Page 116 of Wait for Him

The worst case of it.

Hence the therapist.

"Did you hear my question, Rosalie?" Dr. Campbell prompts gently. "What triggered the episode?"

I lean back and tuck my legs beneath me. "I went to friends and family night at Noctra, and James was there. He's gotten so much taller since I last saw him. And he spoke to me. He was right there at my table, talking to me like a stranger."

"You are a stranger to him." There's no cruelty in it. He just sets the fact between us. "Are you regretting that decision?"

"No. Samson gave him a life I couldn't have. I don't regret it." I take a breath and let the next part out more slowly. "He looks like me."

The memory of that toothy grin pulls a smile out of me.

"It's like I saw him for the first time when he came up close. I'd spent years bracing for him to be like Wesley. To look like him, move like him, have some part of him I couldn't unsee. But he doesn't. He looks like me. Like Michael did when he was younger."

"And that's what caused the episode?"

"In part, yes. And..." I stare down into my coffee. "I started having that invisible feeling again."

He knows exactly what I mean.

"Thoughts of harming yourself?"

I lower my head and nod.

I know I shouldn't feel ashamed. My depression is a disease like any other, and I'd never let Michael carry shame over something like this. But some part of me genuinely believed I'd be cured by now.

Silly as that sounds.

"Go on," he says. "Finish your thought."

I let my head fall back against the cushion and close my eyes.

"There's an exhaustion setting in that I can't stop. It's like I'm standing on a rooftop watching these ominous clouds roll in from a distance, and I know they're coming straight for me, but there's nowhere I can go that they won't find."

I hear the soft clink of Dr. Campbell setting his mug down, followed by his pen moving across the notepad.

"Go on."

"I'm a stranger to James. I'm no one to him. I spoke his name and he looked concerned, like I might be someone he needed to be careful of. Michael is a grown man now, and half of what I do to help him feels like coddling a teenager who needs to grow up without big sister rushing in to fix every mistake. I don't have a relationship. I walked in on David having sex with someone else right after I gave him a key to my place, and he used my own bed to do it."

I leave out that it was a man.

I can only absorb so much humiliation per session.

"That same night, I went to my club and let another woman's sub go down on me while I held his leash."

He flinches.

Visibly.

I don't take it personally. I pay him to hear my life, not to be built for it.

"Have you considered burnout, Rosalie?"

He sets the notepad aside and leans forward, elbows on his knees, and I know this posture. This is the one he uses when he's about to say something he's been sitting on for a while.

"We started seeing each other when you returned to Los Angeles. Before that, you spent years after the assault with no support and no treatment. You raised Michael. You watched James grow up in another family's home, two doors down from your own childhood house. You stayed in school. You worked. You built a career while helping Michael build his business." He pauses. "Rosalie, when have you stopped?"