waiting room, waiting for a therapist or psychologist or counselor, whatever they are, to call me back. I don’t want to be here. How did I let Jeremy’s grandma talk me into this?
My foot is bouncing like crazy and I can’t stop it.
Jeremy reaches over and slides his hand into mine. “Take a deep breath.”
My jaw tightens as I stare ahead at the reception desk, not really seeing it.
“I don’t want to be here,” I force past my teeth. “I can barely talk to you, do you really think I’ll be successful talking to a stranger?”
“Preston?” A woman with bright red curly hair and a comforting smile makes eye contact with me. I jerk to my feet, swallowing hard past the lump in my throat. Jeremy’s hand is still in mine as I step toward her but stop when I meet resistance. My head snaps to the right where Jeremy is still sitting in the chair.
“Come on.” I pull on his hand, feeling myself starting to lose my cool at the very idea of him not coming into that room with me. “I’m not going in there without you.”
Jeremy’s gaze flicks the woman waiting at the doorway then back to me.
“Okay.” He stands and follows me as I pull him along behind me with his arm now pinned between my arm and my body. My fingers spin the ring on his left ring finger, the band bringing me some comfort. He hasn’t taken off the ring since I gave it to him four days ago.
His mom and grandma are still here, staying at a short-term rental house near campus and spending most of their time feeding us, along with Paul and Brendon. I have to admit, Mrs. Albrooke’s taco salad is pretty damn good. Brendon is right.
“Welcome,” the woman says. “My name is Celeste Montgomery.” The office has a dark teal velvet couch, a navy-blue wingback chair set across from it, a cherry wood desk in one corner, and plants. Lots of plants. Hanging from the ceiling, hanging on the walls, on her desk, in the window sill. It’s like a jungle in here.
“Have a seat, take a deep breath. We don’t have to talk about anything heavy today.” She sits in the wingback chair and Jeremy nudges me to sit on the couch. “Today is more about getting to know each other and seeing if we’ll be a good fit.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Doctor Montgomery.” Jeremy smiles at the woman while I drag my palm over my thigh and squeeze his hand. “I’m Jeremy.”
“Celeste is fine.” She smiles at my fiancé because he’s pleasant and friendly while I’m an asshole.
I don’t want to do this. Doctors are not my friends. They aren’t my saviors. Doctors have done nothing but cause me pain for the sake of money in one way or another. My father cut me because hitting me put his hands at risk, the people above him knew he was abusing patients and did nothing to stop it, in fact they went out of their way to bury it so he could continue to be a cash cow for the hospital. I was expendable. A casualty.
Sitting up straight, I take a deep breath and close my eyes for a second.
“It’s nice to meet you Jeremy.” Her pleasant voice has me opening my eyes. “It’s clear you two are very close.”
I say, squeezing his hand. “I don’t want to be here, but the few people I have around me say I should talk to someone.” The words are out of my mouth before my brain has had a chance to tell me it isn’t a good idea. “I don’t see how telling a stranger about how my dad cut me then stitched me back up over and over again solely for his own amusement is going to fix anything. How is it going to bring back my mom, who he admitted to killing right before he jumped off a building while on the phone with me? It’s not going to take the scars off my body or change any of the facts of my life, so what’s the point?”
The air is sucked from the room, but she holds my stare. Her eyes are a bright green, and for a moment, she doesn’t breathe. Just blinks and adjusts in her chair to sit up straighter.
Jeremy is tense next to me, probably waiting to see what her reaction to me is. I’m already on the verge of walking out of here, so she has to walk a very careful line.
Finally, she blinks and sucks in a deep breath.
“I. Wow. That’s.” She takes another deep breath then tries again. “You’re right, talking to me, or anyone else, isn’t going to change what happened to you. I can’t remove the physical scars from your body but I can help you heal the wounds that no one can see. The ones that hold you back, the ones that keep people at arm’s length. I’m sure you have feelings of guilt or anxiety, probably both, which is normal, that I can help you move through so they don’t control you. A lot of people forget that our brains are just as traumatized as our skin when we’re hurt and if that wound isn’t properly cared for, it can fester and get worse.”
“I’m fine.”
She purses her lips while she watches me. “Well, let’s talk a bit and go from there.”
I don’t have a response for that, but I also don’t see how telling her about any of this helps either.
“We can jump into your trauma today or we can take it easy, it’s really up to you. Is there anything you want to know about me? Would you be more comfortable talking to me if you knew me better?” she offers with the lift of one shoulder.
“Whatever you tell me, really tells me nothing. Lies are easy to pass as truths.”
She nods, picking up a pad of paper she had tucked into the side of her chair and writing something on it.
“Being lied to often, and by someone who is good at it, makes it hard to believe what anyone says to you.” She uses the back of her pen to point to Jeremy. “What about Jeremy? Do you believe him?”
“Yes, he’s not a doctor.” She cocks her head as she tries to connect the dots. “Have you seen the news stories about Doctor Andrew Carmichael?”
A lightbulb practically lights up above her head. “I have seen some articles, though I don’t know a lot of details about the case. Is he related to you?”
“My father, yes.” I didn’t have a dad. Dad’s take their kids to get ice cream and pizza, throw a baseball or football round, teach you how to be a man and take care of those who are important to you. My father taught me to hide my pain and pretend to be perfect or there would be consequences. “He’s a…” I shake my head and huff a breath. “He was a plastic surgeon and from the time I was about ten, he used me as a guinea pig. Testing new stitch techniques turned into correction for unfavorable behaviors.”
Her eyes widen a little but otherwise, she says nothing.
Jeremy’s free hand wraps around my bicep and I realize I’m probably hurting him with the force of my grip on his fingers, so I release his hand and rub my palms down my thighs. I adjust on the couch and sit back against the tufted fabric, pick up the hand, and kiss the ring on his finger with my eyes on his. He gives me a soft smile and a reassuring squeeze on my arm.
“Tell me about Jeremy.” Celeste nods toward him while keeping her eyes on me.
“So you can fuck up the only good thing in my life? No.” I bite out without thinking about it. I hate this. I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin, ready to snap and hurt someone.
“Breathe.” Jeremy pinches the inside of my upper arm hard enough to hurt, but it helps me focus. “She’s not an MD. I made sure.”
“Does that make a difference?” she asks, glancing between the two of us. “That I don’t have an MD. Would that make it harder to talk to me?”
“Every medical doctor, including my own father, has been shit, so yes it matters. Every doctor I’ve ever seen has been paid off or threatened so they didn’t report shit.” I force myself to drag in a big breath. “Doctors only care about their precious licenses, making them easy to manipulate.”
“I have a license, does that make me easy to manipulate?” The question is almost a challenge, but her expression doesn’t change. She’s carefully neutral, which is something I am very familiar with.
“Possibly.” I answer honestly.
“I can definitely understand why you feel that way. What would it take for you to trust me just a little bit?” She raises an eyebrow at me.
Jeremy smirks and pulls his hand off my arm. My eyebrows pull together as I turn to look at him. He lifts his shirt to show Celeste the marks I’ve left on his body, and there are plenty—scratches, bruises from my fingers and teeth, hickies. I should probably be embarrassed but I’m not. I love my marks on his skin.
“So, Preston and I enjoy rough sex. Now you know my secrets.” He shrugs and drops his shirt. “Or, at least, one of them.”
“Thank you, Jeremy.” She turns her gaze to me. “Does that help? Knowing he trusts me.”
“Makes me think he’s naïve,” I say and he slides his hand back around my bicep, pinching the tender flesh and somehow finding the same spot as last time. This time I flinch a little. I sigh but answer her earlier question. “Jeremy is my fiancé.”
“Tell me about him.” She makes a note on her paper.
My head blanks like I’ve never had a thought in my entire life. Tell her about him? What the hell kind of question is that? Like, what position does he play or what his favorite sex act is? I don’t know how to answer this. I need direction.
“Like what?”
Jeremy tries to hide a snort in a cough but I hear it just fine. Jerk.
“What does he like to do? What do you love about him? Is he quick to joke in a serious moment or is he cool, calm, and collected?”
“He plays hockey and eats too much pizza, it makes him slow on the ice.” He scoffs but I keep going. “I love that he knows when to call me on my shit and when I just need to…abuse him…a little.” I shrug and he snorts. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, picturing him in my head. “He calms me, soothes the ragged edges my life has left on my soul.” My voice is quiet now. I don’t know if she can hear me or not, but that’s her problem. I want to look at him, see those blue-brown eyes full of love, but this may be one of the hardest things I’ve ever said out loud. “He shows me that I’m lovable, even in the dark moments when everything tells me otherwise.”
Why is this so hard? Why does being loved hurt so much? Accepting it as truth opens up the old scars I thought had healed. It reminds me of my mom, my grandparents, and resurfaces memories I had forgotten.
“Sounds like you’ve found a good man.” Celeste’s comment breaks through the spiral. “You said your father killed your mother?”
I nod, threading my fingers through Jeremy’s as he leans his head on my shoulder.
“What was your mother like?”
My eyebrows pull together as I try to remember specific things about her. It was so long ago and so much has happened that I blocked out a lot of it because it hurt to remember. I was in enough pain.
“She was soft, gave the best hugs.” I try to bring a clear image of her into my mind, but it’s fuzzy. “My sister looks a little like her, short, curly hair, happy more than angry.”
“Are you close to her?”
“Not until recently.” I focus on spinning the ring around Jeremy’s finger instead of looking at the woman across from us. “I kept her at a distance to keep her safe from our father. She’s been in boarding schools most of her life.”
“What made you make the effort to get closer to her?”
“Jeremy.” I snort and shake my head. “He’s a nosy little shit and since he talks to his siblings all the time, he started bugging mine.”
I lift an eyebrow and glance at Jeremy out of the corner of my eye to find him smiling at me.
“Now his siblings are bugging me too. I went from talking to my sister sporadically, mostly after games, to now having two sisters and two brothers blowing up my phone multiple times a week, plus his mom and grandma.” I sigh. “It’s weird to be accepted into a family that actually cares with no hesitation. I was just part of the group one day.”
“My family loves you because I love you,” Jeremy says, squeezing my arm.
“You’ve told me the tip of the iceberg.” Celeste smiles. “But I definitely think I can help you if you want me to.” She smiles as she looks between me and Jeremy. “I would love to talk to you more in-depth, and help you heal. I won’t lie to you and say it’ll be easy, sometimes it will feel like you’re getting worse, it’ll be hard and hurt, but there is light on the other side. That I can promise you.”
Do I want to do this? No. But I don’t want to hurt anymore, I don’t want to give my father the power to continue to cause me more pain even after his death, but I think if I walk away now, I’ll create more problems for myself and jeopardize my relationship with Jeremy. I can’t lose him.
The suffering I will no doubt deal with will be worth it if it makes me a better man for him.
“Okay,” I tell her, letting determination fill my chest. “Bring on the pain.”
Our appointment time ends just a few minutes later, and Celeste shakes both of our hands and tells me to schedule another appointment for next week. By the time we leave the office, I’m wrung out.
On the street in front of the building, Jeremy pulls me to a stop and spins me around to wrap his arms around my neck. My arms wrap around him on instinct, my hands splayed along his back.
“I’m so proud of you,” Jeremy says softly in my ear.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you with me.” I bury my head in his neck, inhaling his scent that soothes me.
“I’m not going anywhere, I love you.”
“Even when I’m an asshole and push you away? When I pick a fight because I don’t know how to ask for what I need?” My soul bleeds as I wait for the answer.
“Especially then.” He kisses my temple. “You come after me when you need it and I’ll know what’s happening. I can read it on your face, in your body language, and even though I don’t know exactly what triggered you or what you need in that exact moment, I know you’ll take it. I’m never not willing to give you what you need.”
Emotion clogs in my throat, threatening to fill my eyes with tears I don’t want to let fall.
“I love you,” I force out around the painful lump. “So much more than I thought I was capable of.”
“I knew you were capable. There was something about you from the very beginning that called to me, that told me I needed you just as much as you would need me. That’s as true today as it was then.” Jeremy cups my face and lifts until our eyes meet. “You are worth so much more than you give yourself credit for and I can’t wait to see what you accomplish.”
“With you by my side, right?” My heart hammers in my chest. I can’t do any of this without him. I don’t want to try.
“I’m like an octopus to the face—hard to get rid of and really annoying.” He says it with a straight face and I burst out with a laugh. I was not expecting that.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Brendon.” I press my lips to his in a quick kiss, then nestle into his neck where the tattoo of my teeth is and kiss it.
“I love you, Preston,” he says with a smile. “And even if we were to break up, I’m pretty sure my family would kick me out and keep you, so you would still have them.”
“Ha!” I wrap my arm around his shoulders and we walk down the sidewalk to the car. I don’t really like driving around new cities, but if we’re going to be here for a while, I should get used to it. “Grandma would for sure. Probably the twins too, and definitely Ella.”
“Fuck you!” He shoves me as we get to the car and I hit the button to unlock the door.
I smirk at him and grab a handful of his shirt to pull him back to me. “Only if you ask nicely.”
Jeremy scoffs. “Asking you nicely gets me nothing.”
I back him against the car and lean my hips against his, dropping my head until our lips almost touch, but I don’t give in. “Maybe you haven’t asked nicely enough.”
“You’re a tease.” Jeremy growls, gripping the back of my neck in his hand to lower my lips to his.
“But I’m all yours,” I say against his mouth. “The future Mister Albrooke.”
