Page 3 of Tame Me

“Come in, Ayla,” Reid says, walking to his computer.

“No,” I snap.

“Ayla…” he starts to say, but then I start backing up.

“I’m sor…” I start to say, but stop myself. “I’m going to go. Sorry for wasting your…”

“Stop, Ayla. What happened?” Reid asks, stepping into the hallway with me. “It’s something, so say it, Ayla.”

“Your office,” I admit. “I just… Can’t. Not there. Please.”

“Okay. Let me grab my laptop, and we can move to a therapy room,” he says. Just like that, he walks back in, grabs his laptop, a notebook, and a clipboard, and returns to me. Zero hesitation. He doesn’t push me to try and deal with it; he just respects that this place triggers me. I follow him down a few doors before he opens one leading into a room with nothing in it. The back wall is a giant mirror, and the walls have every sex toy you can think of, but that’s it. No chairs, desks, or anything but a padded floor. “Take your shoes off and sit with me.”

“On the floor?” I ask.

“Yes,” he laughs. I slip my sandals off and sit on the floor with my legs crossed. Reid slips his shoes off, too, and sits in front of me with his laptop. He types for a moment before setting his laptop down and picking up the clipboard to write on.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I had to pull up your profile, and now I am writing your name on the assessment paper,” he says. “Why?”

“Can’t I just be curious?” I snap. “Jesus. Not everything has to have a fucking motive.”

“How has your morning been, Ayla? You were released yesterday, yes?”

“Yes,” I sigh. “It’s been… weird. I stayed at Dad’s old house…”

“Why?” he asks.

“Because it was that or a park bench,” I snap again. “Why are you asking so many goddamn questions?”

“Look at your hands, Ayla,” Reid says gently. I look down at my hands, and I see that I’m rubbing my thumb across the scars on my inner wrist, where I dug the blade in to kill myself. The healing process for all of these scars left dark and well-preserved scars on my forearms and thighs. The last cut I made when I tried to die… that’s the worst. I’m fucking lucky there wasn’t permanent damage.

“Oh,” I say, pulling my hand away from my wrist. Reid pulls a pen out of his suit jacket and the notebook from under his laptop. He opens the notebook to an empty page and lays it in front of me before handing me the pen.

“What’s this for?” I ask.

“You fidget when you are triggered. Sometimes we need a distraction from those automatic tics when we are triggered, so distract yourself, write or doodle, just listen and answer the questions,” he says.

“Thanks,” I mutter, slowly taking the pen. I start in the bottom corner and draw a line. I dig the pen in and trace it over and over again until it tears through to the next page.

“Okay,” Reid says. “Now, most of this I know because I was with you at Parker Valley Regional Health Center. So we are going to skip some of this.”

“Why?” I ask, still doodling circles and spirals.

“Because I know you are not a danger to yourself or others. You are of sound mind, have the ability to consent, and you understand what it means to consent. You were not forced or tricked to come here and…”

“Maybe you did,” I say. “Maybe I was eager to please you, and I said yes out of fear.”

I never look up, but it’s because even I know that I’m full of shit. “I didn’t give you the address of this place, and it’s not easily found. That means you spent a significant amount of time and effort finding out where this place was,” Reid explains.

“I’ll give you that one,” I say, glancing up at him. He smiles and shakes his head, but continues. I did spend an insane amount of time last night finding where this place was.

“You need help regulating, but you are perfectly capable of participating in this program,” Reid continues.

“Okay…” I say, looking back at the paper to resume doodling.

“What do you understand about the program and our objective here at Meridian?” he asks.