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“Oh.” I looked at my lap, unsure of what I felt or what, if anything, I should say.
Jesus, get me out of here. Therapy might be as bad as tofu. It might be worse.
She sat there, waiting for me to continue.
“I don’t like feeling helpless,” I said eventually.
“Of course you don’t.” Karen’s voice was soothing. “You’re a marine, and you’ve been on your own for a long time. You’re not the type of person who sits back and watches others get hurt—you’re the guy who protects people.”
“I didn’t protect her. I didn’t protect the other agents.”
“They shot you. They incapacitated you.”
I clenched my hands into fists. “Then they took her from me…and you know what they did.”
“But she’s okay. She’s going to be fine. And Wes, what happened to her wasn’t your fault.”
“You’re wrong about that.” I shook my head. “We were joking around. I was supposed to be guarding her, but we were in her kitchen joking around. The other guys were outside, and I never even heard what happened to them—because I wasn’t paying attention. I was in the kitchen. I was joking around. I wasn’t paying attention.”
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“Even if that’s true, you aren’t responsible for what happened to the other men—”
“The hell I’m not!”
“It’s not any different from the service,” Karen continued. “Everyone knows what they’re signing up for. The work you do is dangerous work. The men who died that night aren’t any different from the other peers you’ve lost over the years—and you haven’t told me much, but I know you’ve lost people.”
I didn’t look up. “Not only did they die that night, but Hannah got kidnapped. That is on me.”
Karen nodded. “Okay.”
“Now you’re agreeing with me?”
“Now I’m agreeing with you.”
I shot up, then realized that the sudden movement made my legs scream in pain again. Motherf-ing physical therapy. “I think I’m done here.”
“I can’t stop you physically, or by asking you to reconsider, but I think it would be in your best interest if you sat back down. Your best interest. And Hannah’s.”
“Really? The Hannah card again?” But I flopped back down.
“I know you want to move forward. As a first step, you might want to stop beating yourself up.” She motioned to my legs. “I think you’ve been pushing yourself too hard, too fast. I’m not sure what the rush is.”
“The rush is that the woman who did all this is still out there, and she’s killed another innocent person. The rush is that the next time someone threatens people I care about, I am not going to fuck it up.”
“You were shot. You were hurt. Bad people did something terrible to you and you couldn’t protect yourself. Don’t forget about yourself!”
“That’s not the point—”
“It is absolutely the point. As much as you’ve focused on everything you didn’t do, who you couldn’t save, you’ve only been punishing yourself, and you were wounded, Wesley. You almost died. You’re twenty-seven, and you almost died. And you haven’t even been kind enough to let yourself heal. You’ve been pushing hard.”
“That’s what I needed to do, though.” I scrubbed a hand across my face. “That’s the only thing that makes me feel sane.”
Karen switched gears. “So…what’s your plan for being intimate with Hannah?”
“I don’t know yet.” I felt dizzy from her zigzagging across topics. “I want it to be special, really special.”
Karen sighed. “I think that’s too much pressure.”
