Us by James Bay

Can we make it better cause I'm losing hope, tell me how to be in this world, tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt, tell me how could I believe in something — I believe in us.

"How do you feel?" 

I dunno, a little like my friend just died because I didn't trust her, and like maybe if I had she wouldn't have been brutally murdered on display to a full audience and the world's televisions. 

"Fine." 

My therapist scrawls down some notes on her clipboard. I sit still in my uncomfortable seat and wait for the next question. 

"Do you feel anything in particular?" She asks. 

"Sad?" I shrug. She gestures for me to go on. "That's all I've got." I sigh bluntly. 

"You need to cooperate if you want this to work. Be honest and I might actually be able to help you get over this. I'll ask again: What do you feel?" 

I sink deeper into my shoulders, drowning in my own skin. 

"Guilt." I finally say after momentary silence. "And why is that?" She hums. "I killed her." I whisper. 

"You've said that 4 times total now, Paris, and you're yet to expand on that statement. Are you aware the detectives in this homicide are suspecting you over anyone?" 

Maybe if they arrested me I'd be safer.

"Please tell me what's going on. Patient confidentiality." She assures me. 

Just tell her. 

Don't.

Tell her.

Don't you dare.

C'mon, do it.

Don't.

Say it.

"I have a stalker." 

Why would you say that?!

You told me to!

That's my inner thought, it's meant to stay inner.

I've officially fucking lost it now that the voices in my head are having conversations. 

"Sorry?" She blinks. 

"Been stalking me for over a year." I elaborate. 

"I.. I don't know if I've heard that one before.." 

She thinks I'm crazy. No. She knows I'm crazy. 'Thinks' implies that there's any speculation. 'Knows' is a fact. She knows I'm insane.

"I have a stalker. I don't know who it is. They've been hunting me down, hurting me, threatening me." I ramble. 

"Tell me everything." She orders. And so I do. I replay everything, knowing this therapists life is now directly in danger because of my rambling, but I can't bring myself to keep it inside. 

Grayson:

My foot taps aggressively on the floor, my leg bouncing as I sit in the waiting room of the therapists office. I know Paris knows more than she's letting on. I know she may even know who did this. But the only way to get it out of her is with her therapist. According to Dr Greene, Paris stopped seeing her a long time ago. We were all under the impression she was still seeing her every week. 

"She's been in there nearly three hours." Libby sighs with worry. "She's fine." I dismiss. 

The office door clicks and I stand, expecting to see Paris, instead Dr Greene walks out, her 'bad news face' worse than anyone's I've ever seen. 

"Paris is having a moment alone. She's told me some upsetting information." She offers a frown. 

"Is she okay?" I instantly advance to the door protectively. "I'd rather you didn't go in there. I think I know what's going on and I want you to hear me before you talk to her." She explains. 

"Would you join me in the office next door?" The therapist asks, opening the door to a bigger room and inviting us all in. Oren silently steps inside, ordering two of his men to wait outside and two to go into the room Paris is in. 

"What's going on?" Jameson demands, his girlfriend looking too worried to ask. 

"Paris believes she has a stalker." Dr Greene tells us as calmly as possible. 

My heart stalls and I have to manually learn how to breathe. I don't even think as my feet float to the door, ready to go get her. 

"I'm not entirely sure that's the case." She raises a hand to stop me. 

"You think she's lying?! Paris is a lot of things, but she is not and has never been a liar." I defend angrily. 

"Settle down. I understand what I'm about to say is hard, considering you clearly all love her so dearly. Paris has retold all the things she believes her stalker has done, and some of the incidents don't seem to be adding up correctly." She says, looking down at her clipboard of notes. 

"There are things that don't make sense. She's told me that someone sent her a text from inside her house last Thanksgiving. She said she was talking to herself and someone texted her a reply to what she'd just said. She called the cops and they searched the house." She reads off her board. 

I nod, the memory replaying in my mind. Paris calling me and telling me she was in danger. 

"The officers never found anything. No signs of entry, no signs of anything. They tried to track the text, but the text was never there. It never existed." She swallows, taking a shaky deep breath. 

"She claims a brick was thrown through the window of the coffee shop she worked at." She states. "It did! I was calling her when it happened — I saw it." I instantly tell her, knowing she's about to try and justify it. 

"I know. I looked at some public police records and that was logged as vandalism. Two teenagers were charged. It was a case of two drunk kids messing around. Paris said that the brick had some kind of QR code that lead to a link online. She claims this website held images of her that she didn't know were taken, things like voice recordings and videos. She smashed her phone and utterly destroyed it."

I try to comprehend that. The fact that was happening while we were dating and I didn't hear a word of it. 

"I had detectives on the line, listening on the chance she said something useful. They heard this and drove to the coffee shop, taking the brick as evidence. There were no traces of any ink like she stated." Greene states solemnly. 

"So what, you think she's lying?" Xander scoffs.

"Absolutely not. There were other things she mentioned. Things like ties appearing seemingly out of nowhere," My chest aches at that, "Someone messing with her chair at the Christmas showcase last year, lights going out when she was dancing on her own, a knife on her pillow." I feel a migraine coming on. She told me that was her. Every incident seems to flood back to me, drowning me with guilt of not realizing. 

"Police entered her bedroom and they found a wall full of 'suspects'. All of your faces were on there. Her roommates, her friends, her relatives, her classmates.. There were the names of each of her classmates since first grade. Every single person she ever encountered." She says with this sympathetic and worried frown. 

It haunts me. The numbing cold flow of my blood speeds up along with my heart. My pulse is quickening with each passing second and I almost think I'll pass out. 

"There's too many things. Too many unexplainable instances. It's all too elaborate to be a stalker. But we know a lot of the things aren't lies.." She states, slowly edging towards the thing I know she's about to say. 

I hear the words falling to place in a big mental jigsaw. Comprehending each part of the story. I know where she's leading this. I know what she's going to say. 

"I think Paris has been experiencing the effects of Dissociative Identity Disorder — DID." She states. 

The room goes fuzzy. 

"You think she's insane." I state bluntly. "I know it's difficult to process, but I want to ask you all if you've noticed any changes in her lately?" She suggests hopefully. 

"No! She's been completely fine." I snap. "Gray.." Jameson murmurs, rubbing Avery's back as she sobs. 

"She's fine." I yell. "She dumped you in a thirty second phone call, went no contact for nearly a year because she broke her own phone, and she hasn't had a normal conversation with any of us since this whole thing allegedly started. It all makes sense." Jameson raises his voice, firm enough to get his point across to me but gentle enough so he doesn't startle Avery, who's now sobbing and hugging Xander. I glance around the room. Libby's shaking, pale as a ghost. Nash is holding her shoulders to steady her. 

Everyone believes it. Everyone knows it's the only logical explanation. 

She's been hallucinating, blacking out and doing these things to herself, imagining things. 

That would mean she didn't actually dump me. She didn't actually do the worst thing I could ever comprehend to me. That wasn't her. That thought brings me a strange warmth, and then my body jolts back to the whole situation and I feel like an asshole. I didn't notice any of it. I never knew. 

"What about Maddie? Someone killed her." I jump in, trying to think of any possible detail to her explanation that proves it wrong, but it all makes sense.

She doesn't say anything, her face just shifts a little, just enough for her point to pass across the whole room. A retched sob escapes Avery's mouth.

"With your permission, I'd like to call a friend of mine. There's a hospital I know that specialises with this sort of stuff. It's a year program — maybe more if she doesn't heal entirely. And it's highly guarded and secure, I'm aware of her position in the media so her safety is of the utmost importance." 

I don't hear the responses to that. I don't listen to anything. I can't. I can't bear to hear Ave's sobs, Lib's sniffles, Xander's protests of denial, Jameson's silence, or Nash's calm enquires about the hospital.

I float out the door, beelining for the office Paris is perched in next door. I nod for the two security guards to leave. They do. 

I sink numbly into the spot on the couch beside her. Her shoulder brushes mine and she finally snaps her eyes to me. They're red raw and the bags that hang beneath them are dark. 

Her skin looks pale and her waist is thin. I don't like it. I don't like looking at her. I can't cope with seeing her look to lifeless. 

"She told you." Paris murmurs shakily. I want to hug her tight enough to assure her there's nothing to be afraid of. I want to make sure she knows I'm not going to let anyone hurt her, not even the voices in her head. 

"It changes nothing. I love you, P." I tell her flatly without a moment of hesitation. 

She opens her mouth, then shuts it, then repeats the same pattern for the next few moments before she finally takes a deep breath. "I don't think I love you." 

Those words are the only ones holding enough power to actually shatter my heart clean in half. 

"I don't think I love anyone, right now." She adds. Her voice is numb and it's almost like she's not here, like she went into autopilot. 

I try to formulate a response to those words. Anything that could possibly express any of the agonising emotions stabbing into my body every word she speaks. 

"I thought you were the one trying to kill me. I thought it was everyone at one point or another. Libby, Avery, you, Toby, Mom.. Maddie." Her poor little voice cracks with a raw and slashing crack. 

I want to pull her in. I want to hold her. I want her to know she's safe. But she doesn't know if she loves me. 

"But.. I do know that I feel safe around you. I always have. I know you wouldn't hurt me. I know that now."

I don't contain it any longer after that. I pull her in. 

I cradle her against my body, both arms wrapped around her in some weird split of protection and possession. 

"I love you." I whisper against her hair, knowing she won't say it back, but not needing to hear it back. 

"I love you." I repeat, refusing to have her pried out of my arms by anyone. "I've got you." I coo gently.

(a/n. My babies are back together.. kind of.. and at what cost? I've been thinking about this book a lot and part 5. I'm so excited. I'm pretty sure there're 18 chapters of this whole book left now. I'm so scared for it to end)