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“Well, you need to talk to her about it, jackass. What the hell happened to using your words?”
***
Antony shuffled into therapy the next morning. He could have been a lot worse, had Simon not saved him from himself. Dr. K. looked at him over her glasses but remained silent. He sat.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he began, knowing exactly what she was going to say next.
“I wasn’t going to,” she said.
Yep, called it, he thought.
“But you know I am going to ask what’s going on. Was this in celebration, or something else?”
Antony spilled his guts for the next 45 minutes. Dr. K’s eyebrows raised at the mention of drugs and stayed there until he ended with his squealing tires out of Lesley’s driveway.
“Wow,” she said. “That’s a lot to take in at once. Have you talked with Lesley since you left her house?”
He shook his head. “No. She wanted space.”
“Did she give you any time frame?”
He shook his head again. “A couple days, she said.”
“And that’s what set you off on a bender?”
Antony pondered his response. The doctor could see through anything and would call him on it. “Yeah. I just...it felt like she was kicking me to the curb.”
“From the sounds of it, she’d tell you plainly if she were doing that, yes?”
“Yeah. Probably.” He picked at the cuff of his slacks, where his leg was resting across his knee. “It just...It was like Victoria, all over again.”
“She’s not Victoria.”
“Not by a fucking long shot,” he blurted. “Oops.”
Dr. K. chuckled. “It’s okay.”
“Lesley is everything that Vicky isn’t. There’s no comparison.” He looked at the doctor. “You know my brain. This is all new, and I’m screwing it up.”
“Antony. Remember our first session? Remember the man you were then? All that anger, all those nightmares?”
He did, too well. Victoria had, just a few weeks before, uttered those words that left him shattered. He’d been on a rampage every day, pushing his physical therapy beyond the doctor’s expectations, and he spent his nights locked in terror, dreaming about the attack that took his team and his leg. The only thing that stopped him from spiraling even further was being escorted into Dr. K’s office that fateful morning. She’d cleared her morning calendar to spend time with him, and by the end of that session, had him booked for an hour each morning after his daily physical therapy.
“Victoria’s perspective is wrong, Antony,” she’d told him back then. “You are whole, just fractured at the moment. It’s your mind we’re worried about here, not your body. If she can’t see beyond that, she needs to go find someone else. And you deserve someone who sees you as more than that.”
The present Dr. K. spoke over the voice in his head. “This is the first time in over two years that you’ve actually put yourself out there, Antony. Of course you’re going to be jumpy. Add to that your ex showing up—I’m sure that’s a fun story we can unpack another time when you’re not so raw. For now, I want you to dig out your old journals. You still have them, right?”
At his nod, she continued. “Good. Go over them. See how you’ve grown and healed yourself. Make sure your head’s on straight and get your business handled.”
Antony closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said quietly. “You’re right. I jumped the gun on all of this.” He paused and raised his hand a little off his leg, bringing his fingers into a fist. “No. I didn’t jump the gun on Lesley. I just screwed that up when my brain got the better of me. Know what the worst part of that is?” He looked at the doctor, who shook her head. “The worst part is as I was driving away, I knew I was being a dumbass, but I couldn’t stop myself.”
Dr. K. smiled. “We all have our moments, Antony. Just take this chance to reset yourself and hopefully, things with Lesley will work out.”
***
The office was buzzing when he walked in. Randall looked at him and nodded, then jerked his head over. “Ramos. About time. We finally got the connection.”
Antony dropped his keys on the desk and walked over. Charlie handed him a clear plastic evidence sleeve. In it was a slip of paper, torn in half and yellowed. It was an evidence log, and the signature on the bottom was Jensen Bower.
