I shook my head. “That’s all I know, Officer.”

“You can call me Steve.” He smiled.

I smiled back. “All right, Steve. I’m Jade.”

“Okay, Jade.” His lip twitched.

Was he nervous?

“Uh…would you like to join me for a drink after work?”

Chapter Eight

Talon

“Yesterday we told my sister about what happened to me.” I gripped the now familiar green leather arms of the recliner in Dr. Carmichael’s office.

“And how did that go?” she asked.

“About as well as I expected. She was angry and hurt that we hadn’t trusted her with the information before now. She asked a lot of questions, wanted to know a lot of details—details I wasn’t comfortable sharing.”

“And how did you handle that?”

“I didn’t want to lie to her. I had only just shared some of the details with my brothers earlier. I didn’t want to saddle Marjorie with the horror of it all. So I just said I didn’t remember a lot of the details. She seemed to buy that.”

“Why did you feel she couldn’t handle the details?”

“I guess it’s not that I thought she couldn’t handle them. She’s my baby sister. I didn’t want her to have to handle them, you know?”

Dr. Carmichael nodded. “I understand. How else did she react?”

“She cried. She said it helped her understand so much now. And of course she wanted to tell…”

“Tell whom?”

“She wanted to tell Jade. Jade’s her best friend.”

Dr. Carmichael cleared her throat. “What did you say to that?”

“I made her promise not to tell Jade.”

“And did she?”

“Yes, she promised, but on one condition.”

“And that was?”

“That I tell Jade. When I’m ready.”

“I think that’s a good idea. I think you do need to tell Jade. But you don’t have to be in any hurry.”

“How can you say that? I’m in love with this woman. And she said she loves me too. I’m amazed every day at the fact that someone so wonderful could love me.”

“That’s exactly why I can say that, Talon. You have a long way to go to work through all of this. You need to understand that you’re worthy of her love, and you’re just not there yet.”

Dr. Carmichael was right. I sure wasn’t there yet. “You’re right. I’m not.”

“So is there anything you want to talk about today?”

Where to start? “I have no idea where to begin, Doc. So much happened, and so much of it affected me.”

“The last time, you said that the one with the phoenix tattoo seemed to be the leader.”

“Maybe that’s a good place to start,” I said. “The phoenix.”

“What about the phoenix?”

“I came across a similar image recently.”

“Oh? Where?”

I breathed in and let it out slowly. “Jade. She was going to have an almost identical image tattooed on her lower back.”

Dr. Carmichael widened her eyes. “Really? How did that come about?”

I rubbed my temple, my head beginning to ache. “Hell if I know. She said she found the image in one of the books at our local tattoo shop in Snow Creek. I went over, and damned if the image wasn’t nearly identical to the one I remember.”

“Odd that Jade would pick the same image.”

I nodded. “More than odd. She said the phoenix was a symbol to her. She got left at the altar and was humiliated, and the phoenix rising from the ashes pointed the way to a new and better life for herself.”

“That does make sense,” Dr. Carmichael said.

“It didn’t make sense to me.”

“It didn’t make sense to you? Or were you just so upset by the image that you didn’t even think about it making sense?”

God, I hated it when she was right. “That image…it’s hard for me to…” I closed my eyes, gripping the arms of the leather chair.

 

Again I focused on the colorful bird on his forearm—the only thing I could focus on to keep myself from screaming or emptying my stomach. It was a menace, but it was also my safe place.

“Yeah, boy, that’s it, take it all,” Tattoo said, pumping into me.

Low Voice and the other laughed, jeered. “That’s it. Give it to him good. You know he likes to be fucked.”

Again, I stared at the bird. I’d learned not to argue with what they said. Did they really think I liked this? How could anyone like any of this? I hated it. I hated it to the depths of my soul. But I did what I had to do to survive. The first few times, when I screamed, “No, I hate this!” I’d been punished with a beating.

Why did I try to survive? Most of the time I wished I were dead. But still, every time they came, I did what I had to in order to survive.

Every damned time.

 

I opened my eyes. “That phoenix has been part of my life since then.”

“How so?”

I swallowed. “I always thought I remembered every single horrific detail of what I went through. But honestly, Doc, new memories surface all the time. Like, for example, I just remembered about the one guy missing a toe. How could I have forgotten that?”

“Talon, your mind does what it has to so that you can survive. You were ten. It’s only natural for you to block out some things.”

“But something as innocuous as how many toes one of my captors had? Why would I choose to block that out, when I remembered so many of the horrors?”

“I don’t know, but we will figure it out. You did remember the phoenix.”

True. “For a long time, the phoenix was the only thing I remembered about the whole experience. Other than the abuse, that is. I’m afraid that has always been etched into my psyche. I wish I could forget it.”

“Forgetting things and blocking things out come with their own problems,” the doctor said. “The fact that you do remember is actually in your favor, as far as healing goes.”

“I’m sure you know what you’re talking about, but let me tell you, remembering all of that is a curse.”