Page 31 of The Dark Before Light

“No,” he finally says.

“Then you weren’t forcing me,” I tell him. “I’m willing to move past it if you are.”

He nods, still not looking at me. “Yeah, good.” He blows out a breath. “Can we call it a day?”

“Yes.”

He jumps off the couch and is out the door before I can muster the energy to stand.

Chapter 10

Talia

When I was thirteen, the monster inside me woke up. By the time I turned fourteen, she was constantly with me, flexing and scratching. The pressure was tangible, so agonizing, I’d curl into a ball on my bed for hours and shake with the effort of containing it.

In the months prior to our trip to Ireland, I was so exhausted from my nonstop efforts to manage the monster that my grades started slipping. My teachers grew worried. The school counselor talked to me, but I couldn’t tell her what I was feeling. I’d never been taught how.

Conversely, my parents failed to hide their relief when I brought home my first C. They’d always said they were proud of my academic achievements—especially when it came up around other adults—but I knew they weren’t. Not really. Even if I didn’t have the words to communicate my own feelings, I’d spent my life observing them and others. Always slightly apart from my peers, my family. Looking in from the outside.

My parents loved me, but it was an obligatory kind of love. I made them nervous. A little scared. I was the changeling who’d dropped into their home and upset their perfectly predictable lives. I was too much effort, too different. And when they thought I didn’t notice, they looked at me like the problems in their marriage were my fault.

If only she’d been a normal child.

When we returned home from Ireland, I grew even more depressed. I barely left my bed, preferring to sleep and float in daydreams of the boy I’d met in a graveyard. The first person I’d ever opened up to, who’d seen the real me and shown no fear or revulsion. When I thought about him, my monster was quiet.

My fantasies grew to epic proportions, each more grandiose than the last. My favorite was the one where his father was an Interpol agent with a computer program that could find anyone, anywhere. Kieran hacked the computer and tracked me down by cross-referencing passports with reservations at the hotel in Galway. He showed up outside my house in the middle of the night and tossed pebbles at my window. Our reunion was always the hardest part for me to envision as I had no life experience to draw from. There was some sort of embrace. A confession from him that he couldn’t stop thinking about me, either. It ended with a hazy epilogue of us running away together.

Then, about two months after our trip, my father moved out. Watching from the living room window as he packed boxes into a rented trunk while my mother drank wine in the backyard and Olivia hid in her room, I realized that fantasies were pointless.

No one was coming to free me, save me, or love me. I had to do it myself.

That was my awakening. The moment I stopped fighting the monster and her baby claws popped through my skin. It hurt like a muscle stretching—there was pleasure in the pain. Power I’d never felt before.

I was done kneeling to the world.

The session with Kieran stays with me like a mosquito bite, driving me half-mad over the next two days. I scratch at every word spoken. Struggle with the unprofessional urge to call him and make sure he’s okay.

I try and fail not to hijack his fantasy as my own. In a weak moment, I kneel naked in the shower and close my eyes to a vision of him doing exactly what he said. I imagine what he’d feel like. Sound like. I squeeze my own throat as I stroke myself to an explosive orgasm, then collapse in gasping, tearful shame.

I almost call Leo a dozen times. What stops me is the fear of the questions he’ll ask. The fear I’ll lie to him because I’m not ready to face the truth. My monster—tamed for years—is restless. Pacing. Her claws tickle the underside of my skin, an imminent threat.

I don’t sleep well Wednesday or Thursday, my dreams filled with vague catastrophes I don’t remember when I wake. My only relief comes at work. In my office, I’m not Talia, a woman still worried I’m not enough, that I’m failing. That I still haven’t found where I fit in the world. I’m Dr. Stirling: therapist, life coach, wizard. I’m compassionate and honest. My best self. I cradle my clients in my palms and stroke their tattered feathers. I feed them, soothe them, and help them learn to fly again.

The strain of balancing the schism within me catches up Friday evening. I’m so drained when I get home that I skip my normal after-work ritual of a shower and ten minutes of meditation.

Without bothering to change clothes, I make myself popcorn and grab a beer from the fridge, then slump onto my living room couch. Pulling a blanket around my shoulders, I close my eyes, telling myself I’ll open them in a minute. Eat a little. Watch a show.

In a minute…

The incessant vibration of my phone wakes me hours later. The room is dark, my popcorn cold, the beer warm.

“Okay, okay,” I mumble groggily, digging into the couch cushions where the device slipped. I manage to extract it. Squinting against the brightness of the screen, I see the time first—a quarter till midnight—and then the name of the caller.

Sven Akerman.

My stomach nosedives and I swipe to answer. “Hello?”

“Sorry to call so late, Doctor.” He sounds the same as always. Gravel in the desert. There’s a fair amount of background noise wherever he is: feminine squeals, male laughter, and… was that a splash?

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