Physis (Phoebe Reede: The Untold Story #4)

by Michelle Irwin

  “Phoebe, would you like to sit?”

  Whipping my head around to look at the doctor, I shook my head. I took a step closer to the door.

  “Perhaps you’d feel more comfortable if you were at the window?” She flourished her arm in the direction of my usual place of comfort. “I think it will help Beau knowing you’re here for him.”

  All the accusations I’d hurled just a week earlier bubbled up on my tongue. “Why have you been talking about me? Why would you betray my confidence like that?”

  “Beau, can you please give us a minute?” Dr Bradshaw asked, moving over to touch his elbow when he didn’t move. Her light brush was enough to stop him from staring at me. The last thing I saw before he left the room was the hurt that he’d obviously been hiding inside while he waited for me to close the distance between us again.

  Once we were alone in the room, Dr Bradshaw approached me, stopping when she was just a few metres away. “The first thing I want to discuss is my knowledge of your relationship. I feel it is wise to let you know that I was aware who you were to each other. I had to be because there were too many coincidences in your stories for you to be anything else. But I can promise you that Beau and I have never discussed you or your case, Phoebe. No more than you and I have discussed him.”

  “But why—” I sucked down a deep breath as I tried to reorder my thoughts. “How did you know what he wanted to talk about when you saw me?”

  “There is a topic, just one, that has been off limits where Beau is concerned. He has said from the beginning that he will only discuss it when he is able to bring you with him.”

  “W-what?”

  She glanced down at the floor, no doubt trying to come up with a way to mention whatever topic it was without sending me fleeing. It made me question what could be so bad—what would Beau only want to discuss when I was with him. I thought back to what he’d told me before we’d come. There was something he needed to discuss with her that I would want to hear.

  One topic struck instantly. It was the only one that made sense, and I didn’t know if I could do it. Both my hands curled into fists, one pressed against my stomach and the other against my mouth.

  “We don’t have to continue if you don’t want to. You are in control, Phoebe. I’m sure under the circumstances, Beau would understand if you wanted to talk about something else.”

  “No, I . . .” I lifted my eyes to meet hers so she could see the sincerity there—and also the pain. “I need to hear his side of it. I just don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Stand. Sit. Be wherever you need to, and we’ll try. Does that sound okay? If you find it’s too much at any time, you can call a stop.”

  Instead of nodding or speaking to let her know I agreed, I moved to the window and stared down at the coffee shop across the road. My shoulders shook as silent sobs wracked through me as images of my child—our baby—played in my head.

  The doctor called Misty on the intercom to invite Beau back into the room. I could feel his gaze on me even though I refused to turn back around to look at him.

  “What would you like to discuss?” Dr Bradshaw asked him.

  “Cass has been sendin’ me updates about Hope. Photos and stories.”

  I closed my eyes and pressed one hand against the window to support myself. We hadn’t discussed Cassidee or her baby—two of the factors that had kept us from one another. That had led me into Xavier’s arms. She had been due a few weeks after I was kidnapped; she must have had a little girl, based on Beau’s words.

  “I can’t open a single one.” He paused and I was certain if I’d opened my eyes and spun around, I would have found his gaze focused on me. “The first photo I saw was . . . before. And she was cute as a button. But now, it’s impossible to look at ’em. I can’t do it without wonderin’ what our child mighta looked like.”

  Another sob tore from me. How many nights had I wondered the same thing? Or imagined still being pregnant and what symptoms I’d be facing that week. How big the baby would be and whether I’d be able to feel her kicks yet. I pressed my hand against my mouth to stop myself crying out as Beau and Dr Bradshaw talked back and forth about his feelings over not only Cassidee’s baby but also the one he and I had lost.

  The first time I’d seen him again, I’d thought he didn’t know about my miscarriage. He’d shown that he did, but I hadn’t understood the full impact on him. Since then, we’d only discussed it once, and only enough for him to prove he didn’t blame me for what happened. Not that it mattered—I blamed me still.

  I spun around when Beau sobbed. From the first day I met him, I’d only seen him cry in the days after his foster sister’s death. Seeing him in so much agony over something that cut me so deep made me want to comfort him.

  The beat of my heart rang through my ears in rapid succession and my whole body shook as I pushed myself away from the window and closed the distance between us.

  “Beau, I—” My words died on my tongue when his gaze lifted. The agony in his eyes was enough to bring me to my knees and I saw that it wasn’t just him talking about the baby he wanted me to see. He wanted me to know that he was hurting like I was, but he couldn’t find the words outside of the doctor’s office. “Oh, fuck.”

  I covered the distance between us in seconds, practically throwing myself into his arms. My arms enclosed his neck as I climbed into his lap.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered over and over. I was apologising for the things I couldn’t control, but also the things I could.

  Taking my position and words as permission, he wrapped his arms around me as well and we held each other while we both cried. His tears dried up first, and once they had, the doctor kept talking to him while I just clung to his neck, unwilling to release him.

  By the time his hour was over, he was back to his usual self. Dr Bradshaw asked him if there was anything else he wanted to say to me.

  “Thank you for comin’ with me, darlin’,” he said, cupping my cheek with his hands.

  “I’m so—”

  He pressed his finger to my lips. “Don’t apologise no more, ’kay?”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  Interlocking his fingers with mine, he raised our hands to his lips. “So long as ya know I don’t need no apologies from you. Not ever.”

  “What if I’m a bitch to you?” Like I had been before.

  His lips stretched across his face in slow motion. “Then we can talk then ’bout whether ya need to apologise.”

  Shortly after, we wound up Beau’s appointment. I had to leave the room with him so Dr Bradshaw could change the tapes and make her notes—the things she did during the time between appointments. Beau waited with me until it was time for my appointment. Rather than inviting himself to come in, or asking whether I wanted him to, he kissed my hand and told me he’d be there when I finished.

  I turned to head back inside, trying to sort through the good and bad thoughts all clamouring for attention in my mind.

  “I’M HAPPY TO see you two have talked,” Dr Bradshaw said as I found my way back to her couch. “And that you appear to be working things out.”

  I curled my legs up against my chest. It was somewhat surprising she didn’t start with a blast for the way I’d acted the week before, but maybe she thought mentioning it would set me off again.

  “I don’t know if I really had much choice,” I admitted. “Beau’s persistent.”

  Even as the words left me, I knew they were as much a lie as they were the truth. Beau wouldn’t have approached me if I hadn’t gone to him at the track. I was the one who’d run across the road to speak to him the week before. It was my phone call that had granted him permission to come to my house. Every touch we’d had, every communication, had been at my request.

  “He cares about you.”

  I nodded because everything she said was the truth. “I know.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “Terrified,” I admitted. “Xavier cared abo
ut me too.”

  “Do you worry that Beau will hurt you?”

  I rested my cheek on my knee. “No.” I sighed. “Yes.” The admission was near silent. “Just not in the same ways.”

  “How?”

  “He’ll leave.” A sob left me.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because he’ll have to go home eventually, and then where will I be? I can’t be me without him.”

  “Do you truly believe that?” She raised a brow at me.

  “He’s been able to reach into the depths of me and find the parts of me that I thought were gone. In the last couple of weeks . . . everything’s changed. I’m terrified it’s all going to disappear again after he’s gone.”

  “You can’t rely on someone else to give you the confidence you need in your day-to-day life.”

  I wanted to ask why not but kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t exactly the first time I’d heard something similar, and Dad was always open about his experience. As much as he needed Mum to ground him, he’d had to learn how to survive without her too.

  “You need to find a way to keep those pieces at the surface yourself. Beau might have helped light the spark, but only you can keep the fire burning.”

  “I know. It’s just hard. I mean, where do I start?”

  Her warm gaze trailed a path over my features, the brown irises tracking from eyes to mouth, and back again. “One place to start is acknowledging the things you haven’t been able to until now.”

  My heart raced and I wrapped my arms tighter around myself.

  “Things that are causing a distance between yourself and other lifelines you have available.”

  I closed my eyes as tears burned. My lip started to quiver. “I—I can’t.”

  “You won’t be able to avoid—”

  “I know!” I shot up from the couch. The denial racing through me was a time bomb. I knew it, but I couldn’t—

  It was easier to pretend it wasn’t true even if that caused its own problems.

  I picked at my fingernails as if chipping away at nail polish I no longer wore. “It’s just impossible, all right?”

  “It’s something to think about. Something to work on. You’ll run out of time otherwise.”

  With a sigh, I nodded. It would be easier—on everyone—if I could just find it in myself to talk about the right things to the one person I needed to talk to, but easier in the long run didn’t mean possible in the short-term.

  “Now, how about you tell me the good things that have happened to you this week?”

  A smile fought its way onto my lips as I considered that for the first time since I’d started therapy nine weeks earlier, I actually had some. They spilt readily from my lips.

  By the time the session ended, I was actually feeling better than I had since Beau had given me the five-months warning.

  As he’d promised, Beau was waiting for me just outside the door.

  “Would ya like to go get some lunch across the road?”

  “I think I’m at my limit of outside today,” I said as I offered him my hand.

  He took it readily as he said, “Let’s head back to your place and see what we can do there.”

  Together we covered the short distance to his car.

  As we drove, we didn’t talk about our sessions. Didn’t talk about anything in fact. Beau put on the same playlist we’d heard on the way into the city. A few other songs that I’d heard a few times.

  “What’s this list?” I asked after listening to Beau mumbling the lyrics to three songs in a row. Despite the words being issued under his breath—and likely without conscious thought—he uttered them with such emotion that it was impossible for it to be just a random list of songs.

  His cheek reddened and the tips of his ears turned pink.

  “Is—is it a list of songs about me?” It seemed the only logical explanation for his embarrassment.

  “Will it make ya uncomfortable if I say yeah?”

  “Maybe it would’ve a week ago, but today . . . I think I’m okay with that.”

  “It’s been helping me to relax. They’re songs that make me think of home, and you, and the times you were with me out on my lake.”

  “Things were so easy then.”

  He blew out a breath. “Yeah. Didn’t seem like it at the time.”

  “You know I’ve got one too. A playlist for you, I mean.”

  With one brow raised, he turned to me. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” The word was almost silent as regret rushed through me that I’d even said anything.

  Reaching across the car, he paused with his hand right in front of me. When I didn’t draw away, he brushed my hair behind my ear. “I’d like to hear that list one day.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I think music’s a good insight into someone’s mind. Into their soul.”

  “Well, I guess your soul is a little country.”

  He laughed. “A li’l.”

  “And very sweet.”

  “You think these songs are sweet?”

  I stared at my hands. “No. I just think you are. Thank you.”

  “What for?”

  “Your patience. Being here. Coming to Australia. A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve said that the last thing I needed was for you to be here. But now . . .”

  He grinned. “Ya love—”

  “No!” I whisper-shouted as I shrank away from him.

  “I love you. You know that don’t you, Phoebe? And you love me too. The sooner you remember that, the happier we’ll both be.”

  Sobs shook me as Xavier forced food into my mouth and made me participate in the date.

  “Manners, Phoebe. They’re a sign of respect for the people you’re with.”

  “Respect would be letting me go.” I sobbed.

  In an instant, his hand slapped across my cheek. Sweet Xavier was gone, in his place the psycho that could rival Bee for his cruelty.

  “You love me . . .” His breathing was harsh as he rose to his full height. “Tell me!”

  “I-I love you.” The words were platitudes. I just wanted him to stop attacking me.

  “Liar!” The open palm was gone, replaced by a fist. I raised my hands to block his attack, but he grabbed the chain securing me in place and ripped my hands away from my face. His knee came to rest on the chain, pinning my hands near my waist. His fists came again, one across my cheek, the other meeting my temple.

  “Next time you tell me you love me, you better mean it.”

  When he released the chain, I crawled over to the bed and curled against the metal frame. The sound of a tap nearby filled the air. A second later, a cold, wet cloth pressed against the spot on my temple where he’d connected.

  “I don’t know why you make me do this, Phoebe.” His voice was back to the calm, soothing voice of sweet Xavier. “If you would just see how perfect we are for each other—if you’d just love me like you’re supposed to—I wouldn’t need to hurt you. Why can’t you understand that?”

  “Phoebe?” Beau’s voice filled the cabin of the car, barely covering the sound of my sobs. “Dawson.”

  I sniffed and wiped the tears that wet my cheeks. In my periphery, I saw Beau’s hand reaching for me. I tried, so hard, to convince myself that he wasn’t going to try to hurt me, but I still flinched away from him.

  He drew his hand back and placed it on the steering wheel. His other hand shifted to his hair as he turned to lean against the window. It was just like when we’d driven together across the States and he’d closed down over Mabel’s death and Abby’s injuries.

  The muscles all along his arm strained under the pressure of his grip on the wheel.

  I curled further into myself. I’d made him unhappy—I’d hurt him.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as the tears fell harder.

  “Don’t—don’t you apologise.”

  “But—”

  “No. I’m the idiot, Dawson. I was thoughtless and said something stupid.”

/>   I laughed without any mirth. “You said something that any fucking person should be able to say to someone else without having them break down. It’s my fault my stupid brain hears that word as a threat. I told you, Beau, I’m broken. Get out while you can.” Even as I said the words, I desperately wanted him to fight them. As had been the case so often lately, my tongue acted of its own accord, lashing out to hurt before I could be hurt.

  He swerved to the side of the road. As soon as the car had come to a stop, he had both hands offered to me. With my stomach twisting, I shifted in the seat and slipped my palms into his hold. Our gazes met and he didn’t have to say more. All the things we’d said before—his request for me to not apologise anymore, my begging him to stay even as I pushed him away—it all burned between us and we drew closer to one another.

  Without breaking eye contact, Beau lifted one hand and cupped his hand near my cheek. A silent statement that he understood the broken parts of me, that they might cut him from time to time but he was willing to fight through them. That he’d come some of the way, and I’d have to go the rest. With a smile playing on my lips, I rested my cheek against his hand.

  We were so close his breath brushed over my lips. It was a do-over of the night I arrived at his place after Abby’s death. After he’d admitted he had regrets, and asked me for another chance. Like then, he’d come 90 percent of the way and was waiting for me to cover the other ten.

  “It’s not going to be easy,” I murmured, my gaze focused on his lips.

  “Nothin’ worthwhile ever is, darlin’.”

  “And this is worthwhile?”

  He grinned and went to speak, but before he could say anything, I pressed my lips against his. The chaste kiss lasted seconds, but it was what we needed after the intense afternoon.

  “This is worthwhile,” I said before he could answer.

  Beau got the car back on the road and headed back toward home. The conversation between us was stilted again.

  When we pulled up, Beau offered me his hand. “How are ya feelin’?”