"Like I'm lying," I admit before I can stop myself. "Like I'm standing there telling them they're safe, that their bodies are theirs, that they can heal, and the whole time I'm thinking,I'm a fraud. I can barely keep myself together."
"But youarekeeping yourself together."
"Barely."
"Barely is still breathing," she says quietly. "And breathing counts."
The thread comes loose in my hand. I stare at it, this tiny piece of fabric that used to hold something together and doesn't anymore.
"I want to talk about that night," Dr. Chen says. Not a question. Never a question. Just a gentle inevitability, like watching a storm roll in and knowing you can't outrun it.
My throat closes. "Do we have to?"
"We don'thaveto do anything, Syvannah. But the memory's been sitting in your body for months. It's not going anywhere until we look at it."
Look at it.Like it's a painting. Like it's something I can observe from a distance instead of something that lives under my skin, in my lungs, behind every heartbeat.
I close my eyes. "Where do you want me to start?"
"Wherever feels safe."
Nowhere feels safe. But I start anyway.
“I was walking home from work.”
That's how it always starts in my nightmares. Such an ordinary thing. The kind of thing you do a thousand times without thinking. Key in the ignition. Drive home. Park. Walk to your door.
Except I never made it to my door.
"It was late," I hear myself say. My voice sounds far away, like it's coming from the bottom of a well. "My shift at the diner ran long. I remember being tired. My feet hurt. I just wanted to get inside and take a shower."
"What happened when you got to your apartment?"
The room tilts. Not the therapy room, but the parking lot. My hands go numb first, then my legs. The beige walls of Dr. Chen's office bleed into cracked asphalt. I can smell it. The parking lot,exhaust fumes, and the chemical-sweet reek of the cloth that covered my mouth.
I'm back there, and I can't breathe.
The parking lot light is flickering. It always fucking flickers, casting strobing shadows across the cracked asphalt. My keys are already in my hand, and pepper spray on the keychain that I thought would keep me safe.
I don't see him until it's too late. The hand comes from behind, covering my mouth. Chemical-soaked cloth pressed against my nose and mouth. I try to scream, but the sound dies in my throat as my lungs fill with something sweet and wrong.
My keys clatter to the ground. The pepper spray is useless. The world goes sideways, then black.
When I wake up, I'm not alone. Two other women are huddled in the corner of a motel room that smells like mildew and fear.
The blonde one, Nadia, I'll learn later, has a split lip and blood crusted in her hair. But her eyes are sharp, alert, calculating. She's already looking for exits, for weapons, for a way out.
The younger one, Exleigh, won't stop shaking. Her hands are wrapped around her knees, rocking slightly, lips moving in silent prayer or maybe just counting. Something to hold onto when everything else has been taken.
"Where…" I try to speak, but my mouth is so dry that the words stick.
Nadia's head snaps toward me. She presses a finger to her lips, urgent, terrified. "Don't," she whispers. "Don't make noise. He hears everything."
"Who?"
Exleigh's rocking stops. Her eyes, glassy and unfocused, drift to the door like she can see through it. "The man who takesthe fight out of you," she whispers. "The one who teaches you how to disappear."
As if summoning him, footsteps creak on the floorboards outside the locked door. Heavy. Deliberate. Taking their time.