Page 76 of Eleven of a Kind

CHAPTER27

ONE WEEK LATER

Piper

I was never good at communicating my feelings. Ever since my dad left us and I realized he wasn’t coming back, I hid my emotions behind a wall deep inside my mind. The hurt and anguish I felt when I was ten years old set me on the path of not giving a fuck and never letting anyone inside. There were only two people in the entire world a child could and needed to depend on: their parents. The one thing I learned when my father left and never looked back was that love wasn’t real.

I stepped into the elevator at the Kind Medical Center, and when the doors opened, I carefully stepped out to make sure Gabriel wasn’t walking around. I opened the door to Charlotte’s practice and checked in.

“Piper.” Charlotte smiled. “Come back to my office.”

“Hey, Charlotte.”

“I’m happy you scheduled an appointment with me. How are you?” she asked as we stepped inside her office, and she shut the door.

“Obviously fucked up if I’m here.” I sat down on the couch. “I appreciate you getting me in so quickly.”

“That’s because we’re friends, and you’re hurting.” Her lips formed a sympathetic smile.

“Please don’t tell Gabriel I was here. We have that whole patient/doctor confidentiality thing, right?”

“Of course. He’ll never know. So, why don’t you start by telling me what’s on your mind.”

“Men have this habit of falling in love with me, and when they tell me, I run for the hills as fast as I can.”

“Why is that? Why do you run?”

“My father left my mother and me when I was ten. His last words to me were, ‘I love you.’ I never saw him again.” I looked down as I played with my hands.

“You never had contact with him over the years?” she asked.

“No. He disappeared. He walked out of our lives as if we never meant anything to him. He was my father and my world. We were so close, and I was his angel.”

“You felt abandoned by the one person who was supposed to love you more than anyone else in the world,” she said.

“Yeah. I did. And he taught me that love isn’t a real thing. Because if it were, he wouldn’t have abandoned me the way he did.”

“Let me ask you something. Do you or have you ever blamed yourself for him leaving?”

“Yes. I would always ask myself what I did to make him leave. My mother couldn’t handle it, so she started drinking to ease her pain.”

“Did you feel abandoned by her as well?”

“Yep. I sure did. I remember the first time a boy told me that he loved me. I was sixteen years old.”

“What happened?”

“We dated for a few months. He was the captain of the football team. He was the guy that every girl would kill to date. He took my virginity, and right after, he told me that he loved me. When I heard those words, I became paralyzed. My body wouldn’t move. It felt like I had a huge weight on top of me, holding me down. After that, I stopped talking to him. Over time, the paralysis became less and less because I knew I’d just walk away and be fine. Until Gabriel. I’m not fine, Charlotte.”

“That’s because you’ve fallen in love with him and conditioned yourself over the years to feel unworthy of someone’s love. Am I right?”

“I guess. If my own father didn’t love me enough to stay, how could anyone else?”

“You’re self-sabotaging, Piper, and that’s the worst thing anyone can do to themselves. What your father did had nothing to do with you. It was a problem he had inside himself. You weren’t responsible for him leaving. You need to believe that.”

“I try to believe it, Charlotte. But the scar of his abandonment runs too deep.”

“Have you ever thought of trying to find and confront him?” she asked.

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