Page 58 of Shattered Dreams

Make the best of it.She convinced me to do this, now I need to use the time she’s giving me. Maybe the medication she prescribed can get my jumbled thoughts under control, even if that seems counterproductive to Dr. Reagan weaning me off what Ash hooked my body on.

I haven’t had a lapse since the courthouse the evening Zane and Stella got married, but when Jerricka asks how I’m doing, I’ll tell her that I still have holes in my long-term memory. While I don’t want to remember the way Ash’s jobs treated me or the evil things the doctors did to me at Quiet Meadows, it’s better to remember every vile, gory detail than let my brain suppress what happened.

I can deal with what I know.

I can only hide from what I don’t.

After I use the bathroom, I find Jerricka in the kitchen letting a bottle of wine breathe on the counter. She changed out of her dress into jeans and a sweater. I’ve never seen her look so casual.

“Are you married?” I ask, stepping farther into the room.

She’s fiddling with a syringe and a glass vial that has yellow goop at the bottom of it. Because of my time at Quiet Meadows and Dr. Reagan lowering my medication dosages, I’ve had enough blood drawn over the years that the process is very familiar. Needles don’t bother me. I would be a very unhappy patient if they did.

Smiling thinly, she says, “No. I was engaged once. He cheated on me. He tried to hide it, but I found out and broke it off. If a man can’t be faithful before he’s said his vows, chances of fidelity during marriage are slim. I’m seeing someone now, and he’s a better match. We have the same vision of what we want our future to be.”

“I’m sorry about your fiancé. How did you find out?”

She lifts a shoulder. “We work in the same profession and I heard about it through gossip.”

“Do they still see each other?”

“Not that I’m aware. Possibly. She’s married, but her husband cheats on her too.”

“What’s the point of getting married if you’re going to do that to each other?”

She gestures to the kitchen table, and I sit. She unbuttons the dainty pearl button at my cuff and rolls the sleeve above my elbow. Her fingers skim over my skin, and goosebumps dance up and down my arm.

“Do you remember the one thing I always say about sex?”

“Sex is about power.”

I say the words by rote. It’s something Jerricka says whenever we’re talking about my past and Ash’s jobs, but the more she asks me to repeat it and the closer Gage and I become,the less I believe her. Rape may be about power, the kinds of things that Ash’s jobs did to me, but sex isn’t only about power. Sex can be about love.

Maybe Jerricka’s never made love, and if that’s true, I feel very sorry for her because there’s nothing that will ever compare to Gage wrapping his arms around me, sliding inside me, and telling me he loves me. Nothing.

Naïve, inexperienced, confused, I’ve always believed she knew what she was talking about, and to her credit, almost everything we’ve discussed in my sessions has proven to be correct.

Not this time.

“Yes. Sex is power. My fiancé loved me, I have no doubt about that, but he wanted the power he felt fucking another woman and it made him feel powerful to think he was getting something over on me. It made him feel powerful he could sweet-talk a married woman into spreading her legs.”

“How do you know he loved you?” I ask curiously. “That he wasn’t just saying it?”

People can say anything, but you can’t know what’s truth or a lie unless you have actions behind the words. Gage loves me, but he doesn’t have to say it at all for me to know it’s true. He rescued me, just like Stella, and that’s all I need to believe.

“Because when I asked him to do something he didn’t want to do, he did it anyway.”

She ties the blue rubber strip around my bicep and taps on my veins, finding the one she needs. I barely pay attention—I’ve gone through this so many times—but it might hurt if she doesn’t know what she’s doing. I’ve had nurses so skilled they drew blood while we talked and I had no clue they were doing it until it was done.

“Did he get tired of that?” I ask as she uses an alcohol swab to disinfect my skin. “He cheated on you and you broke yourengagement. He’s not doing what you want him to do now, is he? Maybe he didn’t love you as much as you think he did.”

“This will pinch,” she warns, pressing the needle to my skin.

I look at her expectantly, waiting for her to praise my brilliant deductive reasoning. I’m actually proud of myself for coming up with that. It’s not that I want to best Jerricka at a game of common sense, but during our sessions when I continually felt like a dog chasing my own tail, getting one up on her is somewhat exhilarating.

I didn’t know she’d make me pay for it.

She jams the needle into my vein, and I gasp. “Ouch.”

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