Page 60 of Into the Fire: After
“Anything,” I repeated.
He crossed his arms, eyes narrowing a bit. “Where’s this coming from?”
I snorted. At least this I could be up front about. “I’m an aspiring therapist. I’m attuned to your moods at the best of times. And this time is far from best.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Lightyears from best.”
I waited.
Brooks half-sat on a barstool and leaned over the counter toward me. “I don’t know,” he said. “Doesn’t it all feel…anti-climactic? Like, we spent weeks and weeks being chased, our only thoughts keeping Taryn safe. Then the worst came to pass…and itpassed.And what the hell are we supposed todonow? How does all that happen and we come out the other side and just…go about our life?”
I refolded the towel and laid it aside, folding my hands on the cool countertop. “I don’t think there’s any one way to do that.”
“Well, how are you doing it?”
In an actual session, I’d redirect the attention back on the client. My job was to give them the strength and confidence to ask the questions and find the answers within themselves, not to spill my own traumas and hangups.
But Brooks wasn’t a client. He was my packmate. My beta. My friend.
“Throwing myself into my work. Clearly,” I added, gesturing between the two of us. “Same way I did when I left Pockston.”
At that point in my life, escaping my family had been the climax of my story. Running away with Taryn, starting our life together had been the happily ever after, the epilogue of a hard-fought tale.
In some ways, this was the same. We all had our chance at a happily ever after together. This was what we’d been fighting for, working toward from nearly the day we all met.
But leaving Pockston, we had been running toward a brighter life than what lay behind us. Emerging from a lightless existence with a lightless future. This time, we’d all lost a little bit of innocence. We were no longer naive to the grim realities that existed around us, unseen. They’d been our reality for a time.
Now, not only did we have to convince ourselves that the danger had actually passed, but we had to move through the world with newfound understanding. We could see things now that others didn’t.
If leaving Pockston was a journey from dark into dawn, coming home after Phoenix felt more like dusk melting into black night. No streetlamps, no stars, and the sound of something creeping just out of sight.
It was bound to make anyone a little antsy.
I grabbed his hand. “Maybe things feel anticlimactic right now because life doesn’t have a climax. This isn’t a story that we’ll ever reach the last page of, Brooks. There will always be another page, and another. It just…it continues on, and so do we.”
Cool eucalyptus surrounded me. My alpha preened at having found the right words to soothe our beta. I’d have to keep at him—at all of them, really. We all carried so much inside us since Phoenix.
Brooks sighed, squeezing my hand in thanks. “You’re a good therapist, Brea,” he said before kissing my knuckles. “Such a good therapist I won’t ruin the moment with a joke about climaxes.”
Note to self: Clients do not get slapped upside the head.
Packmates, though? Fair game.
Twenty-six
Taryn
TheBasementwasaperfectly fine coffee shop, I supposed. Where Bean & Leaf was an inviting blend of comfy-cozy, The Basement rode that fine line between the aesthetic of grunge and the reality of it—water stains on the ceiling, peeling paint covered by years-old band stickers and flyers, uneven floorboards with a yellowFloor is Wetcone perpetually on top of it.
For fuck’s sake, the place wasn’t evenina basement. I was fairly certain they’d just picked the name so they wouldn’t have to dole out the funds to spruce the place.
They did have one thing going for it that my beloved former workplace did not, though: a liquor license.
Sheyna sipped on her Irish Coffee, and I forced myself to slowly nurse my grown-up s’mores—espresso, marshmallow liqueur, with a chocolate and caramel drizzle and crushed graham crackers around the rim. Plus a few extras for dipping.
It was absolutely disgusting.
I hated it.
