Page 113 of Meet Me in the Valley
“What made you go there?” Charlotte asks gently. Her pen pauses just above her notebook. “What is it about that memorythat brings you ...” She purses her lips, choosing her words carefully. “Unease?”
That’s a loaded question.
I slouch in my chair, the familiar ache in my chest already tightening. That last night with Tia plays again like a broken record—same words, same regrets, same dissection of everything I said or didn’t say.
Charlotte doesn’t press. She never does. She just waits, letting me sit in the silence long enough to actually hear myself think. I try to pull it apart.
Why this memory? Why now?
It’s something I’ve been shoving down, pretending that I’ve moved past it. But Charlotte’s big on saying things out loud—bringing thoughts into the open, naming them so they lose their power.
“It had me thinking about my mom,” I murmur.
Charlotte nods, encouraging me to go on. My palms are slick, but I wipe them on my jeans and push through.
“I sleep with a lot of women,” I say, then quickly correct myself. “Slept. I’ve slept with a lot of women. I didn’t ... I never let anyone get close. Commitment didn’t feel real. Or safe.”
Charlotte’s tone remains neutral. Measured. “And now?”
“Now I have a reason to settle,” I say, more certain than I’ve ever been.
“Areason,” she repeats, jotting something down. “That’s different from having the tools.” She looks up at me through the computer screen. “Do you feelcapableof settling down?”
My confidence falters. Tia’s face floods my mind—the pain when I told her about Krista. The way she looked at me like I wasn’t who she thought I was. The way she pulled away, like I’d proven every fear she’d ever had about me.
And she wasn’t wrong. I let her down before I even had her.
I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. The silence says it for me. Charlotte watches me closely, and her voice softens.
“When we last met, you said you witnessed your mother’s infidelity. That’s something no teenager is prepared to understand—especially when she left not long after. That loss of trust, Logan … it leaves a mark.”
I nod, the lump in my throat rising. “It was hard.”
Charlotte jots something down, then looks back at me. I shift slightly, adjusting the angle of my laptop screen to cut the glare. Mostly to buy myself a second to breathe.
“Hard,” she repeats quietly. “And maybe somewhere along the line, your brain decided it was safer not to trust anyone. Safer to keep things temporary. Surface-level.”
I blow out a heavy exhale. “Tia isn’t temporary,” I murmur under my breath.
Charlotte offers a small, almost imperceptible smile. “That’s the first step. But the next one?” She tilts her head. “It’s trusting that you don’t have to become what hurt you.”
Charlotte’s words land heavy in my chest. I let them settle, pressing against something I’ve avoided for a long time.
There’s an undeniable truth in them. But there’s confusion too. And resentment. Not toward Charlotte, but toward what those words stir up.
“It feels like I already am just like her, though.”
“Like your mother,” Charlotte states. Not a question, just quiet recognition.
“Yeah.”
“How so?” Charlotte tilts her head with imploring eyes.
I let out a heavy sigh, rubbing my temples with my pointer and middle fingers before answering. “I slept with a woman from work who I knew Tia didn’t like. But it wasn’t only that. I slept with her because I had intense feelings surface for Tia, andthat scared the shit out of me. So, to avoid it all, I ran away from it and did what I knew how to do.”
Ever since my mom left, I’ve held onto this belief that my dad and I just weren’t enough. That if we had been, she wouldn’t have needed more. Wouldn’t have disappeared.
I was sixteen when I saw her. In a car. In the next town over.
