I needed it more than ever, so as much as I hated it, I dragged myself out of bed and went.
Ever since I admitted to Nicole that my favorite sweet treat was oatmeal raisin cookies, she’d always had a plate ready when I arrived at therapy. I helped myself to a few before we even started speaking, and she accusingly raised her eyebrow at me.
“What?” I asked.
She crossed her arms like a disapproving mother. “Have you been eating?”
“I ate yesterday,” I said back.
“You should be eating every day, Nathan,” she replied. “You also seem sick.”
“I don’t feel great today. I had a rough weekend.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“Nikita is mad at me. I heard from my brother, but we got cut off, and he never called back,” I said.
“What happened with you and Nikita?”
“More Cherri stuff,” I replied. “They got into a fight, a bad one, and when the principal asked me to take sides, I took Cherri’s.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Honestly, I don’t really know. It was dumb. My reasoning at the time was that I thought Cherri would get in more trouble than Nikita did, which turned out to be true, but I don’t really think that was why I did it.”
She hummed. “More guilt?”
“If I’d taken Nikita’s side, Cherri would have gotten expelled for sure. I couldn’t be the reason she got expelled.”
Nicole sighed. “You know, Nathan, being in a position to prevent someone from suffering the consequences of their actions does not make when they see those consequences your fault.”
I tried to blame it on the sentence’s complicated phrasing when I said, “I don’t understand,” but it was more that I didn’t understand how Cherri getting in trouble at that time wouldn’t have been my fault. If I could have prevented it and didn’t, that made it my fault.
“There’s a difference between robbing a store and harboring the fugitive.”
“Both are wrong,” I said.
“Correct, but one is self-inflicted, and the other is self-imposed.”
“Aren’t those the same thing?” I asked.
She laughed. “You and I both know that you know they aren’t.”
“Well, all I’ve got right now is giving until I figure out the next step of forgiveness. Is that such a bad thing?” I asked.
“No, but what you’ll find is that people will always accept gifts. Even though Cherri claims to be angry at you and has even said not to help her, she’s always accepted your help. She could have easily turned herself in or asked the teacher who accepted your bribe not to look the other way, but she did anyway. People will always accept gifts. Until they’re ready to truly accept you, nothing will make a difference.”
“Is it bad to give them gifts until then?” I asked. “As long as I know that’s not what’s affecting whether or not they’re choosing to forgive me?”
“No, but you have to be careful,” Nicole said. “If you’ve passed the point of no return, then you’re beating a very expensive dead horse.”
19
Nikita
Fortunately, I quickly pulled out two blades as someone snatched me while I was getting into my car. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter because whoever had their arms around me seemed to know I’d be armed. They wrapped around my arms and held me until I was too coiled to move. Then they dragged me backward until we were slipping into the shadows on the side of my garage. A hand cupped my mouth so that I couldn’t scream, but I knew what to do. I relaxed a bit to make my captor think that I was going to comply with what they had planned, and as soon as I felt that slight bit of release on the hand around my mouth, I craned my mouth and bit down on the hand.
The body behind me grunted, but they seemed to be trying to keep their voice down. The hand cupped further around my mouth despite the bite. Eventually, they tried to switch their arms, briefly releasing my arms and hoping that the hold they had on my mouth was enough to keep me still. That miscalculation cost them. I rolled out of their hold, bringing up my blades, and flipped around to bring them up to my captor’s neck.
Jaxon backed against the garage wall, wincing at my blades held to his throat. I opened my mouth to ask him what the fuck he was doing, but he slapped his hand over my mouth, and I could taste the blood from my bite where it trickled out. He