His eyes wander to the path of grass adorned by yellow and white flowers. 'How long have you been toying with my daughter's feelings?' her voice clear as ever in his head, in a constant loop to the same collection of words. 

A knock at his door awakens his senses back to reality. A young woman dressed in green scrubs opens the door and signals Liam to follow her. His beard has grown considerably and his short hair now sports long curls that cover his blue eyes. Liam gets up and makes his way down the white corridor with the young nurse a few steps ahead of him. The nurse unlocks a door at the end of the hallway on the left and steps aside to grant Liam entry. Liam's eyes cross the nurse that gives him a small reassuring smile before closing the door behind him. 

Inside the room, there is one grey sofa and a leather lounge chair. The room is minimalistic in its decor, with a couple of plants in each corner of the room as the most aesthetic pleasant feature. Liam sits on the sofa, the exact spot that he has been seating for the last two months. 

He stares at his hands that are connecting with one another in a finger embrace. He recalls her touch to his skin and his mind wonders to her lips on his. 

"Good morning, Liam." His voice snaps Liam back to reality. "How are you today?"

Liam looks up to Dr Jonas Brunner, a man roughly in his mid-thirties. "Morning, doctor" he replies.

Brunner sits down in the lounge chair and takes a notepad. "I hear you are still not participating in your weekly group sessions." 

Liam scoffs in response. The cure is worst than the disease. Repetitive and unhelpful to his soul ailments. 

"And, we are not making much progress either here." Brunner adjusts his spectacles to the bridge of his nose interrupting his thoughts. "So, why should we keep you around?"

The question throws off Liam. "Because I'm paying you," he responds in a half-smirk. 

"Your family is paying for it. And, I can't keep taking money from them if you are not going to try."

Liam sits back. "I'm not sick." 

Brunner writes on his notepad. "Another reason to discharge you." 

Those words shake Liam. Discharge meant going back home. Where people will judge him for his misgivings. Back to a life that has no meaning to him. Back to the place that is devoid of her. 

Liam shakes his head vehemently in response. "No, I need to stay here."

"Why?" Brunner looks at him demanding an honest account.

"I promised that I would stay away. I have nowhere else to go. If I leave here, then I'm expected to go back home. And, I promised I would stay away."

"Who did you promise you would stay away?" 

Liam gets up and rubs his face in frustration. His last few hours in the Bay replay in his head repeatedly. 

"Liam?" Brunner calls him. "If you don't talk with us then there is nothing we can do for you." 

Liam lowers his head regretting every action in his miserable life. 'I feel sorry for you if you think that this is what loving another person means.' Her words are like a dagger through his heart. 

Brunner gets up and closes his notepad. "Okay, we're done. I'll inform your brother we will be discharging you this week."

Liam snaps back to reality. "Wait!" he yells. "Please, don't." 

Brunner stands impassively awaiting more than just empty pleas. 

"I made a promise to stay away from her. I can't be around her or I'll fuck things again. I can't do that to her..." His eyes fight back tears. 

Brunner puts his hands inside his pockets. "Who's her?"

"Aimee," he exhales, saying her name out loud for the first time in weeks. "I promised that I would not come close to Aimee again."

Brunner takes two steps forward. "You promised this to her?"

"Her mother," he says acknowledging the truths uncovered on his last day back in the Bay.

Brunner nods subtly in acknowledgement. "Tonight you are going to speak in front of the group. It doesn't have to be about what you just said but if you want to stay, then you need to do the work. If not, I'm calling your brothers and discharging you." Brunner leaves the room. 

Liam drags himself out of the therapy room, Brunner's words heavy on his head. The night that Liam got on the aeroplane, he knew where his brother was taking him. The first day in the facility was the easiest. He spent the night sleeping, acclimating to the time difference, and processing his thoughts. On the third day, he tried to check out when he was asked to attend his first group counselling session. Brunner stopped him. Barring his brothers, he was the only one that could discharge him. When Liam fought back, they pumped his veins with tranquillisers and he slept for another five days.

The day went by in a whisper of a thought. When the clock marks five minutes to six in the evening, Liam gets out of his bedroom and walks down the white wide corridor. Group sessions are the worst part of the week. These sessions are held twice a week and everyone needs to talk, although Liam has been successfully avoiding it until this moment. 

In three months, he has successfully avoided disclosing any of his dark secrets, making any meaningful contact with any other human in the facility, and avoided any attempts of contact with the external world, particularly his family. Liam has been, for the past ninety-one days, living with his thoughts and memories of her. The woman which has fleetly reconnected something that he never knew it was missing. 

He enters the large grey room that has brown foldable chairs in a concentric circle and makes his way to one of them, sliding down and lowering the upper half of his body with his forearm resting on his thighs. His head hangs low and his mind races to the thought that he will need to disclose something of himself to this group of strangers if he wants to stay in the security of the facility where he can't hurt her. His eyes hurt and he closes them while the room slowly fills in. 

He feels a hand on his shoulder and raises his head. Brunner pats him softly on his right shoulder reassuringly. "Welcome everyone to our session." 

Everyone keeps silent and some people that still stand take a seat with Brunner standing in the middle. 

"As usual we will start by giving a voice to those that haven't had an opportunity to speak and then move in a clockwise direction to everyone else. If you don't want to speak, you just need to indicate you pass." He stares at Liam. "But, I do hope your voice is heard if your mind has something to say. Who wants to go first?" 

A couple of hands raise but Brunner looks pointedly at Liam that squeezes his left fingers with his right hand.

"I'll go first" Liam whispers. 

Brunner gives him an encouraging nod.

"I don't know how to start..." he confesses.

"Tell us your name and why you are here," Brunner says.

"My name is Liam and I'm here..." He lowers his eyes to the ground. "Because I've done some despicable things in my life, and I've never cared about them, until..." He refrains from saying her name. "Until I started caring about the people I'm hurting."

Brunner puts his hands in his pockets. "What despicable things you've done?" 

Liam shakes his head, ashamed. 

"Liam, this is not a place of judgement. You need to own the path that led you here."

Liam sighs. His hands squeezing his thighs until his knuckles are white. "I play sexual games with women. We select them, we approach them, and I have my way with them, while she watches," he finally says.

"Why did you do that? Did it give you pleasure?" Brunner asks. 

Liam shakes his head. "No, but it gave her pleasure."

"Who's her?" Brunner insists, probing further. 

Liam looks at Brunner for the first time that night. "My ex. Mary." 

*

Brunner sits down in his lounge chair and glances at his notes while scribbling down. A knock at the door forces him to look up. "Yes?" 

The door opens and Liam's enters the room. 

"Liam." He looks at his watch. "Right on time. Come in" 

Liam enters the room and takes his place on the sofa.

"How are you feeling since yesterday?"

Liam shrugs, "Fine, I guess."

Brunner adjusts his glasses to his frame, a habit he has developed since he was a little kid who wore spectacles bigger than his face. "I thought it was a great start. The point of that session is for you to open up but also to relate with others. You are not alone." Brunner looks at Liam that hangs his head low. "And, what you feel, so do they. So do all of us."

"No one there did the things that I have."

Brunner drinks a sip of water from the glass and clears his throat. "You're right. Some of them have done much worst but you will only know this if you listen to their stories. You are so wrapped up in your thoughts, punishing yourself, that you forget that to fail is only human."

Liam scoffs. "Not in my family."

Brunner leans back in the chair. "Why not in your family? Talk to me about them."

Liam rubs his hands in his beard. "My family is perfect, haven't you heard? From my perfect big brothers with their perfect families... to my perfect parents with their perfect marriage. Every single one of them is always in step with what is expected of them."

"And you? Where do you fit in?"

Liam laughs dryly, "I fit here. In the rehab centre although I'm not an addict. Far away as possible so I can't screw up anymore."

"I think your family is worried about you. I think that is the reason why you are here. Addiction comes in many forms, it's not just about abusing a substance. It's about a pattern of behaviour repeating itself. Do you see a pattern of your behaviour repeating itself?" 

Liam stares at Brunner and his mind goes to Mary. She is the pattern that keeps repeating itself. 

"Why do you feel so out of step with the rest of your family?" Brunner enquires. 

Liam gets up and stares out the window. The outside world shows the contour of a mountain as the backdrop, its peak covered with the remnants of snow. 

"Charlie and Matt, they always belonged in the big picture, you know? They both were eager to be part of dad's company, they both attended elite universities, married well and have always been role models. Matt is the figurehead, and now is making headway in the political world. And, Charlie, that guy is a whizz with numbers and chemistry. He is just like dad, as simple as that, and he will soon take over the company."

"You talk about Charlie with such admiration."

Liam nods and thinks of his brother. The only link to his family that he never wanted to sever. Charlie was the one person that has always been there to pick him up, and he had let him down more than he can even recall. 

"I'm not like them. I don't live and breathe the family business. Or, the Forsyth name."

Brunner leans forward. "If you're not like them, then tell me. Who are you, Liam?"

Liam sits back down and leans back. "Honestly? I have no idea. I've never been allowed to figure it out. The one thing that I do know is what they ask me to do. I'm the charming sales guy at the company. The guy that attends fancy events where everyone talks about how to make more money. The guy that is expected to marry well. The guy that I've been asked to play all my life."

"But, let's be honest. If you haven't exactly been playing along, have you?" Brunner opens a file and starts reading. "From car wrecks, drunken nights, the string of flings, and of course the videos... you haven't been playing by the rules since you were seventeen."

"Matt told you all of this?"

"I haven't spoken to anyone in your family since you've been here. I make a point to research my patients myself. Family and friends can only come later in the process, and not influence what I'm trying to achieve. Usually, I get rap sheets of those that have them, others I need to do some digging around their past, but with you it was easy. One Google search was all it took. The Australian tabloids love you, don't they?"

Liam face hardens. "What is your point?"

"Why do you refuse to play by the rules?"

Liam gets up once again and paces furiously. "I'm done with this."

Brunner gets up and intercedes him. "Not until you've answered me. Tell me why."

"Get out of my face," Liam says angrily but Brunner stands impassively.

"Tell me why you act up. Why do you refuse to play according to their rules? What are you trying to accomplish?"

"I don't know!" Liam screams in Brenner's face. "I have no fucking idea why I do it!"

"Yes, you do," Brenner says calmly. 

Liam puts his hands and pulls his hair back frustrated with himself. He cowers on the floor, his breathing unsteady. 

"Tell me why did you do it."

"Because I've never been allowed to be the kid that plays in the bush or the beach. Because instead of normal school, I was sent to an all-boys private school followed by private tuition. Because my picture was taken everywhere. Because I became part of something I never wanted in the first place" 

Liam takes a deep breath and gets up. 

"Because my father went from being a guy that would do crazy things in the garage, to one of the most serious men I've ever met." Liam sits back on the sofa and Brunner sits down in the lounge chair. "I was so angry and she just lit the fire further."

"Mary?" 

Liam nods. 

"Tell me about Mary."

Liam's eyes fixate on the white wall behind Brunner. He suddenly gets up. "No."

Brunner gets up and places his left hand on Liam's shoulder. "Okay. But, I do want to give you some homework."

Liam scoffs, "Never have been a fan of homework."

"Well, in this place everyone has some sort of emotional work to complete."

Liam puts his hands in his pockets and sighs. "What?"

"I want you to write three letters. You don't need to send them, that is your choice, but you do need to write the letters. To your parents, Matt and Charlie."

"Letters? What for?"

"I want you to tell them how you feel. I want you to be honest with them. Write as little as you want, or write a novel but tell them how you feel."

Liam scoffs. "That's just stupid."

"It's what I require of you. If you write them, then I will excuse you from group therapy for the next month. But, you need to have them written down before next weeks group. And, it can't be bullshit, it needs to be real accounts of what is in here." He points to his heart. "It's time to open up."

"This is bullshit...You know I will not have these written by then."

"That's entirely up to you. It's not like you have a great deal in your schedule. Write the letters, get out of group therapy. If you don't write them, then you will continue group therapy and you'll need to share something about Mary with the group. It will be your choice."

Brunner opens the door to his office. 

Liam makes his way to the door and stops just before exiting the room. "This is hardly my choice."

"I make a deal. Show me one letter of the three and the deal stands."

"One letter?"

"One letter and you get one month of freedom."