The red light makes me angrier today than it did the first time.

A conditioned environment makes sense. If you want someone to remember something, you recreate it. You offer up any triggers, any objects or words that could have a mental association. Jay’s plan has merit.

But it makes me angry because it takes me back there. Back to when I was helpless. Back to when I didn’t fight. If I had known how it would end, I would have killed the bastard. I would have found a way. I would have killed him before he could hurt Jay anymore.

My shoulders are squared as I sit on the bed though. My back’s against the hard cinder block wall. It doesn’t slip by me that John’s back is to the drywall, and he’s the one who’s forced to stare at the block wall. The same fucking stone that tortured my vision for four straight months.

“Do you feel comfortable?” John asks as he leans forward and puts his hands between his knees. I try to keep my eyes from moving to the blinking red light, but I fail.

I swallow the lump in my throat. “I could be more comfortable,” I tell him and then look back to his steely gaze, “but I’ll be fine.”

“You seem…” his brow furrows and he leans back with an uncomfortable expression. “Better today,” he concludes, finally settling on the words he wants.

“I’m more certain of what I need to do,” I look into the swirls of gray clouds as I tell him and bring my knees up to my chest. It’s an odd behavior I’ve seen patients do, but I like it when they do it. It makes them vulnerable, which inherently means they’re not defensive.

My eyes drift back to the red light, and I wonder who's really running this session. It needs to be me.

“Can I tell you something?” I ask John although it’s a rhetorical question.

He nods his head once, not breaking my gaze and says, “Jay said you had something to tell me.” My blood turns cold and I swallow the unforgiving lump in my throat, lowering my head to the comforter. I pull it up tighter around me, not wanting to address what John’s said at all. So, I don’t.

I pick at a loose thread. It’s a habit because for so long, all I had was a blanket to pick at. This one is thicker, higher quality and clean, but it’s a blanket nonetheless.

The thin thread slips between my fleshy fingertips before sliding past my nails as I start my story. “This story is about a girl named Marie.” Just saying her name makes my heart squeeze in my chest.

Her face flashes before my eyes. Beautiful green eyes that were so clear and so pure, I felt she could see to the very depths of my soul. Her skin was pale and her hair was always combed just so. She kept it perfectly straight as though she were put together, but she wasn’t in the least.

“Marie?” John asks me, and then crosses his ankle over his knee. The movement makes me look up as the memory of her voice echoes in my ears. “Doctor Everly.”

I nod my head, hating how real her voice sounds.

It takes me a moment before I’m able to speak. “She had a very abusive father. Her mother fled in the middle of the night when she was only six and left her there.”

The pain is nearly consuming as I talk about her in the past tense, but that’s where Marie will always be. Never again to be here with me.

“He hurt her?” John asks, and it disrupts my thoughts. I part my lips to exhale and answer his question. “Badly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” John says with true sympathy. “You knew her well?”

My hair brushes my cheeks as I nod and say, “I was her shrink.”

“For almost ten years he systematically abused her in every way possible.”

“That’s horrible,” John says although his voice is absent. I feel the need to look up, to look into his eyes to see what he’s thinking, but I can’t. All I can picture is how Marie looked the last time I saw her. I knew she wasn’t well, but they wouldn’t let me go to her. They wouldn’t let me keep her from leaving. She left me, and I knew it was the last time I’d see her.

“I couldn’t save her,” I whisper and let the warm tears slide down my cheeks. “I begged her, the last time I saw her, I begged her to take her medication but she didn’t believe it would work.”

Marie never had a chance. The moment she was saved from her father, the true beast destroyed her. Her memory.

The home she was in was temporary, and they didn’t care for her. They just wanted a check. The city bus brought her there, and the program paid for it and her medication but she was always alone. The burden was left on her shoulders, except for the small moments I had with her.

“She’d gotten worse the last time I saw her. She started hurting herself.” My breathing is ragged and I lean my head against the wall, closing my eyes and willing the images to go away.

“She needed more help than I could give her.” There wasn’t a phone call I didn’t make. Marie became my priority, but I had no rights to her. I had no legal way to protect her or to take her like I so desperately wanted to.

“She’s gone?” he asks me.

I wipe the tears away and take a steadying breath. When I lick my lips, the salt coats the tip of my tongue. It’s only then that I come back to the moment, to what I can change. To what I can prevent.

“Her death affected me very deeply because it reminded me of-” I hesitate and swallow before I say, “Jay.”

John shifts uncomfortably in the steel chair and the metal legs scratch the floor. “Because his father abused him?” he asks.

I’m careful about answering, but I decide to ask, “What do you know about what he did?”

John glances at the red light for a moment, as if distracted by it before looking back at me. “Jay has told me a lot,” John answers with a tone that tells me he’s uncomfortable.

“Did he tell you his father liked to see how much pain Jay could take before screaming for his dead mother?” The words slip out of me like a void. The brutality and tragedy seeming cold as ice on my lips. I look up into John’s eyes as I explain, “It wasn’t good enough unless his father believed it was genuine.” He tortured him in so many ways. As if it were a game and he was simply trying to find the best tool that was most effective. But nothing ever would be. He would never win; he’d never be content.

“Is that what Marie’s father did?” John asks, forcing my gaze back to him. To the present. To being in a basement twenty years later, brought back by the one boy I wish I could have saved.

If only I’d known.

“Yes, but that’s not why she reminded me of Jay. When I left both of them, I knew they were going to their deaths.” My composure crumbles as I state the words as a fact. Because it’s so true.

I left Jay, and Marie left me. “Maybe I never deserved to help her,” I croak out. Maybe if she’d been in someone else’s care, she’d still be alive. That’s the thought that keeps me up at night. The thought that made me down an entire bottle of pills in the hopes of ending my own life.

“I’m so sorry that you lost Marie, Robin,” John says with such sympathy as he leans forward that it breaks me. “It’s not your fault,” he tells me as if it’s a truth.

“I knew and I couldn’t do anything. And when I left Jay-” My throat closes and refuses to let me take in a breath. My upper body collapses, and I hug my legs close.

Watching her walk away from me was every bit the same as when Jay turned his back on me in the field. He pushed me forward and said he’d stay behind for only a minute, but I knew it.

I knew it would be the last time.

And I still ran.

Marie never gave me the choice.

“Hush,” I hear John say at the same time as I hear the bed creak with movement. I focus on calming myself as John rests a large hand on my back and slowly moves it up and down my back in soothing strokes.

His touch makes everything seem like it really will be okay. Like it’s not my fault.

“It’s alright,” he whispers quietly into my ear. I creep closer to him, taking a chance to reach out and grab onto his other arm. And he lets me, he easily scoops me up and puts me in his lap. His arms wrap around me like they belong there, and it soothes something deep inside of me to be held by him.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers and his hot breath sends a chill from my left shoulder all the way down my body. I let out a gentle moan and desire stirs between my legs. I just want to feel something other than this.

With him.

“Could you hold me close and stay with me?” I whisper my plea. Always afraid of being denied. “Please,” I beg him when he doesn’t answer immediately.

My heart stutters and flips as John slides me off his lap and leaves me. I nearly cling to him, I almost reach up to do just that, to grip onto his shirt and beg him to give me another chance, but I know better.

I watch as he walks to the door, leaving me breathing heavily and alone as the sound of it opening and then shutting again signals he's really gone.

My body trembles as I stare at the comforter, rocking on my own and focusing on the one loose thread. When a click fills the silent room and the door slowly opens, I chance a look up.

“Jay,” I say and swallow thickly. I'm only slightly relieved when he nods at me. I close my eyes and let the wave of gratitude take over.

“Little bird,” he says and his voice is so full of pain.

“Jay, please,” I beg him, not caring how I look or how miserably I’ve failed him today. “I promise I’ll do better, but please.”

“This is for you too,” he tells me softly as he walks to the bed and stops in front of me. I sit there on my knees, looking up at him as though he’s my savior. “It’s for all of us,” he tells me, and it shatters my heart.

“Just hold me,” I beg him although my voice comes out strong.

“It’s too early to sleep.” The memories of him denying me with that excuse rush back. It was always when he’d come back shaken. That’s when he wouldn’t hold me. It wasn’t about me though; it was about him. His arms may have been the ones that wrapped around my body, but the comfort was meant for him. I can’t accept that now. Not right now. I need him too much.

“I don’t want to sleep; I just want you to hold me.” I remember what he said last night, and it makes the pain that much deeper. “Please, Jay. You can hurt me if you want, I deserve it.”

Instantly he pulls me into his chest, holding me closer and tighter than John did. Harder even. “Shh,” he tries to calm me. “You aren’t responsible.”

“You needed me,” I whisper against his chest. But I close my sore eyes and just allow him to calm me, rocking me side to side. Soothing me in a way no one else ever can.

“It was an impossible situation, Robin.” He kisses my hair again like he did last night, and it makes a warmth spread through my chest. My fingers dig into my thighs, keeping me from reaching up to him.

“If you hadn’t left, we wouldn’t be here now, would we?” he tells me softly as he pets my hair with long strokes. It’s relaxing, lulling me to sleep until he adds, “It’s fate. Things are meant to happen a certain way.”

I shake my head, hating his explanation and wanting to shove his hand away, but knowing not to reach up. Fate. Fate would mean Marie was meant to die.

“Please hold me,” I beg him and it reminds me of the first time he ever held me. The first time we both knew we needed each other too desperately to ignore. Before I can add that I’ll take the consequences, whatever they may be, he lies on the bed, making it dip and groan with his weight.

“For a minute,” Jay says and my heart hurts all over again. But at least I have one minute. Just one to hold on to him.