Page 82 of How to Walk Away

My dad hiredIanas the tutor? Hadn’t I just put my foot down about that? “Well, I told him I didn’t need a tutor.”

“He told me that.”

I shook my head. “The thing is, I just had this really triumphant moment with my parents where I told them to stop running my life, and then I made a grand step toward—you know—being my own person and making my own choices from the inside out, and that extra gumption you saw in the gym today was me claiming my own long-lost power, soif I just give in now and let them take back over, I’m kind of surrendering after I’ve already won the battle.”

There was no way he’d followed that.

But he nodded. “I understand.”

“You do?”

“I absolutely think you should”—here, he slowed down to get the words right—“‘claim your own power.’”

He wasn’t going to fight me. “Thank you,” I said.

“Except,” he said then.

“Except what?”

“As good as it feels to win a battle, I want you to win the war.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means your parents are right.”

I gave him a look, like,Really?“That’s not exactly helpful.”

“Youcouldbenefit from extra help. There are all sorts of things we could do that are outside the range of typical PT.”

“Like?”

“Like anything. Swimming. Yoga. Horseback riding. Massage. Reflexology. Cold and heat. Acupuncture. Anything we can think of. In the gym, we’re limited to a specific insurance-approved list. It’s not a bad list, but it’s certainly not everything.”

Why was he here right now? Why had he said yes to my dad? Why on earth would he stay in this hospital one second longer every day than he had to? “Are you saying we’re desperate?”

He shook his head. “Not desperate,” he said.“Creative.”

I stared at him. I was tired and hungry, and ready for the day to be over, and pissed at my dad for siding with my mom. “Why would you do this?” I asked. “I know my dad. The money couldn’t be that good.”

“This is what we did at my gym,” he said. “This is the part I loved—the creativity, the challenge, the thinking outside the box.”

Did I want to give Ian a chance to do what he loved? Of course. But, after finally tasting the sweetness of what it felt like to do something for me, I did not want to backslide and agree to extra PT just so Ian could have better job satisfaction.

Until he said these words: “Plus, I could get you out of here.”

“What do you mean, out of here?”

He shrugged. “If you’re doing therapeutic horseback, we can’t exactly do it in this building.”

“You mean, you could check me out?”

“For therapy, yes.”

“Often?”

“If you had the energy for it.”

“You wouldn’t get in trouble with Myles?”

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