“Ridiculous how?”
“Like—he made me breakfast this morning and then watched me eat it like he was afraid I'd smuggle the eggs into my pockets when he wasn't looking. And he keeps asking if I'm okay every five minutes, which would be annoying except I know he's doing it because he's terrified I'm gonna do it again.”
“Are you going to do it again?”
The bluntness of the question caught me off guard. “I don't know. I don't want to. But I also didn't want to the first time, and I still did it, so my track record isn't great.”
Dr. Lin nodded, making a note. “Let's talk about what led up to that night. What was happening in the hours before you made the decision to take the pills?”
I stared at the rug and traced the pattern with my eyes. “A lot of things came at once. My parents. A legal situation with my youngest sister. And something personal that I thought I'd already lost before I even had a real chance at it.”
Dr. Lin waited, pen resting against the notepad.
“I just — ran out of room,” I said. “That's the only way I know how to describe it. There wasn't any space left to put any of it.”
“That's a massive stressor,” Dr. Lin said gently. “What else was happening that night?”
“Rook and I had—we'd gotten close again. Really close. And I thought maybe we had a chance at fixing what we'd broken all those years ago. But then he pulled back and told me it was a mistake. That what we'd done was a mistake.”
“What did you do?”
“Slept together. In Montreal, after a game. And it was—” My voice cracked. “It was everything I'd been wanting for thirteen years. And then the next morning he looked at me like he regretted all of it, and I knew I'd ruined it again. Knew I'd pushed too hard, wanted too much, been too much chaos for him to handle.”
Dr. Lin was quiet for a moment. “So you were dealing with the threat of losing your sister, the financial stress of a custody battle you couldn't afford to fight, and what felt like rejection from someone you cared deeply about. All at the same time.”
“Yeah.”
“That's not spiraling for no reason, Soren. That's being hit by multiple catastrophic stressors at once while you're already running on empty.”
I had to swallow hard before I could answer. “I kept thinking about how much easier it would be if I just—stopped. If I didn'thave to figure out how to fight my parents or how to fix things with Rook or how to keep pretending I had any idea what I was doing. I didn't have anything left in me. No fight, no hope, no energy to keep going.”
“So you took the pills.”
“Yeah. I took the pills and drank enough to make sure they'd work, and then I lay down on my bed and waited to stop feeling everything.”
Dr. Lin was quiet for a moment, and I could feel her processing what I'd just said. When she spoke again, her voice was careful. “And Rowan—where are things with him now? You said he told you what happened between you was a mistake. Has that changed?”
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. “Yeah. It changed. He’s the one who found me and we talked after that. Figured things out.”
“How did that feel?”
“Confusing as hell,” I admitted. “Because part of me wanted to tell him to fuck off for putting me through that, and part of me was just—relieved. That he didn't actually hate me. That I hadn't destroyed everything by wanting him too much.”
“Do you think his words contributed to your attempt?”
“Yeah. I mean, the custody thing was the main trigger, but hearing him say we were a mistake just—it confirmed everything I'd been telling myself.”
“But he came back.”
“Yeah. He came back.” My voice cracked on the words.
“How does that feel?”
“Weird. Good. Terrifying.” I dragged a hand through my hair. “I don't know how to make sense of it. He saw me at my absolute worst and he didn't run. He just stayed. And now he's taking care of me like it's the most natural thing in the world.”
“Does that scare you?”
“Of course it scares me. What if I'm making him the reason I stay alive? What if I start needing him so much that I can't function without him? That's not fair to him. He shouldn't have to be responsible for keeping me breathing.”
