Page 3 of Killing Me Softly

“And the bad things?” Laura prompted. “What happens when you remember the bad things?”

She smiled again, a faint curve of lips. “I’ve made peace with them. I’ve forgiven.”

Laura halted her pen over the pad. “You feel no resentment? No need for revenge? As you spoke previously in other sessions about?”

For a long moment, she said nothing. It wasn’t passive. It was deliberate. Coiled.

“No,” she said. “I understand that while I was born into their darkness, I don’t have to carry it. I can let it go. My parents don’t define me.”

Laura’s posture softened. “That’s a significant shift. What helped you reach that conclusion?”

She glanced down at her hands. “Time. Reflection. And learning about the truth.”

“The truth?”

“That they weremonsters. But monsters aren’t born. They’re made.” She let the words hang between them before continuing. “They tried to make me one, but I’m not. I don’t have to be. I canbe me. Whoever I want to be, right? I just have to make the right decisions. Take the right path.”

“And you believe you can? Make the right decisions?”

She hesitated. “Of course. Like my brother got to.”

Laura wrote something down. “You’ve spoken before about your anger toward your brother. The resentment. For how he escaped it all. And not being treated the way you were. For getting a life outside of… this. How do you feel about him now?”

“I feel…” Her mind flipped through the catalogue of words she’d collected like scraps of dirt while stuck in here. She picked the brightest, shiniest ones. “Happy for him. We’re all put in boxes, Dr Laura. His box differs from mine. Has a different colour. His is bright. Pink, maybe. And mine is a little duller. Green, perhaps. For envy. I know that. But I hope he’s out there thinking about me. I hope he’s safe. I hope he’s living a life he loves. Maybe he’s even fallen in love?” Her smile stretched thin, almost believable. “I told you, doctor, I feel hopeful.”

The words sat too sweet in her mouth, syrup coating the bitterness underneath.

None of it was true. Not a single word.

She didn’t want himhappy. She wantedherchance. The life she’d been robbed of. She wanted to show the world, and especially the smug doctor who’d branded her too broken to save, that they were wrong. Thathewas wrong.

Dr Kenneth Lyons.

The name inked in bold letters on her original assessment notes burned under her skin even now. The thought of it sent a wave of nausea roiling in her gut.

Why had he spared her brother, but not her? They had both beenchildren.

Why hadn’t she been sent to a home where someone would love her, cherish her, buy her birthday presents wrapped in shiny paper instead of prescriptions locked in blister packs?Why hadn’tshebeen saved from the therapy rooms and this suffocating glass cage passing for a window to the world? Why had he been allowed to breathe free air, to become someone? To live a life where he could walk away without chains dragging at his feet? And why—why—hadn’t he ever come to see her?

Did he think he was better than her? Less… ruined? Less dangerous?

Why had he left her to endure all of this alone?

It’s not fair.

She dug her nails into her thighs, carving crescents into her skin as if she could etch the rage there, lock it in a place where it wouldn’t show. But it boiled too close to the surface, threatening to spill over.

Dr Laura’s calm, clinical voice sliced like a scalpel through the storm raging inside her. “If you’re released, you won’t be permitted any contact with him. How does that make you feel?”

Her reply tore free before she could catch it. “Alone.”

Honest. Too honest.

Dammit.

Laura nodded, dragging her pen across the paper with an irritating scratch. Like a coffin nail hammered into place. She bit the inside of her cheek until the metallic tang of blood bloomed across her tongue.

Because it wasn’t just her freedom she wanted.

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