“Because of my mom?” I ask tiredly. “How very Freudian.”
“Not necessarily.” She tilts her head, considering. “But something taught your nervous system that being trapped and unable to escape…is dangerous.”
Being trapped and unable to escape.
The memory surfaces before I can stop it. Laurence Starling’s cologne, thick and cloying. The click of the lock. The way the room seemed to shrink until the walls were pressing in on all sides. His hands on my shoulders, his voice in my ear, his breath hot against my neck while every cell in my body screamedwrong wrong wrongbut I couldn’t move, couldn’t run, couldn’t do anything except wait for it to be over.
“Phoenix?” Melanie’s voice is gentle, but firm. “You went somewhere just now. Can you tell me where?”
My mouth opens. Closes.
For ten years, I’ve been able to keep that memory locked away. I rarely tell anyone the full story, but I’ve always been able to make the connection between my avoidance of alphas and what happened.
Maybe that’s not the only connection the animal part of my brain made.
It’s not just the flying. It’s not just my mother’s childhood stories about aviation disasters. It’s thetrappedpart. The inability to leave. The complete surrender of control to forces outside myself.
Being locked in a hotel room with a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Being strapped into a metal tube thirty thousand feet in the air, unable to open a door or change direction or doanythingexcept sit there and hope the people in charge know what they’re doing.
“I think I just figured something out about myself,” I say finally.
“That’s good. I’d strongly encourage you to follow up with a therapist who specializes in trauma when you get back home,” Melanie says gently.”For right now, there are some techniques that might help. Not solutions, but tools to make the flying more manageable while you work toward deeper healing.”
By the end of the session, the thought of getting on a plane doesn’t make me want to take up lobster fishing and move into town permanently.
Atticus and Mason are exactly where I left them, almost. They are outside of Stephanie’s room, seated on a bench that looks like it’s been there since the hospital was built. Mason has put his sunglasses back on, hiding his eyes, but Atticus looks up the moment I appear around the corner.
He’s on his feet immediately, crossing the distance between us with long strides. “How did it go?”
“Did Stephanie kick you out?” I ask, instead of answering.
Atticus’s expression turns rueful. “She had phone calls to make.”
I laugh. “Yeah, that sounds like her.”
Mason appears at my elbow, having shed the sunglasses again. His expression is carefully neutral, but I know him well enough to read the concern beneath the composure. “Better?”
I turn to face him—my assistant, my friend, my…whatever we are now. The man who spent three years taking care of me, who just spent three days in heat with his estranged bondmate, who suggested I talk to that social worker because he knew I needed help I was too stubborn to ask for.
“You were right,” I tell him quietly. “I needed that.”
His expression softens. “You seem calmer.”
“Don’t get used to it.” I reach out and squeeze his arm, the touch brief but meaningful. “I’m going to find something else to be bratty about soon.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “I would expect nothing less.”
THIRTY-FOUR
ATTICUS
The doorof The Rusty Anchor swings open with a groan of ancient hinges.
In the bright light of the early afternoon and without the crowd, the noise and the drama of that first night, the place feels smaller. Like I’m walking into someone’s living room uninvited.
Dom is behind the bar, sleeves rolled to his elbows, arranging bottles on the back shelf. His tattoos catch the weak light streaming through the windows, dark ink shifting over lean muscle as he moves.
