I wasn't sure what to expect at my first therapy session.

            Elise had questioned if I'd like her to join me, but the very thought of anyone hearing the hell I'd been through had me on the verge of a panic attack. Though I knew that my psychologist wouldn't be able to say a word to anyone outside of this room, I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to bring myself to trust her-or confess what it was that brought us together for the session.

            Dr. McCarthy sat in the leather recliner opposite me, one of her legs crossed over the other, her fingers pecking away at the keys on her laptop to fill the silence in the room. We'd been sitting here in complete silence for over fifteen minutes, as I'd refused to speak. To my relief, she didn't seem to be pushy about the information, and for a minute, Jeremiah's words crept back into my thoughts. He'd promised that people that'd experienced the hell I had would be able to empathize and wouldn't try to prod and pry like everyone in my life right now.

            "I'm glad you came in today, Addison." Dr. McCarthy said now, breaking my train of thought and drawing my attention to her petite figure in the chair. She ran a hand through her bailage and smiled warmly. "I know it seems like a bust, sitting here in silence, but you making the decision to come in here and talk about it is a step in the right direction. I hope you'll find that you can trust me in a future session. But until then I'm going to give you an address for a few support groups. Maybe drop by and see if it's of any interest to you?"

            I nodded but didn't respond verbally. The next ten minutes was her printing a list and walking me back out to the lobby where Elise was waiting. They spoke for a while as I wandered out the front door, not bothering to look at the piece of paper until I had reached my father's Range Rover. Leaning back into the taillight, I dropped my gaze to the paper and immediately felt vile rise in my throat. The first support group on the paper wasn't for recovering from an assault as I'd assumed, but something close to as bad.

            Nar-Anon.

            I guess I had believed that the psychologist was going into this meeting with me blind; that she wouldn't know a single thing of my past and I'd be able to open up about everything on my own, when I was ready.

            "How'd it go?" Elise asked as she approached the car, fishing for her keys in her purse.

            I crumbled the paper into a ball and stared at her. "You ask that like you're not sitting and talking to her behind my back."

            "Excuse me?"

            I thrusted the paper into her unexpecting hands. "There's a support group for families of drug addicts on there, Elise. How would she know about that if you didn't say anything?"

            Her mouth opened, but she reconsidered whatever it was that she was about to say and dropped her head. "I didn't mean for it to cause problems, Addison. I thought it might help you. I thought—"

            "What makes you think she was such a bad mother?" I snapped. "You didn't even know her! You and Dad just sit here and judge her based solely on the fact that she was an addict!"

            "I judge her based on the fact that you came here with old, worn clothes!" Elise's voice rose as her skin started to take on a red hue. "I judge her because we tried countless times over the last ten years to try and bring you out here. To try and give you stability! I judge her because she was far too into her drugs and the life that went with it that she couldn't care less when you got caught in the crossfire!"

            I moved to the left and shook my head. "You don't know anything."

            "I know that if you had been here with us that you wouldn't have been raped!" she shouted, pointed her finger at me. "I know that you wouldn't have had to be in fear of living in your own home because of the likes of the men she brought around!"

            I fell back a step at the harshness of her words and stared until her image started to blur. "I'll walk home."

            "No you won't. Get in the car, Addison."

            "I'm walking home."

            She started to fight me, but I turned my back to her and started to speed up my walking.

            I waited until I had put a good enough distance between me and the parking lot to reach up and wipe at my damp cheeks, blinking rapidly to keep my vision from becoming so blurred I can't see my surroundings. It took a little over ten minutes of walking to realize that my stepmother wasn't going to come after me-and I don't know why it hurt so much. What she said had hurt, but more than that, had been the truth. I eventually slumped back against a power box a couple blocks away, and stared out into the darkness, wondering if I stayed out here long enough if I'd seize to exist entirely.

            *

            "Hey, kid."

            For a fraction of a second, I jerked upright, and my hand shot out to grasp one of the large rocks to my back. When I lifted my head, though relief washed over me, so did an overwhelming amount of anger and irritation.

            "Go home." I snapped angrily.

            Jeremiah lowered himself to the ground beside me, "Unfortunately I was sent on a mission to retrieve you Addy and your father and Jon threatened to behead me if I wasn't successful in bringing you home."

            "Why you?" I growled bitterly, turning my head in the opposite direction. "I have four brothers, why didn't one of them come?"

            "Ouch." Jere mumbled, stretching his legs out on the sidewalk under us so they hung off the curb. "You sure know how to make a man feel loved."

            I tightened my grip around my legs and decided my best bet to get him to leave was to ignore his presence altogether. Unfortunately, Jeremiah was as deaf as he was persistent.

            "I went to therapy once." he stated, surprising me enough to look back at him. His green eyes were trained on the streetlamp flickering across the street, his expression solemn. "Never went back."

            "Why?"

            He shook himself from the memories he'd become consumed by and glanced my way. "Because I wouldn't let them in. I didn't see a point in continuing when I knew we'd be running in circles, caught in a vicious cycle of them trying to get shit out of me and my refusal of saying anything."

            The sigh that escaped Jere then was so full of exhaustion I winced a little. It wasn't the kind of exhaustion that was cured with a good night of sleep-it was one that stayed preying on your every thought and every bone and muscle in your body until you collapsed. I knew it well.

            "I'm not saying this for you to stop going, Addy. I just. . . the opposite, actually. I wouldn't want you to have to keep everything internalized the way I do. I can see it eating you alive, breaking you." he whispered, touching one of his hands to my knee. "You need to let them in so they can help you, Addison."

            "I can't even trust myself anymore, Jere. What makes you think I can trust some stranger getting paid to listen to my trauma?"

            He held my gaze for a while before he finally answered. "That's where you need to start then, Addy."

            "What do you mean?"

            "Learn to love yourself again." he replied. "Learn to love everything that makes you who you are. Understand that what happened had nothing to do with you or how you look. It was them."

            I lifted my right hand and wiped under my nose with the sleeve of my sweater. "It doesn't feel like it. I. . . I used to think that way when I was younger, that it was them and no matter what they'd still do what they did. But now. . . now I truly believe if even a little bit of my skin shows I'm asking for it. I ensure that I'm never alone in a room full of men, regardless if I'm related to them or not."

            "This person, this broken girl is the product of all the crap you've been through, Addy. It's not you. It's only a part of you. You need to find the other part and learn to love and trust her before you can love and trust anyone else."

            I lifted my head slightly and found that his eyes were already on me. "What about you? You can't just keep smiling and pretending everything is fine when it's not."

            He dropped his hands to the concrete beneath him and leaned back on to them, then slowly tilted his head back to look at the starless sky. After what felt like a decade of staring off into the darkness over us, he threw one last, guarded look my way with a wry smile.

            "I can and I will. Gotta fake it til you make it, baby."

            *

            It took very little convincing on Jere's part to get me in the car after our conversation. I was tired, but more importantly, his words had stirred feelings in me I didn't want to feel, let alone out in the cold night. I also knew, given his response to him being sent out after me, that he wouldn't let up or leave unless I went with him.

            Luckily he seemed to get the memo I didn't want to talk anymore and we spent the ride home in silence, and he even managed to keep my parents and Jonathan, who'd been waiting in the living room for us, from all jumping on my case at once. I avoided looking to Elise, but my father's expression spoke for her; not only was I in trouble, but I likely would be getting a good scolding in the morning.

            Jon stood and with two quick strides had me in his arms. He didn't say anything, didn't try and comfort or yell at me as I'd expected, then turned his back to us and jogged up the stairs without a word.

            "Addison, what were you thinking?" my father snapped once Jonathan's door shut upstairs.

            I just stared at him blankly.

            "Walking home in the dark by yourself? Arguing with Elise. In case you forgot, we're the adults here, not you."

            "With all due respect, sir, I don't think this is the best time to have this conversation." Jere interjected his two cents, hands still buried in the pockets of his basketball shorts as his eyes flickered between my father and stepmother.

            Dad, a bit shocked by Jeremiah's words, looked to the younger boy beside me. "Excuse me?"

            "There's a time and place for this conversation." he offered with a gesture in my direction with his right hand. "This isn't the time nor the place. She's exhausted, and as much as we all try to understand what she's going through, we can't. She doesn't need this right now."

            Dad looked as though he wanted to scold and ground Jere, but Elise touched a hand to my father's chest and nodded in agreement. "He's right, honey. Let's just get some rest and we can talk about this tomorrow."

            Dad stared at me for a few more seconds before allowing his wife to lead him out of the living room and down the hall. Jeremiah and I climbed the stairs slowly, and even though I'd never admit it aloud, I didn't want to have to go our separate ways in a couple minutes. There was something about his presence that made me feel safe. Secure. Protected. Something I never thought would be possible after the hell I'd been through with men.

            "You okay?" he asked, extending a hand then dropping it to his side once he'd considered the action and its repercussions.

            "Can you stay?"

            The words hung in the air for a few minutes, his eyes widening once he'd realized what I'd asked.

            "You mean, like in your room?"

            "Yeah." I whispered, touching my door knob. "Just until I fall asleep."

            Maybe I could actually sleep if I felt as though there was no chance of the boy who'd raped me breaking in and doing it again, even if I was clear across the country. Maybe there was a chance that Jere wouldn't just be a security while awake; maybe there was a chance he could scare off the demons that preyed on me every time I closed my eyes.