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I didn’t get his name.
All thoughts of Adam forgotten, I focus on the scene barreling through my head instead. The one with the rugged man with the tattoos, scruffy face, and damp, chin-length brown hair. The one who snuck up on me on the beach not even a whole hour ago, and yanked me out of the chaos in my head with hardly any effort at all.
The man who stole my breath, and jumpstarted my heart, and made me forget all about the cliffs and my need to dive into the ocean.
Him.
I think of him and I relax.
“What are you doing?… Did you hear me?”
The memory of his rough voice tickles the back of my mind, like a quiet little buzz, the kind that you feel more than see, like when you’re underwater and everything’s all whooshy. Quiet, yet not. The closest thing to a noise I can tolerate when everything gets too loud.
My lip ticks up, and I glance down at my lap, easing the tension in my fists.
That man…he was so…miserable…
Grumpy.
Feeling eyes on me, I peer up through my lashes, my barely-there smile dimming.
Dr. Maddock’s head is tipped to the side. She’s taken off her readers and now nibbles on the tip, brow furrowed in thought as she studies me curiously. I fight the urge to squirm, my pulse quickening.
I hate this feeling. Now more than I ever did before.
Like a lot of things, Canaan Academy took what were once little nuisances and turned them into little nightmares.
She lowers her frames, tosses them on the desk, and stands suddenly.
I flinch.
Either she misses it, or is kind enough to not draw attention to it. Rounding her desk, she grabs my folder—the one I imagine was sent her way after I went through intake earlier today—lifts her gaze to mine, arches a brow, and makes a show of opening it, lifting the first sheet without so much as sparing a glance at what it contains.
She then proceeds to feed it through the shredder next to her desk.
My eyes widen, bugging out of my head.
She does this with the next sheet, then the next…
I dart my gaze between her and the shredder currently eating up my life’s story.
“Something tells me, none of this is going to help me help you,” she says.
My head snaps up, and I feel something clunk in my chest when her face blurs.
She smiles sadly, knowingly, and gives me a small nod.
My rapid-fire pulse no longer feels like a timer ticking down to when I explode…but rather a spark flicking to life, heating up the dark, hollow place in my chest. The one I never thought would see light again.
My chin quivers.
This is a trick. It has to be.
Once she’s finished destroying the last bit of history cursing me to this existence, she tosses the empty manila folder into the trash, and pulls out a crisp, new one from her drawer.
“These might still exist elsewhere,” she says gently. “But in this office, just between us, as far as I’m concerned, your treatment starts today.”
I swallow thickly.
