Page 25 of Shattered Obsession

“Thalia?”

When my name leaves the therapist’s lips, it doesn’t sound like an accusation; it sounds like a beginning.

My stomach twists in a knot tighter than I thought possible.

This is it.

I steal one last glance at Xander, seeking his strength, and muster the courage to step forward. My legs move before my mind agrees. Each foot forward feels monumental, a rebellion against every voice that ever told me to stay quiet. The hallway smells faintly of lavender and old paper, ordinary things that shouldn’t make me want to cry. Xander’s presence behind me hums like a rope I can follow back if I get lost. I inhale once, steady and slow. The door shuts behind me with a soft click that sounds suspiciously like freedom. The air inside the room smells different from the lobby; no longer do I detect the faint scent of coffee and lavender but instead a more sterile and clean scent, like the one that instantly makes you think of a hospital room. Sunlight filters through blinds in thin gold lines that cross the carpet like paths. I think about how many steps it took to reach this one.

When I finally lift my gaze to meet the therapist’s, the question that’s lived in my chest for months trembles on my tongue—not “What’s wrong with me?” but “Can I still be whole?” For the first time, I think the answer might be yes.

My pulse steadies, not from certainty but from acceptance. The room doesn’t feel foreign anymore. It feels like possibility, like the space between one breath and the next. I think about Xander waiting outside, how his patience isn’t a cage but a door left open. I want to walk through it. Not as someone broken trying to be fixed, but as someone learning to live. Maybe that’s what wholeness really is. Not erasing the damage, but learning to move within it.

CHAPTER NINE

-Thalia-

Inside the room, the air feels sterile and stark, clean and unnerving. I sit across from the therapist, her voice sounding almost muffled, as if we are separated by a distance I can’t traverse. The words she speaks swirl around me, incoherent sounds that dissolve into a fog I can't penetrate. I twist my hands in my lap, my nails digging crescent shapes into my palms in an attempt to pull myself back into the moment.

I shouldn’t be here. I don’t belong here. This is not my story.

My knee bounces without my permission. I press my palm down on it, trying to stop the trembling, but the shaking only climbs higher, into my stomach, into my throat, into the buzzing hive beneath my skin. I stare at the floor because the floor doesn’t look back at me. The floor doesn’t ask questions.

I track the pattern of the carpet as if it were a map that could lead me somewhere else. Somewhere where none of this happened. Where my body is still mine.

You don’t belong here.

The voice isn’t real, just the echo of Damian’s certainty, but it’s enough to hollow me out from the inside.

The therapist shifts slightly in her chair, and the soft movement makes my heart spike. Every part of me braces for impact that isn’t coming.

I wonder what it would be like to be a person who walks into a therapy office and doesn’t feel like they’re confessing to a crime. Someone who says I need help and doesn’t immediately regret the vulnerability.

I don’t know how to be that person.

Yet here I am.

The clock ticks far too loudly. Each click is a tiny accusation counting my failures. My throat feels scraped raw, the air too clean to breathe. The chair’s leather sticks to the back of my legs, anchoring me somewhere I don’t yet want to exist.

When there’s a long stretch of silence, I look up and realize she’s watching expectantly with a soft smile and waiting for me to reply, like she knows I’m deep in my own head.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked you what brings you in today.”

The question cuts through the haze like a shard of glass, and the world rushes back into focus. I see the bookshelves lined with titles I can’t read, the framed art hanging on the pristine walls, and finally, the therapist’s patient eyes aimed at me, steady and inviting.

Her pen doesn’t move. She isn’t writing notes, just waiting. The silence presses in until I can hear my pulse echoing in my ears. I try to swallow, but my throat is too tight. My pulse drums at the base of my skull, a frantic percussion I can’t turn off. The room blurs at the edges, colors draining to gray as if someone were slowly lowering the saturation of reality.

The therapist moves a pen on the table. Not toward me. Not threatening. But my muscles lock anyway. I feel the mistake happening in real time, how my body responds to danger even when logic can’t find any.

The fan hums in the corner. A soft breeze brushes my arm. I know the air is cool, but my skin feels fevered, prickling with old memories.

Ground yourself.

But grounding feels like trying to stand still in a stampede.

My hands search for proof that I am here. My nails dig into my thigh until pain blooms, sharp and anchoring. The pain helps.