Released (Caged 3)

“Everything that happened in your past brought you to where you are now. Would you ever have had the opportunity to meet Tria if it weren’t for the earlier tragedies in your life?”

“Are you saying Aimee had to die for Tria and me to be together?” I stood up and pointed a finger at her. “That’s the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Aimee and the baby had to die so I could be happy with another girl? Are you fucking serious?”

“I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it,” Erin said softly. “Please sit back down.”

I huffed through my nose as I slowly lowered myself back to the cliché couch.

“I’m asking you to consider the positive things in your life,” Erin clarified. “Your focus is often on the negative aspects, but there are many good things that have happened to you as well.”

“Tria.”

“Yes, Tria,” Erin agreed. “You also haven’t relapsed again.”

I nodded.

“What else?” she prompted.

“Um…I’m not on the street.”

“You have an uncle who cares for you quite a bit.”

I nodded again, noticed I was chewing on my lower lip the same way Tria did when she was deep in thought, and made myself stop it.

“Chelsea, too,” I said. “Chelsea has been awesome to me and to Tria, too. I don’t think Tria ever really had a woman in her life who did shit for her like Chelsea does. She’s been more like a mom than Tria’s real one ever was.”

“That’s your uncle’s wife, correct?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ryan’s mom, too.”

“Have you talked to Ryan since you moved in with your uncle?”

“Nah,” I said. “He’s on some big business trip in China or something. He won’t be back until the end of the month.”

“Your relationship with him remained civil while you were out of touch with the rest of your family.”

“Mostly,” I agreed. “We had our moments.”

“You were close to him when you were younger?”

“When Michael married Chelsea,” I said, “Ryan came along with the deal. We were about the same age, and we got along right away. It was good to have someone to hang out with during family gatherings and shit—I hadn’t had that before.”

“What about now?”

“His wife is a bitch,” I said with a laugh.

“How so?”

“She just is. She was like that in high school, too. I think Ryan saw her as a beast to be tamed. They had an on-again, off-again relationship from about freshman year until three years ago. They got married last winter.”

“But you didn’t approve.”

I shrugged.

“I guess I don’t care, really,” I said. “Ryan loves her, so I guess that’s the part that matters. He says she loves him, too, and I guess that’s probably true. I still think she loves the money as much as anything.”

“You walked away from the money,” Erin noted.

“I made enough fighting,” I replied nonchalantly. “Well, I guess I’m making more now, but it’s not the same. Fighting was…”