Page 106 of The Price of Ice

Assets, he thought with a wince. But Taylor was looking at him with a little thoughtful frown and nodding slowly. “Yeah, that’s... I get what you are saying. So the oasis is the essence of you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, exactly.”Kallen was nodding like he was a dashboard puppy and he didn’t even care. “And I think... Like, when we see someone that open, it’s kinda irresistible. Omegas are supposed to be weak, because we need things and we show it. But lure is... Like, with lure you can see we’re not, that being vulnerableis what makes usstrong. It’s...” He huffed, and he found his excitement turning into a much more unwieldy emotion. “It’s pretty scary, really. But when I focus on being the oasis I am not scared, not at all. It’s like I’m absolutely confident I’m amazing and worth it and I’m just telling the other person: hey, check me out. And if they don’t want to come closer, I’m good because I got me, and I’m enough to keep going. But if they do, it’s nice to share. So whatever happens, I’m golden.”

“You know,” Taylor said slowly when Kallen looked at him again. “I think you really are.”

Chapter 36

The high from the lesson lasted him a good couple of days, which he spent in a happy haze of exercise, a Scrabble tournament with Levy, and some outstanding wanks.

Since life wasn’t that kind to him, that Wednesday he got a call from the therapist who’d cancelled on him. She felt terrible about missing their very first session, claiming she knew it was hard to get the courage to make that first call.

Kallen’s stomach fell, but faced with the task he’d been putting off, he agreed to reschedule it.

SOMEHOW OR OTHER, DOCTORMeira also convinced him to drive over to her office. It was true that it wasn’t far from his parents’ house, but walking into the well-lit reception area, he was already regretting it.

There was nothing objectively wrong with the place, though, and he had to do this if he wanted a psychologist who could testify at court on his behalf.

Magli Meira was tall for a woman, it was the first thing he noticed. She was maybe a little younger than his mother, but he saw something in her honey brown eyes that reminded him of the way his mum had looked in Mr Evans’ office. Steel in a very fine silk sheath.

He swallowed and offered a hand to shake. Her grip was firm, softened only by her slight smile. “Thank you for coming.”

It made no sense, he was the one who’d asked to come. At least as far as she knew. “Sure.”

“I read your referral,” she mentioned when all he’d managed to tell her was that he’d played for the White Cats for close to a year, that it had always been his dream and even started on about the effects of the heat pill.

His jaw clenched, pure reflex. He nodded, eyes on the smooth wooden surface of the table between them.

It couldn’t say much, Kakar had been the one to write it and Kallen hadn’t told him much.

“Wait, I—” He got to his feet to get his phone from his coat pocket, scrolling through his email. “Here,” he said, nearly dropping the phone on her lap before she took it. “Sorry, I... Could you read that? Please?”

Doctor Meira vacillated, but her eyes fell to the screen and Kallen saw them widen as she realised it was a police report. Her face smoothed out as if by magic and she didn’t look up as she read on.

It couldn’t have been five minutes, even though the report was both long and handwritten; but it felt like roughly an hour. He alternated between looking at her face and his own hands, clenched on his lap.

“Kallen,” she said at last, and he met her eyes on instinct before cutting his gaze to the side. “You did the right thing.”

The words shocked him into looking her in the face. “Coming here, I mean,” Doctor Meira explained. “Do you want to tell me what’s happening with this first?” She tapped the screen.

“Oh, yeah!” he said a little too enthusiastically. He’d expected her to want to dig into what had happened to him in the locker room, in comparison the court case was a much easier topic. “I got a lawyer. He’s really good, he got the police to—” He wavered. “This is all confidential, right?”

She nodded. “We signed something akin to an NDA, I can only report on you if you are a danger to yourself or others.”

He took a moment to process that. “Okay, so my lawyer got the police to investigate a different case and they got evidence for what happened in the locker room while they did that. So...” He shifted on his seat, huffing impatiently.

“Take your time.”

“Yeah, I just, Ihavetalked about this, you know? Shouldn’t it get easier?”

Doctor Meira shrugged. “There is no shoulds here. We will work on it, so it gets easier, but how long that takes depends on a lot of factors.”

“But isn’t there like, an average?”

Her lips pressed together in a way he’d come to recognise as her thinking face. “Not that I have noticed. But I can tell you the first few sessions seem to be the hardest.”

He snorted out a laugh. “Great.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You worked hard all your life for hockey, didn’t you?”

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