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I’m just better at hiding.
Or maybe I’ve done a better job clinging to the image of who I was meant to be. I’m jealous how easily he cast his old self away. How easily he found outlets for his pain.
“Mister Wyvern—”
“I’ll go.” Even if my promise to be at Lilah’s side forces me to go back where everything happened.
So, whether or not I should pick the scabs of my past, they’re about to be exposed.
Doctor Jakob and I talk through the morning.
Therapy makes me feel worse.
Talking makes me remember.
There are so many memories I fought to forget. And every one that resurfaces threatens to pull me under.
The doctor gives a grateful sigh when he finally trades me off to Hunter in the office waiting room. They share a silent glance, as if I’m a hound that needs to be put down.
That’s fine.
If Lilah wants it, that’s what we’ll arrange.
“How’d you do, J?” Hunter asks in the elevator.
“It’s over.”
“That bad?”
“It seems…” I need to answer enough to keep him off my back without revealing the depth of the fucked-up rabbit hole in my soul. “I had undergone some trauma. Doctor Jakob suspects I don’t remember events strictly as they happened.”
“Which events?”
My vision whitens.
There’s a maze of a storage room behind the OCC’s theater.
It smells like old fabric and set paint, with a fraying orange couch tucked in a back corner, surrounded by racks of costumes.
I’d come to work and learn with my father—the OCC was one of so many offices—but, overwhelmed by the omegas and the crowds, I ducked away to hide somewhere quiet.
I found the prop room.
So did Lilah.
She was kicked out of a tea party for wearing the wrong clothes. She huddled on the couch, hugging her bony knees, watching me like a feral cat. Big grey eyes and ready claws.
“Who are you?”
“Je-j….” How was I supposed to react to the delicate creature who clutched a sharpened pencil in self-defense?
“JJ?” She loosened her grip, deciding not to fill me with lead.
After she relaxed and I coaxed out the story, it was the easiest thing to solve her problems with a dress from the rack. Her sad, prickly wariness melted into the soft smile that exploded the trajectory of my childhood.
Suddenly, I wanted to go to work with my father. I looked for Lilah every chance, bringing her treats, and finding spots to hide on campus where it was just the two of us in our own world.
Once, she brushed my hair.
