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But I was alive.
Still alive.
“Thank God you woke up. I’ll go get Ryan. He just stepped out for a minute to take a call.”
Marj’s blur was replaced with a blue blur I didn’t recognize.
“How are you feeling, Mr. Steel?”
Like shit, thanks. I wasn’t sure if I’d said it out loud.
“I’m going to check your blood pressure. You might feel some squeezing.”
Not likely. I couldn’t feel anything over the bass drum beating on my back.
“You’ve been beaten pretty badly,” the blur said.
Not badly enough, apparently. I inhaled again, and a knife sliced through me. Damned broken ribs. Nothing I hadn’t experienced before many times. This was the first time I’d ended up in the hospital, though. As I tried to focus on the blur through slitted eyes, my heart sped up.
What had I been thinking? I didn’t want to die.
I had this revelation every time after I let myself get beaten up. Each time would be the last. I swore it. Well, this one would truly be the last. Even though she’d been a blur, Marj’s voice had cracked with fear. I couldn’t take that sound in my baby sister’s voice, nor in the voices of either of my brothers.
I breathed in again, wincing at the sharp, knifing pain.
Never again, goddamnit. This dangerous self-indulgence was over.
“Hey, you gave us a pretty good scare, Joe. Thank God you managed to crawl to that bar and get help. What were you doing in that neighborhood? What the hell happened?”
Ryan’s voice. A bar? I’d been at a bar? The last thing I remembered was blacking out in the alley. I opened my mouth to speak, but only a crackled croak emerged.
“It’s okay, bro. Don’t try to talk. Looks like you’re going to live.”
Dr. Melanie Carmichael sat across from me in her office decorated in dark wood and hunter-green. She was as beautiful as I remembered. She and I had met months ago in a hotel bar. We’d both been staying at the hotel for different conferences. Her golden-blond hair had fallen in gentle waves against her shoulders as she sat next to me, sipping a cocktail. She wore it up today, pulled back in a tight bun at the top of her head. She was still gorgeous, even with the severe schoolteacher hairstyle. Piercing green eyes, though—they were the same. I hadn’t been able to look away from them that night in the bar, and I was having a difficult time trying to do so now.
How was I supposed to tell this woman my innermost thoughts?
My brother Talon had, and he was on his way to healing from a horrific childhood trauma of being abducted and held captive by three men when he was ten years old. Once I had regained consciousness in the hospital, Talon had come and begged me to make an appointment with his therapist.
So here I was, three weeks later, my ribs still aching a bit, sitting in a supple leather recliner. My brother had sat in this chair, no doubt, and told this woman his deepest secrets. Now it was my turn.
“I’m not sure what to say.”
She smiled. My God, she had a beautiful smile. Her lips were full and red, the color of a ripe currant. “Say whatever you feel like saying, Mr. Steel. This time is for you.”
“First of all, no Mr. Steel. Only Jonah. Or Joe. Whichever you prefer.”
“Okay, Jonah. Why don’t you just start with what brought you in to see me today?”
I felt like a fraud. My brother had been through so much, and here I was, seeing a therapist when there was nothing wrong with me at all—nothing except the guilt that lived inside me like a parasite, killing me from the inside out.
I looked around the room, playing for time. On the wall behind her desk were her various degrees. I was surprised to see a medical degree.
“I thought you were a psychologist,” I said.
“I am.”
“But you went to medical school? Wouldn’t that make you a psychiatrist?”
