Chapter 12

Gwen

”Idon”t know if I can do this,” I admitted. Even to myself, my voice sounded small and shaky.

”Hey.”

I looked over at my brother. He was sitting behind the steering wheel, watching me with worried eyes. ”This is supposed to help, not hurt. You know?” He searched my face. ”If you”re not ready, we”ll do it another time, Gwenny.”

I smiled at his use of my childhood nickname. My parents had given it to me and it was a reminder of them. ”We should go see Aunt Sara soon.” She”d taken us in after our parents died and had done her best to raise two traumatized kids. She”d done a fantastic job, and really, we were the people we were thanks to her.

”After this is over,” he promised.

Aunt Sara had moved to Montana a few years ago. We spoke to her often and we had a permanent invitation to come visit the little ranch she bought. The kids would love it. Blowing out a breath, I closed my eyes. You can do this.You don”t have to even talk if you don”t want to. Aunt Sara had made us go to therapy when we were kids. Your parents getting killed in a car crash tended to be devastating and neither of us were coping well. It took some time, but we worked through our issues. Now here we were again, back in therapy.

”Gwen-”

”I”m going,” I told him, voice firm, more for myself than him.

”Want me to come in? Wait in the lobby?”

Smiling over at him, I squeezed his forearm. ”That”s okay. I”ve got this.” I looked around the parking lot. It wasn”t very busy. ”Or maybe it would be safer...”

”Don”t worry about me,” he said with a shake of his head. ”You always worry about everyone but yourself. Go.”

I made the quick walk inside, smiled at the receptionist as I checked in, and sat, still as a statue as I waited. Playing the perfect part. It was what I”d been doing since the attack. I didn”t want anyone to worry about me. I couldn”t bear to inconvenience anyone. But slowly I was sinking and I wasn”t sure how to claw my way back up.

”Gwen? Come on back.”

Blowing out a breath, I followed the receptionist down a short hallway, past her desk and into a large room. A blonde woman in a pantsuit stood and held out her hand for me to shake. She was older, maybe in her fifties. I wasn”t sure why that made me relax. It was more likely her serene vibe that was setting me at ease. This wasn”t a ball buster who was going to go after my insecurities as though they were enemies to defeat. Her hand was soft, almost delicate. She was...matronly. The knot in my chest eased the tiniest bit as I sat on a couch across from her chair.

”I”m Trina Donaldson,” she said, introducing herself. ”It”s so nice to meet you, Gwen. Your brother has told me so much about you.”

My brows rose and I hesitated before speaking. ”It”s nice to meet you, too... Gage has talked about me?”

She nodded. ”Jordan, as well.” There was empathy in her eyes. ”They”ve both recounted their versions of what happened that night,” she explained. ”And while I can”t go over exactly what was said, I can tell you that they”re both very worried about you. I”m so glad you”ve come to see me.”

I swallowed hard. Don”t lose it. Don”t lose it.

”Would you like some water?”

Jerking, I was pulled out of the internal panic attack before it could begin. ”Please,” I whispered.

She moved slowly toward a little kitchenette area. She was making very deliberate, slow movements.

I wasn”t sure if it was to give me time to pull myself together? Or if she didn”t want to startle me. Either way, I appreciated it. I didn”t need quite that level of care most of the time, but coming here today was going to force me to face Trent again. To relive what he did to me. To remember what he might have done to my babies. Gritting my teeth, I accepted the glass of water and sipped it. ”Thank you.” I blew out a breath and met her eyes. ”I want you to know that I”m not a wimp. Or a coward,” I added.

Her eyebrows shot upward and she looked startled. ”I”m not sure why you think anyone would see you that way?”

Looking down, shame made heat creep into my cheeks. ”Because I haven”t been able to handle this alone,” I admitted. ”I was...stronger than this once.”

”You”ve survived a trauma, Gwen. It”s normal to feel the effects of it. But I can assure you, no one is looking at you with anything but concern and care.” She paused and when I didn”t speak, she asked, ”Do you see your brother Gage, or your friend Jordan, as weak?”

It was my turn to be startled. My eyes swept up to her. ”No!” I shook my head. ”Why would I?”

”Why would they see you that way?” she countered. ”They”re seeking help with the events of that night, as well.”

She had a point. I would never think anything bad about either of them. And in fact, I”d urged them to seek help, while I stubbornly refused. ”Thank you for seeing me today,” I told her, changing the subject. ”I wasn”t sure you”d be willing to see me on such short notice.”

”It”s my pleasure,” she told me with a smile. She didn”t call me out for changing topics.

This was supposed to be Gage”s appointment. Dr. Donaldson had been booked out for the next three weeks, but my brother insisted I come in to see her as soon as possible. His appointment was the soonest, so he set it all up for me.

”How can I help you, Gwen?”

I glanced up at her. The last therapist I”d seen—Gage had hated the man and I hadn”t liked him much either—had been a bulldog. He ran the sessions. He decided what we spoke about. And if you didn”t answer the way he wanted? Let”s just say Gage and I learned to hide our emotions from our aunt so we wouldn”t have to go back. Looking back on it now, all we”d needed to do was tell her we wanted to see someone else, but we didn”t want to inconvenience her any more than we already had. She didn”t see us as a burden. That woman loved us and we loved her just as much. ”Um...”

”I want to be able to help you,” she continued. ”So, we can start with what happened that night. Or we can talk about your childhood. Anything is on the table. You just start talking.”

I swallowed and stared down at my hands. They were twisted together in my lap, my knuckles white from the force. I was trying to hold myself together. ”I haven”t made meatloaf since April of last year.”

The only sound in the room was her pen writing on the notepad she held.

”I was making dinner. It...was...like any other night.” I took another sip of my water to wet my dry throat. ”Sean and Grace.” I looked up from her shoes. ”They”re my children,” I told her. She smiled and nodded at me. My eyes dropped back to her sensible black pumps. ”They were sitting at the dining room table, coloring while I made dinner.” I shook my head. ”Why is this so hard?”

”It”s coming up on the anniversary of your attack.”

It was a statement, not a question. There was only a little over two months before we got to that date in mid-April. The dreams were getting worse. And now I understood why.

”Have you spoken to anyone about it?” she asked. It wasn”t an accusation, just a question.

”I told my brother and Jordan what happened before they got there,” I told her. And I knew they”d told Lock and from there everyone knew what happened. But they all took their cues from me and I hadn”t wanted to talk about it. ”Not really,” I amended. ”And now it”s sort of...built up in my head. And it”s like it”s fighting me to get out, but I just want to forget about it.” I searched her kind brown eyes. ”How do I make it go away?”

”It”ll never go away, Gwen,” she replied, a solemn look on her face. ”But you can give it less power.”

”I want to take that power back,” I told her. ”Get back what he took from me.” I dropped my head back with a sigh, closing my eyes. ”How do I do that?”

”Let it all out.”

I nodded. ”I was making meatloaf.” Giving a weak laugh, I shook my head. ”It seems so...ordinary...now. But I had no idea that in just a few minutes my life was going to change.” I gave her a strained look. ”Trent and I were divorced, but he was showing interest in being around the kids again. He stopped by, brought them a few gifts, spent a few minutes here and there with them. And I wanted to give them the opportunity to know their father. That was a mistake,” I muttered. ”Gage was staying with us at the time, so I had him, Jordan, and Trent over for dinner before all this went down. Let”s just say it didn”t go well. Gage hates...hated Trent. But, I wanted to try.”

”It”s honorable to try to allow your children to know both of their parents. There”s no shame in that,” she told me. ”The things that Trent did and said were not your mistakes. They”re his.”

It was something I”d told myself a hundred times over. And I still couldn”t quite shake off the guilt of bringing that monster back into my kids” lives. ”He”d never done anything like this before. I realized my mistak-” I broke off as she looked up from her notepad with an arched brow. ”I realized he was only coming back to try to keep up appearances,” I amended, taking out the word mistake as it applied to me. ”He wanted people to think he was a good guy. And a good guy saw his kids. He didn”t care about them.”

”They”re fortunate to have you.”

It wasn”t possible to hold back my smile. I beamed at her. ”My kids are the best thing I”ve ever done.” She returned the smile even as mine faltered.

”I didn”t know it then, but Trent was using cocaine. They found it in his system after they arrested him. It explains a lot. I couldn”t reason with him,” I explained. ”It was like he was a completely different person. Even from the man I”d grown to dislike and divorced, he was just so different that night.” Squeezing my hands together around the glass, I tried to stop them from shaking.

”Go on,” she urged.

That made me realize I was sitting there in silence, reliving it in my head, not out loud. Clearing my throat, I continued. ”He burst through my front door, kicked it in, and was in the kitchen before I knew what was going on. The kids were in the dining room and I had the door propped open. My house is one of the few in Tucson that doesn”t have an open concept and the kitchen and dining room are walled off from one another. Thankfully, Sean grabbed Grace and they hid under the table.”

I gave her a wry smile. ”I only know that because Jordan told me. At the time, I was mostly sure he”d stormed right past them because of the time between the sound of him kicking in the door and him barging into my kitchen. I was holding my pan that I was using at the time.” I thought about it. ”Too bad it wasn”t a knife.”

”Would you have stabbed him?”

Anger surged through me. ”Absolutely. Not right away. I asked him what he was doing. He was nearly incoherent. Raving like a lunatic. Accusing me of cheating on him. Saying he was going to lose his job because of me. Going off about my brother.” I shook my head, still perplexed about the nonsense he”d spouted that night. ”I think he was mixing up the past and present because of how high he was.”

”It sounds that way,” she murmured.

”I”d like to say, for the record,” I told her, ”that I never cheated on him. I don”t even know where that one came from. Not that it”s important.”

”It is to you,” she corrected. ”So, it”s important.”

”We argued,” I said, continuing. ”I tried to get him to leave. I begged him to leave. There”s nothing in this world I wouldn”t do for my kids and I was so scared he was going to hurt them. I begged over and over for him to leave. I thought he might, at first.” A cold sweat broke out on my skin. ”Then something changed in his eyes.” I focused in on the doctor. Though I”d been staring at her all I could see was Trent”s angry face. Now I was seeing Dr. Donaldson again. Her face was a neutral mask as she listened to me, but I could see the sadness in her gaze. It made me feel somewhat better. She didn”t give pity, just reassurance and comfort. ”Have you ever seen someone”s intentions in their eyes?”

”I have,” she told me, a grim look appearing on her face. ”I know exactly what you mean, Gwen.”

Nodding, I dove back in. I needed to get this out now that I started. ”He was going to kill me. I saw it there in those crazed, glassy eyes. Somehow, the man I”d once loved had turned into...a man who hated me. I wasn”t going to wait for him to attack because I knew he was about to. He was tensing up,” I explained. ”I”ve seen enough fights, thanks to Gage, to recognize when someone is about to advance on another person.” My brother had gotten into a lot of fights in high school. I”d watched nearly all of them, always helpless to do anything to stop it. Gage always won.

”I hit him as hard as I could with my frying pan. Bent the handle, that”s how hard it connected. Too damn bad I wasn”t using my cast iron that night.” I gave a weak laugh. It was wiped away by the next memory. ”I thought for a moment I”d knocked some sense into him. There was this dazed awareness on his face for half a second.” I nodded my head, as though agreeing with myself that I hadn”t just imagined it. ”And then he hit me.”

I was bouncing between looking at her face to gauge her reactions, and staring at her pumps. It was too hard to tell this story and look directly at her. Tilting my head at her shoes, I admitted. ”I always wondered if I”d be able to take a punch and not get knocked out. I wasn”t much for fighting in school, and there were only a few girl fights, but I remember seeing one where a girl got hit and her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she fell backward.” I hit my fist in my palm. ”Knocked out cold.” My smile was feral even though I wasn”t looking at Dr. Donaldson anymore. ”I”m happy to say, I can take a punch. From a full grown man,” I added.

”You were fighting for your life,” she said. She kept the comments to a minimum, mostly letting me get the story out, but she was encouraging when I needed it.

”He hit me… I don”t know how many times.” I shrugged. ”I lost count. It all just blended together after a while. My eye was swelling up, my lip was bleeding, and I had bruises all over me. I tried to fight back, and I got a few good hits in, but I had no hope against him. No weapon. I remember thinking, at least he”s busy with me, so he wouldn”t go after my babies.”

I swallowed hard. Fear was a block of ice in my stomach. ”At some point I fell under the onslaught. I must have passed out. Because the next thing I knew I was prying my eyes open and Jordan was there.” I sighed, closing my eyes. Forcing myself to keep talking, I kept them shut. ”She told me the kids were okay. And then Trent grabbed her by the hair.” A tear tracked down my cheek. ”I tried to help her. She was in trouble because she was helping me. But I couldn”t get my body to move.”

”From what I hear, your injuries were extensive,” she told me.

”I should have gotten up off that floor and helped my friend,” I said between gritted teeth. ”All I did was pass out again. By the time I woke up I was in the hospital. Jordan and Gage filled in the blanks. Sean...” I broke off. ”I think that”s all I can do today.” She opened her mouth to say something and I quickly told her, ”I don”t want to talk about it anymore.”

”That”s alright, Gwen.” Her voice was soft and soothing. ”We made a lot of progress today. You can come back next week. Or whenever you”re ready.”

I nodded and stood, giving her a grateful smile. ”I”ll make an appointment.”

”Please do,” she urged me. ”Just talking about it can help, but it”s going to get worse before it gets better.” She searched my face as she spoke. ”You have nothing to be ashamed about. You held off a man for as long as you could. You tried to protect your kids. By the time help arrived, you were too far gone to help anyone else. It doesn”t make you weak that you”re struggling to resolve what happened. In fact, I”d like to give you a new perspective,” she offered. When I nodded, she said, ”You”re incredibly strong to have gone through something like that and come out the other side.”

”I don”t know how well it”s going,” I admitted, shifting from foot to foot.

”Seems to me like you”re holding things together.”

”That”s what you do. Right?”

”Not necessarily,” she informed me. ”Some people break apart. They lose themselves. Push everyone away. You”re internalizing. If we can get you to stop doing that, make you see that none of this was your fault, you”ll be back to yourself in no time. You”re stronger than you think, Gwen. Don”t let anyone convince you otherwise.”

”Thank you.” We shook hands again and I made my way outside. I stopped, turning my face up toward the sunlight. It wasn”t nighttime. It was almost a year later. But the scent of meatloaf was all I could smell.