Page 22 of Needing to Fall
“That was what started you on this path in life. Why wouldn’t you want to know?” he retorted.
“I’d never really put any thought into it. I took it at face value.”
He and I carried on this conversation like the doctor wasn’t in the room, watching the back and forth. I really didn’t care. All that mattered was getting the information from Lynx, finding out what to do with these small tingles of feelings that were beginning to invade me and how to use them.
He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth then popped it out. “That’s what you need to realize. Everything is deeper than face value. You have to get the whole story.”
I pulled my legs up underneath my butt, giving Lynx my full attention. “But why does it matter now?”
He leaned forward, yet I didn’t feel threatened by it as I normally would have. If anything, I had to stop my body from moving closer to hear what he was going to say.
“Because you never know what you might uncover,” he said mysteriously. I didn’t really know how to take that. “Getting back your power will pull you up to the light.”
My breath caught as my eyes widened. The light? Did I want the light? I thought back to Andi and how her light made me feel when the warmth of it wrapped around me.
I sat there for a long time, just processing what he had said. Then it hit me.
“You’ve been inside one of these places before,” I stated as I began to figure out my new therapy partner.
“This is my fourth time, and I’m sure it won’t be my last.” He leaned back, lacing his fingers together and putting them behind his head. “Most of this shit”—he nodded to the room and I guessed he was talking about being here—“is common sense. It’s just we get in our heads from time to time and have a hard time getting out.”
“Is that how you got so smart?” I teased, my breath catching.
Did I just tease this man? Holy shit, I did. What in the hell was wrong with me? Where in the hell did this easy camaraderie between Lynx and me come from?
I realized in that moment how I had totally lost control; the roller-coaster emotions were taking me for the ride of my life, going up and down, killing me slowly. I felt like I was unraveling.
When his smirk came back out like he knew exactly what was running through my head, I didn’t like that at all. He needed to stay far out of there if we were going to make it through this session.
“Babe, you have no idea.”
Babe?I did not know why his calling me that clicked in my brain, but it did. I liked it. Holy hell, how could I like that?
“All right. Let’s get down to it,” the doctor interrupted. “Tell us about Drew.”
The one name snapped me out of my thoughts of power and control, the hard rock of my life falling heavily in my gut.
Drew. My Drew.Reign, you want out of here … talk.
“I met Drew when I was fourteen when we were placed in the same foster home. I didn’t talk for the first two months there. I wanted to be invisible, but Drew pushed. We connected on several levels, but mainly because we were both alone in this world. We had no one, and eventually, all we had was each other.” As I spoke, neither man in the room said anything, as if they wanted to hear what I had to say, and once I got going, I didn’t want to stop. It was nice reliving the old me and Drew, remembering the happier times. It had been a long time since I had allowed those thoughts to come through instead of the final ones I had.
“I ran away that night.” I told them after relivingagainthat fateful night. “I hated living on the streets, but it was better than where I was. At least, out there, I could choose whom I slept with and what I got for it in return.” I surprised the hell out of myself by refusing to dwell and continuing. “Anyway, I saw some crazy shit out there, but I survived.”
“You sure did,” the doctor said. “I know there is more to your time on the streets, but I’d like to get to the point where you learned Drew was alive.”
“My best friend Andi wanted me to have closure with Drew and suggested I go to his grave.”
Lynx said nothing, only uncrossing and crossing his arms or legs every once in a while as I dredged up all those feelings again and felt the hollow get deeper in my soul. It was pulling me back under, and I couldn’t stop it as I spoke. The dreams I had when I was young with Drew vanished in a puff of smoke.
Lynx leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “Why don’t you just talk to him?”
“Pardon?”
He shrugged. “You know, talk to the guy. Even if he has a woman and kid, you could still talk to him, get your closure another way.”
Talk to him, another thing I either hadn’t thought of or was pushing from my head. I wasn’t sure which.
“I can’t,” I told him.
