Chapter 20 - Vlad

I stood outside the office in the hallway, fiddling with the small loop of silver that I'd found in my wallet. Weirdly enough, I hadn't actually gone digging around in there until I scheduled this appointment, looking for that forged insurance card.

That's when I'd found it—Emory's ring. I wasn't sure when she'd given it to me, especially with everything that we'd been through since I crashed my way into her life. But seeing it there had given me the final push to go to this visit with her.

Sure, I had to do it all online because the idea of actually speaking to her was terrifying, but look, here I was, ready to face that fear instead of being a fucking coward.

As I scanned over the glass door and the weird textured wallpaper that places like this insisted on using, I noticed the lingering char on the wall above the trashcan. It had been where I'd set that fire, and it hadn't been cleaned or repaired yet.

Objectively, I knew that it hadn't been that long since the fateful date when I'd been shot and dragged myself here for help. And still, it felt like it had been years, decades. So much had happened between then and now, so much that I still didn't entirely believe.

But I wasn't here to just stand in the hall, now was I?

With a heavy sigh, I pushed through the main doors and walked up to the reception desk. The same woman from before sat there—Antoinette, if I remembered correctly. I greeted her with a half-hearted smile, and she perked up in her seat.

"Hello, Mr. Ustinov. Are you here for your next session?"

I nodded, and the woman looked down at her computer screen. "Okay. Umm, yeah. It looks like you're just a few minutes late, so that should be fine. Let me page Emory."

Again, I offered a simple nod and stepped away from the desk, wandering over to the waiting area but not sitting down. I knew I was a bit late. I hadn't really planned on coming. I was going to just not show up because there was no insurance to charge, and we'd destroyed the card on file.

But then I realized what I already knew. I didn't want to be apart from Emory, and if seeing her as a therapist was the only way to keep seeing her, so be it.

"All right, Mr. Ustinov, you can head back. Emory is just finishing up some paperwork."

Giving the receptionist a grin, I walked over to the long hallway that led to Emory's office. The familiar route was stained with various memories—my first time here, sneaking in while bleeding out…

I wondered if this visit would be as positive as the first meeting or as disastrous as the second.

When I reached Emory's office, I knocked on the door, which was open with just a crack. She cleared her throat before calling out, "Come in," and my stomach clenched hard as my pulse skyrocketed.

It took a good two seconds before I could get myself moving, and when I brushed my shoes over the dense carpet, it was too loud in my ears. The boom of my heartbeat was too noisy, too. The lights were too bright, and I was strongly considering just turning around and leaving.

But I didn't.

As I stepped into her office, I found Emory behind her desk—likely using it like a shield—and she looked up at me with an uncharacteristically neutral expression. I was used to seeing warm shine from her eyes, but she'd battened down the hatches and wasn't giving me anything to go off of.

I cleared my throat and then sat down on the couch. There was no immediate greeting, and we sat there in silence for roughly a million years, give or take.

"Well, I'll admit that I'm surprised you came in. I was sure you'd just stand me up, and that would be that."

I nodded, reaching into my pocket for my phone. As I flicked open the screen, I went to the few TalkBack responses that I'd saved in the program. I'd prepared them to use until I mustered the courage to do what I was really here for.

As I held it up, there was a flicker of surprise and then disappointment on Emory's face as the TalkBack played the message for me.

"I thought about it. I wasn't sure if I was welcome here anymore."

The robot's voice didn't offer tone. It couldn't, and as the words were read off so flatly, I felt the desire to speak start to outweigh the nervous energy holding me back. I still felt so weird doing it and was so surprised by what I sounded like. Sure, I had to assume my voice would be deeper, considering I wasn't a child anymore, but I'd never heard this voice.

It wasn't familiar like the one I'd used in my head all these years.

Emory's mouth opened like she was going to speak, but then she bit back on the urge, breathing deeply before she dropped her stare to her desk.

"I…I get why you might feel that way. But I'm a professional. I'm a therapist who's promised to help those I can. So, I can certainly do that."

I expected her to say as much, so I scrolled to the next preset message in TalkBack and let it play.

"You help people a lot. I'm sorry that you had to be the one who needed help this time."

Emory sighed, cocking her head to the side as she bobbed her head in a slight nod.

"Yeah, I can't say I enjoyed the experience very much. But I am grateful to have my normal life back."

That one stung. And I had no one to blame for that but me. I knew what I would be asking of Emory if I tried to push things forward. That normalcy would be destroyed. There'd be no way to keep her completely isolated from my work.

Sure, she could still practice and help people, but she'd have to live at the house. She'd had to keep communication about her life vague with her friends and family. She'd have to lie.

I didn't feel like I was worth all that.

Pulling up the last premade TalkBack response, I pressed play, silently wondering what I was going to do after this.

"I'm sorry, Emory. I didn't intend on dragging you into all this."

She offered a gentle smile, and I couldn't tell if it was genuine or just a professional courtesy. She had a damn good poker face when she was in the safety of her own office.

"I know you didn't. Life just…pulls us places sometimes. But I'm more concerned with where you'd like to see it take you. Do you still want to use that?" She gestured at the phone. "Or do you want to keep meeting and maybe work on speaking? Because I'm here for you if you do."

And there it was.

Time stretched into a taffy-thin line that had no beginning or end. I felt the blood in my face, and my ears, and everything was too small, too constricting. Why did I think coming here would be a good idea? I was so damn fucked up, and I knew it. What was I doing dragging Emory more into my bullshit?

But then something happened that I wasn't expecting. I looked into Emory's eyes as I sat there on the couch, and all I wanted to do in the entire world was tell her the truth. I couldn't stand a single second longer of keeping her out or lying to her.

Because she meant the damn world to me. I was…falling in love with her.

I got up from the couch and walked over to her desk, putting her ring on the smooth wood surface. A tiny gasp escaped her, and when she looked up at me I just smiled and nodded, my silent way of saying, "yeah I found it."

Choosing not to speak that sentence was entirely because I had a much harder one I needed to say—and I needed to say it now. So, I turned and went back to the couch. As I sat across from her again, I looked up into Emory's beautiful eyes and let the words that had been caught in my throat for years leave me at last.

"I saw my father kill my mother."

Emory's expression dropped, and she gaped at me as I just blurted out the words and let them hang there. But I'd said it. That was what I'd never told anyone, and with those words no longer holding back the dam, everything burst free.

"He was a piece of shit that beat her and, apparently, my brothers. Ivan just told me about everything that he and Abe had kept me from seeing, all the bruises and fights and destruction that they quickly swept away because I was the baby, and they needed to protect me. And it fucking worked."

The room was dead quiet, and my stare fell to my hands, where I was fiddling with my phone.

"I had no idea that Ivan and Abe had done all that, been through all that. They'd created this lie that painted my father as just distant, not the cruel, abusive fuck he was. So, when I saw him kill her, it broke me.

"When that vital person was taken away—my mother, who I cared about more than anyone, who I'd been basically attached to since birth—it just…it was too much for me to handle. Before I could even process what was going on, I had to get the fuck out of there. My brothers took me with them out of the house in the middle of the night, and we never looked back. I have no idea what's become of my father since we left that house, but…even removed from him, I could feel his presence, threatening to kill me just like her.

"After that…well, I didn't know who I was, who I was after her. I literally lost my voice, and I never let myself think about the past because it was too painful. A few days turned into a few months, and then…it was too late to try and speak again without it being this huge deal, so I just accepted it.

"Now, though, I've seen Ivan with Adley. I've seen you. Darkness and pain aren't the only thing in the world for the Ustinov brothers. And I…I want to hope for something better again. I want to believe that I have a chance at something real, something that I care about so much that I can almost feel my mother again. I…I want to try this, Emory. I want to try this with you because I don't want to be held back by my past. Knowing you'll be there, I want to look forward to my future."

I looked up from my hands when the room still remained silent. As I met Emory's stare, she looked at me with her brows up to her hairline and mouth hanging open slightly. I couldn't stop the abrupt chuckle that bled from me, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the situation.

"Well, that's a first. I actually left someone else speechless."