Page 95 of Penalty to the Heart

“Oh?” I clear my throat.

“Yeah. You remind me a little bit of him. Of Jack. He believed that I could persevere, too. He never lost hope either.”

“Then how about we prove to Jack just how right he was all along,” I say softly, holding out my hand for him to take.

He doesn’t hesitate and grabs it as if it were the lifeline he was praying for.

“Yeah, okay. So how do we do this? Make my brother proud, I mean?”

“First, I want you to admit what you want. For yourself. Not for Jack or me.”

He thinks long and hard before saying the words I already knew would leave his mouth.

“I want back on the team.”

“Then that will be our goal. Are you ready to start?”

“Yeah, Roxie. I’m ready.”

Chapter 18

Caleb

I don’t care what people tell you. Therapy is hard.

Fuck that.

It’s fucking brutal.

How can talking about feelings be so goddamn painful?

It feels as if I’ve been stripped naked and pushed to stand in the middle of a full arena while everyone is pointing and laughing at me.

It exposes vulnerabilities in you that you didn’t even know you had.

Thankfully, I have the best head shrink in the business. Excuse me—therapist, as Roxie so loves to correct.

I have to admit, no matter how grueling the last few weeks have been, spending time with Roxie has been great. Yeah, I might walk into her office on lead feet, worried about what new hidden trauma I’m going to have to face, but the minute my eyes land on hers, all that shit just drifts away.

Roxie has a certain magical quality about her. Like she understands my shit before I’m able to properly vocalize it.

I don’t feel self-conscious about telling her what’s on my mind or divulging all my secret fears and doubts because I know that she won’t judge me for them.

She just gets it.

She gets me.

It’s only when I’m not around her or feel her influence on me that I get antsy, though.

As if I wanted to fuck shit up just for the hell of it.

This burning need that arises says that I need to do something reckless to take the edge off.

Roxie says that’s my self-sabotage mechanism at work and that I shouldn’t give in to it. I don’t need to have a degree in psychology to know she’s right. The dumpster fire that has been my life these last couple of months is more than enough proof that my go-to move is to create havoc instead of facing my troubles head-on.

I honestly believed that’s just how I was built.

It took me opening myself up in therapy to discover that’s not necessarily the case.

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