Page 54 of Vallaverse: Twist
“What if I don't want fancy stuff?”
I give him a flat look. “Lazarus. That's all you want. And I want you to have it. It just won't be pretty this time.”
“It's going to be pretty enough,” he says, then redirects back to his question. “Stop avoiding. How much longer is this going to go on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You have to stop feeling so guilty, Brooks. I don't even know why you're eating yourself up like this.”
“I can't,” I say, refusing to look at him. “I shouldn't have done it.”
“Which part?” Laz asks. “Saving me from myself and everything else? Taking care of me? Being patient with me? Being kind?”
I do look at him then. “Becoming enraged and taking you when I was in that state, Lazarus. It's unforgivable. You could have been hurt.”
“You would never hurt me.”
“I could. In that state, I could.”
He gives me a small smile. “You could. But you neverwould. I know you, Brooks. You would never hurt me. In any state.”
I just stare at him for a moment. He's seen the amount of damage I'm capable of in the past. He's seen me hurt people.He's seen it all. How could he think I wouldn't be capable of hurting him?
“Stop it.”
“Laz.”
He shakes his head. “No, I meant it. Stop. Just stop. You didn't hurt me. You would never hurt me. I am not hurt, and I will never be hurt because of you. You were afraid, and that fear triggered a rage situation. It's what Valla do. It's natural. I am not afraid of you. So stop being afraid of yourself.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Laz
Brooks is going with me to my last appointment with the lead physician on my team. I'll still keep up the therapy, but as far as purely medical treatment goes, I'm as healed as the extensive team Brooks hired can make me. And thank fuck for it because I am sick of going to appointments and giving samples and being prodded and examined. I am very much looking forward to a long while of being left alone. I just want things to be normal now. I want normal outings, normal day-to-day life, and normal conversations. I am beyond tired of being asked how I feel.
Part of today's appointment will cover my current and future reproductive health. I'm anxious. That has been made abundantly clear during my therapy sessions. Before, when Brooks and I were younger, we never really planned what our family would look like. It was always one of those things that we both assumed would happen later when our lives were more suitable for such things. There were a few comments made here and there about eventually settling down and things like that,but we never sat down and talked about what we wanted our future to look like. Today will tell us if that's even possible in the future.
I've done a lot of damage to my body. It's not a secret. I might be ashamed about it, but there's no point in trying to hide it or trying to talk around it. I spent a lot of years abusing myself. The amount of chemically designed hormone simulators I've put through my system has most definitely had a negative effect on how my body will behave.
I can't even remember the last natural heat I had. I don't remember what a naturally occurring heat spike even feels like. The false heat I subjected myself to for years was so intense and lasted so long. I had spikes, but they weren't normal. I had heats, but they weren't normal, either. It felt so good to let everything go and forget myself and everything else that I didn't care. Now that I've got Brooks back, I'm terrified that I've taken something from us.
I know he wants kids. I've always known it. That's part of why I let myself go so wild to begin with. I wanted to live a little before I settled into a life of domesticated monotony. That makes it sound like I didn't want it, and that's not true. I did. I do. But I wanted to be, I don't know, carefree for a while. Maybe even a little careless. I knew that life would calm down and Brooks and I would settle into a family when the time was right.
But then I got truly careless. And selfish. Then I ruined everything. And now we're here, and I have so much regret that it's hard to breathe. I can't focus on that. Not all the time, anyway. The therapist says that it's a process. He says that I will probably cycle through emotions about everything, but that I'm on the road to healing and it's normal. I want to heal. I want to be normal. So, I'll cling to what he says and move forward as best I can. I won't handle it well if we get bad news at today's appointment, though, regardless of the therapy.
“Ready?” Brooks asks, poking his head inside my door and giving me a wide smile.
He knows I'm nervous. He's been trying to distract me any way he can for the past couple of days, but nothing has helped. I've been having a hard time sleeping and eating, and that's done nothing but worry him on top of the worry he already carries.
“As ready as I'm going to be.” I return his smile, but I'm sure it looks as stressed as I feel.
An hour and a half later, my last exam is over, and Brooks and I are sitting across from the doctor in his office. My heart is thudding heavily in my chest and Brooks's palm is cold and damp against mine.
“You can take the anxiety down a level or two,” the doctor says across the desk. “The news isn't terrible. It's not exactly sunshine and rainbows, but it certainly isn't a death sentence.”
I take a big breath and puff out my cheeks when I blow it out. “Just tell us what it is, if you don't mind. Then explain it.”
The doctor chuckles. “Fair enough. I'm giving you a clean bill of health. You will have certain struggles, probably for the rest of your life, but you will have a relatively normal life.”
