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Chapter Ten

Piper

“Piper,” Dr. Brewer calls as she pokes her head out of her office and I look up from my magazine, returning her smile as I set it down on the table next to me and standing up. She stands back to allow me to walk into the room before shutting the door behind me. Her smile is kind as she sits across from me and places her notebook on her lap. “How are you today?”

I nod. “I’m good.”

“We missed you at group last week,” she muses, studying me in that way she does as her pen hovers over the paper, ready to write any notes she feels are important. I nod.

“Yeah, I had a rough day and I couldn’t deal with the whole group so Lillian and I went to get some food and talk.”

“And that helped?”

I think back over that night and how bad my belly hurt from laughing so much as I nod. As unconventional as Dr. Brewer might think it is, it was exactly what I needed. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about what put you in a bad headspace that day?” she asks, jotting down some notes before glancing up at me again.

“Sure.”

She nods for me to continue and I take a deep breath before nodding to myself. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want out of my life, you know… all the things I had planned before everything fell apart.”

“Mmhmm,” she hums, writing down some more notes as I take another deep breath. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been seeing Dr. Brewer for seven years, I still find it difficult to open up and talk about my feelings, especially from that time in my life.

“So Eden was encouraging me to go after the things I want…”

Dr. Brewer holds her hand up to interrupt me. “What exactly are we talking about here? Love?”

“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “Love is… complicated and not my focus. I do still want the family, though and she’s been encouraging me to look into ways I could make that happen without a man in my life.”

“I see,” she answers with a nod, writing some more notes.

“Anyway, that day she came over with information and I realized how expensive it all was and I just felt so defeated. It wasn’t something I was ready to talk about in front of the whole group, though.”

Dr. Brewer finishes her notes and leans back in her chair, narrowing her eyes as she studies me. “You seem less defeated today, though. Has something changed?”

“Um,” I whisper, my mind slamming me back into a memory of seeing Wyatt yesterday as I shake my head. “I’m not sure.”

“Care to elaborate?”

Sucking in a breath, I nod. “I saw Wyatt yesterday.”

“Oh,” she breathes, dropping her gaze to her notepad as her pen scratches furiously across the paper. “Did you just run into him?”

I shake my head. “No. Eden found him on a dating site and she started talking to him. When she realized who he was, she set up a date but sent me instead.”

“And were you in on this deception?”

“No,” I scoff. “I didn’t know who I was meeting until I showed up and he was sitting at the table.”

She peeks up from her notes. “That must have been…”

“Yeah,” I answer, interrupting her. Whatever word she was going to use, seeing Wyatt again with no warning was exactly that. “It was a lot to deal with and I almost stood him up.”

“But you didn’t?”

I shake my head.

“Why not?” she asks and I shrug. Truthfully, maybe it would have been the smart thing to do but I just couldn’t force myself to get back in my car and drive away from him. Not again.