Page 105 of Teach Me to Fly

Angelique

Iwake with a headache that feels like someone took a mallet to my skull. My eyes are stinging when I open them, swollen from crying, and for a while I lie there, staring at the ceiling, letting the ache settle behind my eyes.

Yesterday replays in fragments in my head. I’d woken up on my dad’s death anniversary with an overwhelming feeling of giving up. I just couldn’t imagine a world where life got better for me and I desperately just wanted all the pain to end. I might not have woken up at all today if Reign and Lando hadn’t come for me.

A quiet voice breaks through my morning fog. “Good morning.”

I turn my head slowly and find Reign sitting on a chair in the corner of the room. His eyes are bloodshot, and his hair a mess. He looks like he’s been dragged through hell and back.

“Good morning,” I whisper, sitting up slowly. Shame rolls through me while I tuck the surrounding blankets tighter, suddenly aware of how small and pathetic I probably look. “Did you sleep?”

He doesn’t answer, instead giving me a tired, lopsided smile. The kind that makes my chest ache. I lower my gaze and fidget with the edge of the blanket, tugging a thread loose between my fingers.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he watches me.

I shrug one shoulder, keeping my eyes down. “Ridiculous? Stupid? Embarrassed? You name it, I’m probably feeling it.”

The bed shifts as he takes a seat beside me, his hand reaching for mine. His thumb slowly brushes over my knuckles, grounding me.

“There’s nothing to feel embarrassed or stupid about,” he says gently. “You just need some help right now, and it’s understandable. You’ve been through more than most.” He pauses. “Are you still open to speaking with someone?”

My throat tightens and I don’t answer right away, letting my gaze drift across the room. There’s a part of me that still wants to run and hide. To pretend that if I just sleep long enough, I’ll wake up in a version of my life that doesn’t hurt.

But I remember the fear in Reign’s voice last night, and the way Lando’s hand shook when he reached for me. I can’t put them through something like that again. And maybe… maybe this is what trying looks like. It’s not pretty or poetic, but it’s still a beginning.

I finally nod and Reign lets out a quiet breath that he was holding in this whole time, nodding back, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth in relief.

“Okay then,” he says. “Let’s get ready. Your first appointment isin an hour.”

The car ride is quiet,and I sit with my hands in my lap, fingers twisted together, trying to breathe like I’m not unraveling from the inside out. I can feel Reign glancing over to me every so often from the driver’s seat in that protective way he always does—without pressure, but with every ounce of presence.

He hasn’t let me out of his sight, not since yesterday, and even now I can feel the tether between us stretching across the console, anchoring me.

“Still doing okay?” he asks.

I nod. “Yeah.”

It’s a lie, because I don’t feel okay. I feel like I’m walking into something I won’t be able to walk back out of. Like once I sit down and say it all out loud, I won’t be able to shove it back into the locked box I’ve kept it in. They’ll label me insane, send me off to some sterile white psych ward for the rest of my life, and feed me pills that will only make me worse.

I pick at a hangnail. “What if I go in there and don’t talk?”

Reign glances over briefly, then back at the road. “Then you don’t talk. You sit, and you breathe. That’s enough for the first time.”

I let out a small, dry laugh. “You sound like you’ve done this before.”

I mean it as a throwaway comment, but when I look over at him, he isn’t smiling. He doesn’t say anything right away either, and the silence makes my chest tighten.

“Wait,” I murmur. “Have you?”

He nods once. “Yeah. After my mom left, my dad put Lando and me in therapy. We were both so angry and I think he didn’t know what else to do.”

A lump rises in my throat. “Did it help?”

Reign’s jaw shifts slightly as he considers. “It helped Lando,” he says after a beat. “It helped me, too… just not right away. I didn’t want help back then. I didn’t want to be fixed. I just wanted my mom back.”

I press my fingers together tightly in my lap. I know what that kind of longing feels like. The kind that coils around your ribs and squeezes until you can’t breathe. Wanting a parent who’s gone—whether they chose to leave or just couldn’t stay—it leaves a scar.

A silence falls between us until I whisper, “What if they ask me what happened?”

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