not too many nightmares.”
“But?”
I hated when Elena did that with her open-ended single words. “There’s no but!” I snapped, then subsided into my seat, embarrassed. Of course, there was abut. “I feel like I’m… loitering here.”
That got her attention. Her eyebrows lifted slightly, and she finally made a note. “Loitering,” she repeated. “In what way?”
“Like if I stand still too long, someone’s going to ask what I’m doing here.” I rubbed my hands together, the familiar friction grounding me. “Guardian Hall is for people who need help.Realhelp. I did need it. I know that. But now I’m just—here. Eating food. Using a big room. Taking up time.” She didn’t interrupt me. Didn’t reassure me. Let me dig the hole all by myself. “I keep thinking I should be doing something,” I went on. “Working. Training. Anything. I can’t just sit around waiting for the next thing to go wrong.”
“Is that what you think you’re doing?” she asked after a pause.
I frowned and considered everything I said. Hell, I’d said a lot. “What?”
“Are you waiting for something to go wrong?” Elena asked.
The answer came too fast. “Yes.”
She nodded, like that made perfect sense. “That’s not restlessness, Morgan. That’s your perpetual watchfulness looking for a new role.”
I stared at her. “Great. So, I’m gonna be broken differently now.” The self-hatred came fast and vicious, along with a gut-wrenching certainty that I was never going to get my shit together.
“No,” she said calmly. “You’re healing. And healing is boring. It doesn’t come with instructions.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Because I won’t go back to what I was. I wanted an education, but now I want to be a good dad, and fuck, I don’t know how to start something new without blowing everything up.” I winced. “Sorry for cursing. Again.”
She smiled at me. “I’ve heard worse,” she said and tapped her pen once against the page. “Okay, we need to break this down into stages, okay? We don’t start with what youwantto do. We start with what you can tolerate.”
