My throat constricted. It was painful to be consistently hurt by someone who was supposed to protect you.
My chest felt hot with anger and something worse under it. Grief, probably. Or guilt. They wore each other’s clothes often enough that I couldn’t always separate them.
My thumb hovered over the screen. I didn’t know what counted as a reasonable amount of anger anymore. I didn’t know what part of this reaction belonged to the present, and what part was my body running old code. Dr. Ellie would probably have had a calm, regulated, and deeply irritating perspective on that. Something about noticing the younger part of me that still heard messages like this as a summons. Something about choosing not to let her run the whole system.
What I knew was simpler. I felt eight years old and forty at the same time. I felt mean. I felt manipulated. I felt sad enough to resent it.
I typed, deleted, typed something else, deleted that too. Every possible response had a trapdoor. Too warm, and I’d be back in it. Too cold, and I’d be cast as hard and withholding, and somehow I’d still end up doing emotional cleanup for both of us.
In the end, I locked my phone and tossed it onto the couch.
The silence in my apartment settled around me. My pulse was still too high. My whole body had that strained, over-alert feeling I was starting to recognize as old information wearing a current outfit. But this wasn’t old information. Not really. This was my same old story.
The point Dr. Ellie was hoping to make with me was that I could choose not to live there anymore. I could change the story.
I hadn’t even been in the room with my mother, and I’d still felt thirteen.
A long exhale left my chest before I could stop it.
Why? Why was it so hard for me to say no to her? Why did I always end up solving the problem anyway, and then just bitching to myself about it?
I picked up the travel mug and took a long drink.
This had been an exhausting day.
An hour’s drive.
Socializing.
A call from the police.
An emotional confrontation.
And now this.
The worst part was the uncomfortable thought that followed: Liam had also created a problem tonight, but he had handled it very differently. He had owned the mistake immediately. He’d managed it himself. He hadn’t tried to convince me to solve it for him. He hadn’t pushed or asked for reassurance.
He had simply accepted the boundary and left.
That difference sat quietly in the back of my mind. Unfortunately, I still needed to be mad about the situation. My brain was not prepared to process anything else tonight.
I opened the door.
“BAD DOG,” Markie said.
“Yes,” I muttered. “Everyone has been a bad dog today.”
The night feltdifferent the moment I stepped outside.
Cooler. Quieter.
The street stretched out in both directions under the pale glow of the streetlights. Trees lined the sidewalk, and the moon sat high above the rooftops, bright enough to turn the sidewalk silver.
I stood there, letting the night settle around me.
The fresh air helped immediately. My lungs expanded fully for the first time since I had rushed into the lobby earlier. The tension in my shoulders eased slightly as I took a slow breath and rolled my ankle gently to test it.
Still sore, but functional. Good enough for a walk. Of course, the heels I’d worn today hadn’t helped anything.
