Page 48 of Riff

The last thing Vienna needed was to see that.

But there seemed to be no stopping it, no reasoning with it.

I hadn’t been so at the mercy of my body since I was a fucking teenager.

And the only thing I could conclude, much to my horror, given her trauma, was it was because of the woman I was currently sharing a room with.

For the first week and a half, she pretty much never left it, except to sneak across to the shower when no one else was around.

I brought her meals to the room, brought her packages up that she ordered, and did her laundry for her.

By the end of the second week, though, she was no longer stiffening when she heard the sound of one of the other men’s voices as they passed in the hall or boomed from down below. It was like she’d accepted that they weren’t going to hurt her. Since, if they wanted to, she was right there in the room all the time.

It was the first day of the third week when she finally came down into the common area, meeting the other guys one by one, though she clung really closely to me still.

By the middle of that week, she was coming down for meals, flanked on either side by me and one of the women, who just seemed to know she needed them there.

And by the end, she’d left the clubhouse for the first time since coming to Shady Valley.

With me in the driver’s seat, and Morgaine riding shotgun.

Because, apparently, Morgaine had ‘worked with’ a shrink once, a woman who knew Morgaine’s business and even sent her clients on occasion. I guess when you were in that profession, sitting and listening to the horrors women had endured at the hands of men, at some point, you wanted revenge for them too.

But Morgaine had been able to talk Vienna into going for therapy a few times a week with this particular doctor because of their history, because Vienna didn’t have to worry about the situation of her abuse, about the cops maybe getting involved in any way.

“Are you going in?” I asked when we got to the office building at the end of Shady Valley.

“I’m just going to be in the waiting room,” Morgaine told me. Then, lower, so only I heard, “She might need me after.”

With that, the women went into the building, and I sat in the car, stomach acid steadily working at burning a hole in my intestines as I worried about Vienna up there, reliving all of that shit that had happened to her.

Some part of me wanted to protect her from it. Even if I knew that therapy, that purging it all out, was likely the only way she could ever start to heal from it.

So I sat and waited.

As one hour turned to two.

Then almost three before the door finally opened, and the two women came out.

It was cold now in Shady Valley. Well, as cold as we got, anyway, as we were steadily into December now. So Vienna had two sweaters on under her bison coat, a scarf, a hat, and mittens on. But, somehow, she seemed even more fragile than ever as Morgaine almost seemed to pull her toward the car, then shuffle her inside.

I glanced in the rearview, finding Vienna’s gaze downcast, but her whole face was red from tears, and my heart ached in my chest at the sight.

Morgaine gave me a little nod as she climbed in, reaching for the heat, and cranking it up.

No one said anything on the ride back to the clubhouse.

But as soon as the car stopped, Vienna hopped out and rushed inside.

“It’s okay,” Morgaine assured me. “It’s just… it’s all part of it. The beginning is going to be the worst. Don’t be upset if she seems to regress to hiding in her nest again for a bit.”

“She’ll go back, though, right?”

“She said she would be back overmorrow for her next session.”

“Okay,” I said, sucking in a deep breath. “I don’t know if I should go to her or leave her alone,” I admitted as I cut the engine.

“Normally, I’d say that the last thing she needs is a man around right now. But I’ve seen how she is with you. I think she sees you as her protector, as her security blanket. I think she’d want you right now.”

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