Page 62 of Angel of Water & Shadow

For the first time ever, I was actually excited to share something with my therapist.

No longer sprawled out in his seat like I was his personal chauffeur, Ryder scanned the lot for an open spot as I turned down the last row. He pointed at one towards the back, free of any neighbors. One where we wouldn’t be boxed in. The better for a stealthy escape, I guessed. Actually…I had no idea what motivated any of his decisions.

I hitched the e-brake and stepped out, leaving the headphones on the seat. As I tamed my unbrushed beachy waves in the circular side-view mirror, movement fluttered to my right, and the passenger door clicked shut. I stopped preening. “What are you doing?”

With his keys in one hand, the other running through his hair attempting to subdue the locks spilling over his forehead, Ryder donned an expression as perplexed as mine. “There’s a waiting room, isn’t there?”

Not this again. I’m sure my face said it all.

“What, you thought I was going to wait for you in a hot car for forty-five minutes?” Ryder’s brows dipped inward, quizzical. “They have air conditioning in there.”

My eye roll might’ve made it a tad obvious I’d rather not have him as my plus-one. But I didn’t have time to fight him on it. “Please, leave the arrows in the car, would you?”

He responded with a boyish grin that I didn’t trust at all.

We marched towards the units on the ground floor, leaving the shade of the garage for the dry heat of the summer day. Something flashed in my peripheral, metal in the sunlight. Twisting in its direction, I wasn’t surprised at all to find the source on my companion’s waist. From his very low, hip-hugging waistband that had me looking right above his?—

“What’s that?”

“What?”

I pointed to the brilliant white buckle that glimmered from his belt, the material so similar to that of his arrowheads.

“Oh, this?” He pulled on the clasp, repositioning the seam of his pants. “A belt buckle.”

I narrowed my eyes at the half-truth he’d given. “Then why is it shaped like it could fit around your knuckles?”

“Because it can. They’re brass knuckles,” he added in his irritatingly nonchalant way.

My jaw dropped. “Those are illegal. I said no weapons?—”

“You said no arrows.” He pointed a finger at me. “You didn’t say anything about other weapons.”

“Oh my God,” I muttered. Before I could ask more about their color and why he’d felt the need to bring them along, a cool blast hit my face and shoulders as we entered the lobby. We sighed in sync, savoring the chill. Ignoring Ryder’s prideful smirk, I sent him to a corner to lavish in his imaginary superiority so I could sign in at the front desk.

Meeting the receptionist’s smile—a first—I passed over my insurance and scribbled down my name, actually engaging in small talk. I could almost pass off as happy to be there. What was wrong with me?

“River Harlow?” an assistant read from her clipboard. I sauntered over to the threshold between the waiting room and hallway that led to the individual offices. “Dr. Finis will see you now.”

“Great—wait, who?” I stopped dead in the doorway.

She unpropped the door, ushering me in. “Did you not get the email? Dr. Fairmore’s on leave. In the interim, Dr. Finis will be meeting with all of her patients.”

What. This pressure chamber of a corridor became about ten sizes too small, the spiel about my therapist’s absence lost to the too-loud thud of our footsteps and the blood drumming in my ears. I’d obviously heard wrong. Dr. Fairmore wouldn’t leave me. I saw her two days ago. She was here. She had to be. As the panic grew, it clenched the inside of my chest.

The sconces seemed to flicker, and I lowered my gaze to the floor. Starting with my forehead, I trailed my fingers over my scalp, glacially slow, so that my arms acted like shields from the world that was crashing down.

I didn’t want to be surprised. I didn’t want to be hurt. But that’s exactly what I felt like, and that’s exactly why I’d avoided opening up all these years. That, and the fact that no one else had ever convinced me I was more than just a patient who needed fixing. With Dr. Fairmore, I wasn’t just somebody. I wasn’t just a girl. I was River, and the guilt and the episodes and all that came with them made me stronger, not weaker.

A subtle, but growing, tug in my gut told me this next person would be nothing like her. The final door creaked opened at the end of the hall, as if expecting us. The buttery streaks from the familiar wall of windows vanished when I entered, the passing clouds dampening the room to gray.

“River.” A middle-aged woman, who I assumed to be my therapist, greeted me from Dr. Fairmore’s desk. With a smile so crooked it made her neck veins pop out and her lashless, black eyes bulge. It had to be mocking. No one was ever that excited to meet me. “Riiivveeerrr.” She drawled out each syllable, tasting the vowels on her tongue. Her contorted fingers, like they’d been fractured and never reset, pointed at the chair opposite. “Sit.”

I trudged past my favorite recliner, sentenced to the hard wooden seat.

That exaggerated smile stayed plastered to her face, her ashen skin stretched so tight her cheekbones could’ve broken through her sickly pallor. “I’m sure you’ve heard Dr. Fairmore had an emergency and had to leave town.”

“I’m missing the details.” I flinched as the door shut behind me, leaving us alone. “What happened?”

---