–Chapter One–
Harper
Twenty minutes into our second session, my therapist looked me straight in the eye and told me I had a delicate mind.
This was our sixth session.
I wasn’t sure why I’d bothered coming after the first.
Catching the end of Dr. Powell’s sentence, I shifted my doe brown eyes back to her from the distracting mural of hideous sunflowers.
“Are you saying that what I know happened didn’t really happen?”
She flashed me a smile of large white teeth.
“What I’m saying, Harper, is that perception and reality are often two different things.”
Bringing my hands together on my lap, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The worn leather chair crackled loudly beneath my sore, denim-clad ass.
Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I blinked and studied her perfect cherub face. I’d hated her on sight the first time we met nearly seven months ago. Her blonde hair was so ridiculously shiny it looked synthetic. Her fingernails were short and neatly manicured, and her porcelain skin was relatively flawless.
I was the complete opposite, lying partially doped up on Dilaudid in a hospital bed.
My dark brown hair was matted to the point I eventually shaved it all off, and some of my nails were completely gone.
“Are you ready to tell me about J?” she prodded, not allowing me to blissfully ignore her presence.
Withholding an exasperated sigh, I swept my gaze over the flat surface of her cherry desk. I noticed she never wrote anything down. Wasn’t that something she was supposed to do?
I couldn’t believe my parents, who rarely got along for five minutes these days, had mutually agreed to pay for this. Correction: I hated that my parents were paying for this.
“Why do you talk in circles every time I come in here?” I asked, thinking better of telling her where she could shove the bullshit degree she had hanging on the wall, and exposing her ignorance.
“Harper, I’m here to help you move forward and heal. To do that, we have to—.”
“I’m never going to discuss him with you, so stop asking.”
I glanced down, absentmindedly running my pointer finger over the ugly jagged scar on my wrist.
“I’m not sure what talking about the events that got me to this point is supposed to do for me. I don’t want to talk about what happened. I relive it every time…”
I shook my head and trailed off before I could give away too much. She’d begun to give me a pulsing headache.
She was so certain that if I divulged all that had happened, I’d feel better. It was pure bullshit.
If she knew I’d let a stranger shove his dick in and out of my ass last night until it bled, and I came so hard I saw stars, she’d probably want to talk about that, too.
Some things just weren’t meant to be spoken aloud.
It took minimal effort on my end to pretend I was an average, everyday functioning member of society.
If I told this stranger what was bouncing around inside my head, she would more than likely recommend I be taken away to a safe place with a padded room.
I pretended to check the time before looking right into her milky blue eyes and feigning a sense of urgency.
“I’m going to have to cut this session short. I forgot I have somewhere to be.”
“We still have twenty minutes left,” she objected, glancing down at her wrist. By the time she looked at me again, I was already standing up and preparing to leave.
“You won’t believe what I’ve done…What I’ve seen.”
She opened her gob to spew more medicinal words, but I hastily cut her off.
“I don’t have a skewed perception of reality, Dr. Powell, and I don’t need a fake diagnosis or a little orange pill bottle to hide behind. I’m a fucked up bitch, period. It’s something the world is just going to have to deal with.”
Whatever she said after that fell on deaf ears. I grabbed my things and walked out without a backward glance, the buckles jingling on my combat boots alerting the receptionist of my rapid approach.
“I won’t be attending any more sessions,” I chirped, zooming past her surprised face.
Stepping outside, I expelled a long stream of air and glanced upward.
A light drizzle had started up, causing the blue sky to turn a murky gray.
I took my time cutting through the parking lot, allowing soft drops of rainwater to run down my face. I would never take fresh air and something other than debilitating darkness for granted.
Just as I reached my ruby red Wrangler, my cell started to vibrate. I climbed inside and dug it out of my purse with one hand, starting the Jeep with the other.
“Lovely timing,” I grumbled.
It was my mother, of course, no doubt having received a text from her fluke of a therapist the second I walked out.
I thought there was supposed to be some confidentiality with these people.