Yeah, I could admit I was fucking scared. I didn’t want to talk about my old lady. I didn’t want to talk about her death, my drinking, my grief. I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about fucking Ryder.
Yet here I was. The club was important to me, and my role as VP was important to the club. I couldn’t disregard an order without repercussions. So, I made my way up the stairs and knocked on her front door.
“Hello,” she greeted, opening the door and giving me room to enter. I hesitated for a moment before I stepped inside. Haizley hung back behind me. Waiting for me to sit, I imagined.
My eyes locked onto the couch and memories hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t sitting on that fucking thing.
Never again.
Most people walked in and probably just saw a couch. A place where multiple people could sit and visit. A soft cushion after a long day. A place to take a nap, or cuddle with your partner while the two of you watched a movie. You know, normal shit.
What I saw was different.
For me, it was a reminder. A past no one knew about. Hours spent talking about my fucking feelings. About how I felt when I discovered my parents weren’t really mine.
Was I angry?
Did I feel betrayed? Abandoned?
Did I have questions?
Did I want to know who my real parents were?
I didn’t fucking feel any of that shit. I didn’t fucking care.
Only no one believed me.
Three different shrinks in three years decided how I should feel. How I should react. And when it didn’t line up with what I said and did, they told me I was broken.
I didn’t blame my parents. They just wanted something to blame for my disassociation.
The truth was, I loved my parents. That had never changed. I talked to them every few weeks. They wouldn’t be around forever. They were older when they adopted me. My mom was almost forty. My dad forty-five.
They’d tried for years to have a baby and couldn’t. Then one day Mom met a girl in the park who was too young to have a kid. Mom and Dad took her in until I was born and then adopted me through a private transaction.
She left and never came back.
I was fifteen when they told me. They thought my moodiness was because of what I had learned. The reality was, every fifteen-year-old kid was moody. Being too old to be a kid and too young to be an adult screwed with your mind.
Avoiding the couch like it might bite me, I sat in the chair. I had expected Haizley to be like every other shrink I’d seen and make a fuss about me not choosing the couch.
“Would you like a drink? Before you ask, I am not offering alcohol,” she clarified firmly.
I scoffed, sitting back in the chair, letting her know I wouldn’t move to the damn couch. She shocked the hell out of me when she didn’t say a word and just sat on the couch herself.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“Anything you would like to talk about?”
“No.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“King ordered me to.”
“What did King order you to do?”
