Page 45 of Make Me Yours
Monique was studying us like a puzzle she’d already started assembling. The faint whirring of the air vent filled the quiet, and for a second, I wondered if she would make me sweat it out before saying anything.
“So,” she said finally, glancing between us. “You want to tell me what brings you both here?”
Lilly shifted beside me. “He did,” she said quickly, nodding toward me.
I gave her a look. “We’re both here.”
Monique's brow rose after briefly explaining our relationship and how we met. “That right?” She sat forward, elbows on her knees, tattoos sliding into view—bold lines of black and blue across her forearms. “Last time we talked, Sawyer, I told you to focus on building something real before adding more complications. You remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck. “This is different.”
Her eyes narrowed with the kind of amusement that made you feel both seen and exposed. “So what happened?”
I hesitated, then went for blunt honesty. “Lady Luck intervened, and Lilly got pregnant.”
Lilly’s fingers tightened in her lap. “It happened fast… our first time to… You know… the first time we were intimate,” she said quietly. “I was going to take the Plan B pill, but I went to visit my parents in Arizona and forgot. And now—well, here we are.”
Monique didn’t flinch, didn’t look surprised. She just nodded, like she’d seen a hundred versions of the same story. “All right. So now it’s real. The question is, what are you going to do with that reality?”
She glanced between us again, eyes sharp but not unkind. “You two have three big issues sitting between you—trust, communication, and control.”
Lilly’s gaze flicked toward me, then back to Monique.
“You,” Monique said, nodding at me, “try to protect people until they can’t breathe. You equate control with safety. It’s what kept you alive, and it’s what’s keeping you stuck.”
Then she turned to Lilly. “And women like you? You build walls so high nobody gets in. That’s how you survive heartbreak, but it’s also how you end up lonely. You think self-reliance will save you, but it’s already isolating you.”
Neither of us spoke. There wasn’t much to argue with.
Monique sat back again, eyes softer now. “This doesn’t have to break you,” she said. “But it will if you keep trying to manage each other instead of meeting in the middle.”
Her words hit hard, like the quiet before a storm.
“You’re not here to fix each other,” she continued. “You’re here to learn how to stand next to each other. Start with small things. Talk about what you need before assuming the other one knows. And don’t rush to define what this relationship looks like yet—let it breathe.”
I nodded, trying to absorb it all. My brain felt like a kettle about to boil.
Monique’s gaze pinned me again. “Sawyer, you keep up your individual sessions. PTSD doesn’t take a vacation. And Lilly…”—she turned toward her— “you might want to find someone to talk to, too. Change, even good change, can shake your foundation.”
Lilly nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
“Good.” Monique stood, signaling the end of the session. “You’ve both been through hard things. Hard doesn’t mean hopeless. It just means you’ve got work to do.”
I stood with her, tucking my hands into my pockets, not trusting myself to say much.
Monique’s tone softened a little as she looked at Lilly again. “You’re tougher than you look, sweetheart. But tough doesn’t mean you don’t need help. Let him in, just a little.”
Then to me: “And you—stop trying to earn your right to be happy. You already have it.”
For a second, no one moved. Then Lilly exhaled, the sound trembling just slightly, and I felt something in me loosen right along with it.
Monique smiled faintly. “Now, get out of here before I start charging overtime.”
We both laughed—a small, shared sound that didn’t fix anything but felt like the first breath after coming up for air.
The sky over Billings had started to fade into that gold-and-lavender mix that always hit right before sunset. Lilly and I walked across the parking lot in silence, the sound of our boots on the asphalt the only thing cutting through the quiet.
She looked more relaxed, like Monique’s words had loosened something in her shoulders. Me? I felt rung out but steady. For once, the session hadn’t sent me spiraling—it had leveled me.
