AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You look angry,” Dr. Adani said quietly, shifting the pad of paper on the arm of her chair. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“Nope. This is my last session anyway, so I don’t know why I bothered coming. I guess just to tell you that.”
“Why is this your last session?” She tilted her head, kohl-lined eyes blinking serenely.
“Because after today I won’t have any fucking insurance, which means I can’t afford to keep coming here.”
“Has something happened?”
I snorted. “Yeah. My father. But isn’t that the answer for everything? Fucking daddy issues? Daddyormommy, in my case. Take your pick. Both of mine are fucking worthless.”
“Have you talked to either of them?”
A dark smile surfaced, closer to a grimace than anything. “I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t going to be one of your success stories. My mother’s idea of bonding is shopping or a trip to a medi-spa. That’s not exactly going to un-fuck my brain. And don’t even get me started on my father.”
“Ok… What about Sasha?”
Fucking Sasha.
The fight from last night flashed through my brain, his snarl, the dangerous glint in his eyes. He wassofucking pissed when he saw my phone... He seriously thought I was cheating on him?! And for how long, exactly, did he have that suspicion? Wasthatthe real reason he didn’t want anything to do with me? Not because he was afraid of hurting me but because he thought I was getting laid somewhere else?
Although, I had a hard time believing Sasha would sit back and let me fuck around with someone else when he threatened to cut Samuel’s hands off for simply touching me. Given what he’d done to other people, the threat was more than plausible.
Realizing Dr. Adani had asked a question I’d yet to answer, I cleared my throat. “What about him?”
“Do you ever talk to Sasha about what happened?”
That time I laughed. Bitterly. “Sasha and I don’ttalk. We never have. And I highly doubt we ever will.”
“You don’t talk aboutanything?”
“No. Unless coordinating groceries and the dry cleaning pickup constitutes talking.”
“And yet you’re still together.”
“Yeah.” I leaned forward, bracing my elbows on my knees and holding my head in my hands. As much as I hated feeling useless in our relationship, I was more dependent on Sasha now than ever before. Chicago was fucking expensive. What I’d managed to squirrel away in savings would be gone in the blink of an eye if I tried to move out on my own. Then again, Samuel mentioned he had a spare room, which would be a lot cheaper than renting a place on my own...
Yeah, no. That sure as hell wasn’t happening. If I told Sasha I was moving out, it would be the absolute end of everything. He would kill me for sure. And Samuel. And probably anyone else who came within twenty feet of him that day just because he was in a bad mood.
As mad as I was with how things were, I would never cheat on Sasha and certainly not with Samuel. Samuel was a friend, nothing more. I didn’t know (or care) if he was interested in me, but Sasha seemed to think so and it was easy fuel to throw on the fire when I was pissed. It was shitty of me, but I really didn’t care about that either. I wanted to get a rise out of him and I did. Mission accomplished. Congrats, Roan. You’re a fucking idiot. Push away the one person who has stuck around. Frankie went off to New York. Freddy off to grad school. And here I was, stuck in time and space, hating every minute of it.
Even with all of our problems, I wasn’t ready to walk away from Sasha — especially when none of this shit was his fault. But it seemed like no matter what I did, I couldn’t pull myself out of my own misery. I knew I was drowning both of us, yet there wasnothingI could do to stop it.
At the end of the day, I wanted Sasha, like before. I wanted him towantme. I wanted to be seen as more than the personification of his guilt and failure and anger. I wanted the Wolf again — the man who did whatever he wanted with no regard for anyone else’s feelings. The one who could just as easily kill me as kiss me. I wanted the man who didn’t look at me like I was one of those fucking glass balls that was going to shatter into a thousand pieces if he so much as looked at me the wrong way, let alone touched me for longer than two seconds.
Dr. Adani let me sit in silence for a minute before trying a different tactic. “Have you reconsidered telling the police about the attack? Perhaps legal recourse would be good for you. It might give you closure.”
“I have closure,” I snapped, lifting my head to look at her. I had it because Sasha made sure every single one of them was dead. Painfully, as per my request. And yet the nightmares still came. The stench of their cologne, the putrid food in the dumpster, the smell of asphalt. The paralyzing feeling of being completely fucking powerless.
We’d only discussed what happened once and it was after a lot of vodka so the details were still kind of fuzzy. It wasn’t so much of a discussion as Sasha recounting what he did to each of them when I’d stupidly asked. For the millionth time, he told me it wasn’t my fault, thathehad been their real target, which explained why there were four of them to begin with. I was a victim of opportunity. Instead of breaking into his apartment to take on the Wolf, they snatched his stupid pet off the street and defiledmeto humiliatehim. Two birds, one stone.
What he said made sense. One hundred percent. But I didn’t care. The “what ifs” continued to play out in my mind. What if I’d kept my ass inside like he told me to? What if they’d broken in anyway? What if he came home and was attacked too? What if he was killed? What if I never went back to him — not just the once at Delirium, but over and over? What if, when I escaped the first time, I stayed. The. Fuck. Away?!
Dr. Adani gave me a patient smile, like she could see all the bullshit rolling around in my head. “Do you? Have closure?”
“As much as I’m going to get.” I slumped against the couch. It’s not like I could tell her she was beating a dead horse. Even if the four of them weren’t rotting in Hell, the system had bigger problems to deal with thanmyattack. Women couldn’t get justice. Kids couldn’t get justice. Why the fuck should anyone care about a gay guy’s assault? Compared to what happened to some people, I got off fucking lucky. Iknewthat. IknewI should be grateful. But I wasn’t. I was fucking angry.
“How has your anxiety been?”
