Page 32 of Revere: A Legacy Novel

Catherine tipped her head to the side, saying, “Well, not okay. More … confused. No, not even that. I don’t know. It was like dipping my head into a cold bucket of water and thinking it was going to be warm. You know what I mean?”

“A shock.”

“Yeah, that.”

Cara let out a slow breath. “What about today—now? You’ve had two weeks to sit on your choice to refuse his offer, and really think it over. How do you feel now?”

“Like my fingers are itching,” Catherine confessed.

By the look on her therapist’s face, Catherine knew Cara didn’t understand.

“I don’t regret it. I simply want to say fuck it and contact him again.”

“Ah,” Cara said in a murmur. “Well, that’s to be expected, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“How long you loved him.”

“Love,” Catherine said before she could stop herself.

Cara raised a single, manicured brow high. All she said was a quiet, “I see.”

Catherine knew this trick of Cara’s only because it was one she played on her several times over. Cara would wait Catherine’s nerves and confused thoughts out. She would allow her to talk and talk and talk, even if it only led them in circles. Eventually, Catherine would talk her way out of the mess with a new understanding of her problem and an outlook that helped.

She didn’t know if this was the same thing.

She didn’t know if it would work.

“Catherine,” Cara said, “why are you here?”

“I just told you why.”

“No, you gave me a topic. Cross is a topic. He is not your issue. Topics are things we choose to discuss to avoid the real issues. Give me the issue, Catherine.”

Catherine looked down at her clasped hands, unsteady and wary in her heart. “I’ve loved him since I was thirteen. I don’t understand how someone can be gone from my life for all these years, and still make me question everything when they waltz back in like nothing’s changed. Because it does feel like that when he’s around. Like nothing’s changed. It makes me think I have zero control; my feelings and heart, my past and future are things I don’t own or control when he’s near.”

“Mmhmm.”

“He wasn’t there. I went back, and he wasn’t there. I was well. I was good. I fixed myself. I was better than I had ever been in years. I wanted him to see it, to know. He forced me to do it, so I did, and he was fucking gone. It was the best thing he ever did for me, and then he ruined it.”

“He promised to be there, didn’t he?” Cara asked.

Catherine shrugged. “How far did that push me back, Cara?”

“A ways, but not too far. See, I think a part of you was still expecting Cross to hold together your pieces when you weren’t capable of doing it back then. Instead—”

“The issue is that I’m scared,” Catherine interrupted.

She had to say it before she said nothing at all.

Cara frowned. “Yeah, I know.”

“Terrified.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t ever want to be that broken girl again,” Catherine said. “That’s my issue. I see him, and I feel like I did when I was happy and innocent and in love. Yet, I see him, and I feel broken and incapable and scared. I don’t want to be her again just because of him.”