Текст книги "Revealed to Him"

Автор книги: Jen Frederick

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

“What’s going on?”

She draws in a shaky breath and then turns to me. “I should go home,” she says. “I don’t belong here. I’ve embarrassed myself enough. I called Dr. Terrance. He said to take two diazepam and go home.”

“This is your home.” I fold my arms across my chest and stand in the doorway, blocking her way.

“Then I called Dr. Crist and he told me the same thing. To go home.”

“Your home is here,” I repeat.

Her eyes fill with tears, but she swallows hard, fighting them back. “It’s not.”

I push away from the door so I can gather her into my arms. “Natalie, I love you. You love me. This is your home. I want you here with me.”

Her lips tremble and her face scrunches up as she tries to keep the tears in her eyes from falling. “I’m embarrassed and ashamed and maybe I shouldn’t feel that way, but I do. I want to be able to lick my wounds in peace.”

“I’ll leave then, just for tonight, but don’t go.” She’s shaking and feels slight and frail. I don’t want to let her go. Not now. Not ever. “Listen, sweetheart. I know who is doing this to you and I can make it stop.”

“You can? You can magically make all my anxiety go away?” She twists out of my grip and zips her suitcase closed. “With your penis or what? You are so well adjusted. You’ve conquered all your demons and now go around saving others. Well, you can’t save me. I’m a mess. I know this. But I just want to be a mess by myself.”

The shame and anguish in her voice is killing me. “You don’t have to go this alone.”

“You know agoraphobia isn’t fear of the outdoors or crowds. It’s the fear of having a panic attack in public and not being able to do a damn thing about it. It’s literally fear of fear itself. That’s why even in my own home sometimes I have a hard time with change. When I first moved in, I stayed in the bedroom. Sometimes I slept in the bathroom because it was the smallest room in my house and I figured if I passed out, pissed myself, or vomited, I’d just have to reach up and turn the shower on. I can’t do that here. There’s too much space. It’s just all too much. I can’t stay here.” She shuts her eyes and the water leaks out. I wipe her tears away with my thumbs and when I place my lips against hers and she opens in response, I feel like the crisis is momentarily averted. I taste salty tears and infuse as much love and tenderness into the kiss as possible.

I brush her hair back. “You’re stronger than you know. This too shall pass.”

It is the wrong thing to say. She gasps and breaks away. Bending down, she grabs her suitcase. It swings around and hits me in the knee joint and I fold, like a stupid house of cards.

“Fuck,” I cry, sounding like a goddamned broken record.

“Oh my God,” she cries and claps a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I—I have to go. I’m sorry.”

She runs out and because of my stupid fucking prosthetic, I can’t get up and chase after her. I crawl to the bed and pull myself up, and then limp downstairs only to see her run out the door. Adrenaline must be overcoming her fear. A car service is waiting. She dives into the backseat. I see her bending over, blowing into a paper bag as the car speeds away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

JAKE

“You bastard,” I say, ripping the door open.

Isaiah is on his phone and he looks at me coolly as I charge in. “I have to go now,” he speaks into the receiver, “an emergency has arisen. Here’s Sarah. Make an appointment, first available free date.”

“You’re goddamned right this is an emergency,” I snarl. “What the fuck did you say to Natalie today?”

I want to leap across the desk and strangle him.

“Have a seat, Jake.” He gestures toward the chairs.

I plant my palms on his desk and lean over. “No, I won’t fucking sit down. Now tell me what you said to make Natalie leave. I know you said something and I want to know what the fuck it was and how you’re going to fix it.” He stares at me. “Now,” I roar and pound on the desk.

Isaiah jerks back and then rises. He waves to the person behind me. “No, Sarah, we are just fine. No need to call the cops.”

“You don’t know that,” I fume. “I’m two seconds away from taking you down, no matter what our history.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “Now, son—”

I cut him off with a slash of my hand. “No, you don’t get to ‘son’ me. I am not your patient. I am not in your platoon. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You are going to sit down and you are going to listen good. You took something from me that was vital. You broke her, and you need to call her right now and fix it.”

Hands spread, he shrugs helplessly. “That’s just it, Jake, she is broken, but I can’t fix her and neither can you. She has to get better on her own. I spoke with Dr. Terrance—”

“You did what?” I ask incredulously. “I came to you because I fucking trusted you, Isaiah. You knew I didn’t like this guy and that I thought he did more harm than good.”

“So are you.”

I rear back as if he struck me. “What?”

“You aren’t good for her either.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Isaiah comes around his desk and stops a little too close to me for his own safety. My right hand curls into an involuntary fist and the left follows seconds after.

“You were enabling her. In your house, she didn’t need to go anywhere. You saw to her every need.”

“So what? She was having therapy. You yourself said she’d get better in her own time.”

“She wanted to get better for you, not for herself.”

“That’s bullshit. She wanted to be better before I ever met her. She was outside her apartment and walking down the street, going to local cafés. Her progress and subsequent reversal had fuck-all to do with me.”

He takes a step back and then another as I advance on him. “You’re not a therapist, Jake. You were her lover.”

“Am,” I say stonily. “I am her lover. Will be. There will be no one else for her.”

He shakes his head. “You’ll never be happy if she’s not sufficiently well.”

“Fuck you, Isaiah. You don’t know what makes me happy or what I need. As long as she was happy, that’s what fucking mattered. When she was ready, she would have left the house. When she was fucking ready. You think taking her away from people who love her was really the best decision?”

“I do, yes,” Isaiah says, with the pompous reassurance of a man who’s fucked with one too many minds.

“If you weren’t twenty years older than me, my fist would be in your face. Don’t ever call me again, Isaiah. I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

“Jake, wait,” he calls.

I don’t turn around or answer any of his pleas. That man is dead to me. I want to break something or someone, and if I stay another minute in his presence, I will lay him out. He messed with me; worse, he shit on Natalie. He’d said something to her, made her think she was weak and less-than.

Instead of building her up, he tore her down. Did no one recognize how strong she was? In her own time, my ass. Everyone was imposing a time line on Natalie that fit their idea of when she should be at what mental health marker.

Did I care that she didn’t leave the townhouse? Fuck no. Did I care that she preferred to spend her time locked up in her two rooms on the third floor? Double fucking no. I care that she looks at me like I could lift the world on my shoulders. I care that when she smiles, my whole day gets better. I care that she’s clever and talented and can think rings around me. I care about the sweet way she and Sabrina have bonded. I care that she loves me and that I love her. That she, in the noncorniest way, is my other half. Probably my better half.

At home, I find Sabrina in the kitchen. There are already two full boxes of cookies and from the looks of it, she’s well on her way to a third one. She gives me a sad, trembly smile. “I thought I’d bake some cookies for her.”

Folding Sabrina in my arms, I try to comfort one woman in my life. “I’m going after her. She’ll be back here sooner rather than later. I have her treadmill desk. She loves that damn thing.”

“Do you think she’s all right?”

“She will be.”

And I’ll be there to hold her hand and celebrate every success, even if it’s just answering the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

NATALIE

Jake calls, but I can’t bring myself to answer the phone. I huddle nude in the shower. I couldn’t make it from the car into the building without vomiting. I had to lean over the planter and spew my guts into the soil in front of a bunch of strangers. Chris, the night doorman, held my hair and my suitcase and then helped me upstairs to my apartment.

I managed to get to the bathroom before losing whatever was left in my stomach. Shaking like a leaf, I stripped down and sat in the shower waiting for the hot water to warm me up. I’m sweating like I ran a marathon and I can’t catch a full breath. When I break down into full-on ugly sobs in my apartment, there is no one to hear me but my walls.

I hear the phone ring, and I can see Jake’s face smiling back at me. He let me take it one morning after he’d gone down on me. He had this intensely satisfied look, and I thought it was wonderfully perverse to take a picture of him right after he’d wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

His smile was full of wicked intent and it thrilled me to look at it. Even as wretched as I feel now, I still can’t prevent my body from reacting to that look and the memory behind it.

I close my eyes to shut him out. I can’t bear to look at all that I’ve lost, at all that I could have if only I didn’t let my fear rule my life. In such a short time, he’d come to mean so much, but God, I require so much work, so much sacrifice.

He turned his world upside down for me, re-creating my office and bedroom down to the last pink pillow. He set up eyes to the outside world to alleviate my anxiety. He showed never-ending patience. And what do I give him in return?

A freak show.

I can’t allow him to make more sacrifices for me. I remember when Adam, my ex, broke it off, telling me how he was done explaining how I’d hidden away under the guise of someone else’s name. He wanted me to go out and defend myself. I tried, but the deluge of abuse was too much for me.

I understood why Adam didn’t want me anymore. I was too much trouble. Eventually Jake would feel that way and I can’t bear for that to happen—to see the love in his eyes replaced with resentment. It’s better this way, I think.

Eventually the hot water runs out and I am forced to leave the shower or turn into a Popsicle. The phone dings and a message from Oliver pops up.

Read your email. It’s important.

With a trembling hand, I pick up the phone and open my emails. There’s one from Oliver that I swipe on and I see immediately it’s a forward from Jake. The contents send me reeling.

I don’t want to believe a word of it. It’s all so circumstantial. Roadkill, a restaurant, a delivery service. It doesn’t compute. She’s my friend, my only friend, and the betrayal strikes deep. I hate Terrance, but I love Daphne.

If it was Terrance, I’d believe it, but not Daphne. Never Daphne.

I delete the email and stumble toward the bed. I haven’t changed the sheets and they smell like Jake, which makes me cry harder. The diazepam must not be working. The pain of emptiness and loss wracks me, and I feel worse, a hundred times worse, than when the only thing that surrounded me was fear.

I huddle under the blankets, wanting to rewind the clock, only I don’t know when I’d stop. Do I go back to four weeks ago when I first met Jake? Or six weeks to the time I got the note? How about three years ago when the subway attack happened, or maybe all the way back to when my parents died?

Why did I come here? I can’t remember. I don’t feel safer. I don’t feel better. I don’t feel less shame or embarrassment. Instead I feel alone. So alone.

It’s the unbearable emptiness that makes me take the phone call. It’s the twelfth one.

“Why?” is the only thing I can think of to say when I answer the phone.

“Let me see you. Let me explain in person,” she begs. Her voice is thick with emotion. Is she crying because she betrayed me or because she got caught? How does she even know? My guess is that Oliver or Jake called her to tell her to leave me alone.

“Why?” I repeat. I can’t see her. I shouldn’t want to talk to her, but she’s someone I love and I have this need to hear her out.

“We needed another hit. You were way behind. These notes, the clown, spurred you like nothing else. I would have stopped them once the book was done.”

“For the book? That’s it? Because it’s done. It was done this morning. I was going to email it to you.” The manuscript that I finished after working all night and into the morning rests abandoned on the floor of the office at Jake’s house. I wonder if it will ever see the light of day.

“What do you mean, that’s it?” she cries. “That’s everything! I did this for you! I would never have sent the dog if I’d had the manuscript. You were too busy with Jake.” She says his name like he’s the devil.

“No!” I sob. “No, you did this for yourself. You fucked with my head, Daphne. I trusted you and you—you did this horrible thing for your own gain. I don’t want to talk to you ever again.”

I move to hang up, but she yells out, “Stop.”

“What is it?”

“The book? You said it’s done? Can you send it to me?”

I shake my head in disbelief. “No.” And then I end the call.

I drag the comforter and pillows into the bathroom, turn my phone off, and try to sleep, but my mind is racing. I want to call Daphne again and yell at her until she says she’s sorry. I want to hurt her so she knows what it feels like. I close my eyes and envision kidnapping her and locking her in a box until she screams for release. But then somehow, it’s not her in the box, but me. I’m the one screaming and afraid and no one is there to hear me.

I see Jake, but he can’t hear me. I yell for him and slam my palms against the box, but the barrier is too thick and he walks by. I gag on my own saliva. Crawling to the sink I fumble in the drawer until I find my bottle of Restoril. It takes thirty minutes, but eventually I find peace in a drug-induced sleep.

I wake up with my face glued to the bathroom tile. The Jake-scented sheets cocoon me, and for a moment, in the dawn space between sleep and awareness, I feel him next to me. He’s curved around me with his right arm under my cheek and his left arm resting on my waist. I have my legs tangled with his and my toes are pressed against his calf.

But then the smoke of sleep dissipates and I’m left with the cold tile and the sheets that are quickly losing his special scent. My body protests as I rise. In the mirror, a puffy-faced monster stares back at me. My hair is both knotted and limp, a spectacularly ugly nest. I had told Jake I wanted to fall apart alone, and here I am, more unraveled than a ball of used yarn.

My eyes are red and tired. Below my puffy eyelids, my cheeks look extra pale—nearly ghostlike. An insistent pounding sets in around my forehead. I swallow two aspirin before I leave the bathroom in search of clothes. Three antianxiety drugs yesterday, a sleeping pill and two aspirin before breakfast. I’ve become a regular pill popper.

I dig my laptop out of the suitcase that yesterday I tossed just inside the door on my way to the bathroom. I bypass the kitchen because the thought of food makes me ill. In my office, I take a seat and then power up the laptop. The room looks enormous and bare without my treadmill desk.

I ignore the new emails—all of them from Daphne—and dig out the deleted email. In plain and unmistakable detail, Jake spells out what he knows. That Daphne sent me a dog that was already dead to scare me into finishing my book. He believes she was responsible for the note and clown too. He ends the email saying that he loves me and that the third floor is waiting for my return. I get misty-eyed when I read that part.

I open the manuscript. The dedication reads:

To Daphne, a tough but necessary taskmaster. Without your encouragement, I would never have finished this book.

My finger hovers over the DELETE button. Is she right? That without the notes, the clown, I would never have finished? When I was achieving my biggest milestones—leaving the apartment, walking into a café, traveling all the way to the subway stop—I’d forgotten about the book. Or not forgotten about it, but it wasn’t my priority. I’d done the three books in the trilogy. This was the start of something new, and I felt that I had time to pay attention to fixing myself rather than the words on the page, and so the book was pushed aside.

I’d been selfish, because Daphne had made me a commitment and needed me to fulfill my end of the bargain. But I’d ignored her pleas, too wrapped up in seeing how far I could push my phobias.

But then I remember the cold sweat and nausea that hounded me for days after the note came. I remember the sense of utter defeat when I couldn’t bring myself to open the door. Her methods worked but at a great cost because once again, I’m a prisoner of my own making.

That’s not entirely her fault, though she played a part in it. I press down and watch the letters disappear. The cursor blinks at me. I can’t write what’s in my heart, so I shove away from the computer and pace. The walls of the apartment feel confining rather than protective. I pull open the curtains of the French doors and look outside. There’s a blue sports car and then a red one. And then a town car and then a taxi and then a black Audi and then a white delivery truck—my eyes swing back to the black Audi. It’s hard to see inside the tinted windows, but I believe I see the shape of Jake’s perfect head.

A knock at my door has me swinging around. My breath catches and then accelerates. Is it Jake? Daphne? Do I feel fear or anticipation? I rub my sweaty palms together and call out, “Who is it?”

“Dr. Terrance.”

I drop my head into my heads and press the bridge of my nose between my two index fingers. The pain in my head doesn’t go away. Neither does Dr. Terrance, judging by the repeated knocking on the door.

“Oliver is worried about you,” he calls. “I promised I wouldn’t leave until you opened the door.”

“I can’t open the door. I’m too sick,” I lie. I probably could open the door, because I can see by Jake’s security setup on my laptop that it is indeed Dr. Terrance alone and outside my door. But I don’t want to. I want him to go away and let me wallow in my misery.

“I heard about Daphne. That’s a difficult situation. I’m sure you feel betrayed.”

I squeeze my entire head between my spread fingers, but Dr. Terrance’s incessant knocking continues.

“Use the key,” I finally call out. I know Oliver has given it to him.

The lock disengages and the knob turns. I slam the top of my laptop down and fold my arms, waiting for him to step inside and close the door.

“Your curtains are open. Are you feeling well enough for that?”

I glare at him in mulishness. I don’t want him here. There’s nothing he can do for me today.

“I see you’re in a mood.” He sets a small white bag on the table. If it was Jake bringing me this bag, I’d guess there was something flaky and delicious inside. Because it’s Dr. Terrance, I’m certain it’s drugs. He wanders into my office, where I’m sure he’s counting the prescription bottles and the number of pills I have left. Predictably, he returns a short while later.

“I see you haven’t been following my medication regimen.”

“I believe at our last meeting you said that the drugs were ‘as needed.’”

“And you believe you haven’t needed them?” Skepticism abounds in his tone.

“I believe I took them when I needed them.”

“Hmmm,” he murmurs. He crosses one elegantly shod knee over the other. Dr. Terrance is a handsome older man and dresses well. I wondered at times in the past whether his success was largely reliant on his looks. He’d once lamented to me how he’d do well on television and thought we could work together in shining a new light on anxiety-based disorders. I said no. “It’s unfortunate about Daphne. Were you able to finish your book?”

“Yes.” I wonder how long it will take until he leaves, or rather how many questions I’ll have to answer before he leaves.

“Really?” His eyebrows arch, just slightly. “When was it? After the dog was delivered or before?”

“Before,” I say stonily.

He leans forward. “How fascinating. So the note and the clown were all you needed to push you forward? Tell me, how did it feel when you received the dog? I’ll need to document this all for your charts.”

“It didn’t feel good.”

He continues as if I hadn’t said anything, or as if he can’t hear me. “Daphne’s methods, although unorthodox, worked. Interesting.”

“Interesting? How is it interesting that my best friend royally screwed me over.” Disgusted, I rise and pour myself a glass of water.

Dr. Terrance waves his hand as if to say “never mind.” “It’s an interesting data point to help me treat you better. The more information you provide to me, the better I am able to help you cope. Now why do you have a camera installed above your door?”

I hesitate because Jake told me to keep the details of my security in the apartment a secret. But since the danger is gone, what’s the point?

“It’s so I have eyes on the areas that I feel present the most danger to me. Jake thought if I could see what’s going on outside my door, I’d feel better.”

“Was he right?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting,” he muses. “Are there any other security precautions that Jake installed for you?”

I open my mouth to say yes, but then close it. He doesn’t need to know. I need to keep some things private, and the night that Jake installed the sensors, the night I opened the door and let him in, is a memory I don’t want to share.

Dr. Terrance senses that I’ve shut down and gets to his feet. He taps the white bag with his finger. “This is a prescription for a higher dose of your sleeping aid. Take it tonight and for the rest of the week. When you’re better rested, we’ll start therapy again. I’m confident that now you are no longer being targeted by an unscrupulous person, you’ll be able to make great strides. But it all begins with rest. So take the prescription and help your body recover. Your mind will soon follow.”

He leaves me with this sage advice.

There’s a kernel of truth in his statements. The more tired I am, the more emotional I get. I stare at the white bag. If rest can help me get better faster, then that’s what I should do. I should sleep, get rid of these headaches, and start therapy again.

Maybe if I can get better soon, Jake will still be available. I’d take a taxi to his apartment and stride up the stairs and knock confidently on his front door. When he opened the door in surprise, I’d invite him out on a date. We’d go to the local Chinese place with its wonderful, cheap food. We’d hold hands and walk along the Hudson as the joggers and tourists pass by.

I reach for the white bag and open it. Inside I find one pill bottle. “Take two,” it states. I swallow them and go into the bedroom to start my recovery.