The Reality of Everything - Rebecca Yarros Page 0,12

I said slowly.

“Are you okay?” Her eyebrows rose.

“I’m bruised up, but fine. Thank you for asking.” I swallowed. “But this man—my next-door neighbor—he pulled me out, and there were a few minutes where the only pain I felt was from where I’d gotten scraped. I only thought about…Will when Jackson asked about his truck.” Heat flooded my cheeks as I twisted the cap of my water.

“I’m glad he pulled you out, Morgan. How did you feel after that encounter?”

“Besides embarrassed that he found me dangling in my Hello Kitty underwear?” The corners of my mouth tugged upward slightly.

She bit back a smile but nodded.

Mine faded. “Guilty that I enjoyed meeting Jackson,” I admitted quietly.

She studied me for a moment.

“Okay.” She stood and walked over to her desk, then pulled papers from the bottom drawer before coming back toward me. “I want you to fill these out. Be as blatantly honest as you can. Like I said, there’s no right or wrong.”

She handed me a three-page assessment and a pencil.

“Right now?” My stomach twisted as I looked over the questions.

“If you can,” she answered gently, taking her seat again. “I think there might be a little more going on than your last doctor caught, and this will help me figure it out.”

I took another drink, then answered the questions as truthfully as I could. I long for Will every day. Yes, it’s disruptive. I’ve accepted this as my reality. Hell yes, I’m still bitter.

Each question pricked at the raw center of my soul, scraping and cutting until it drew blood. I finished and handed the papers back to her.

She thanked me, and I walked to the window so I could see the water while she quietly read my answers.

“Okay. Morgan, I don’t think it’s just anxiety or depression that’s causing your attacks.”

“You don’t?” My brow puckered as I turned to face her.

“No.” She shook her head and leaned forward slightly, putting the papers in my file on the table. “I think you have something called complicated grief.”

I scoffed. “Because we had a complicated relationship?”

“Maybe that’s part of it. Complicated grief happens when your rational mind has accepted the loss, but your emotional mind hasn’t quite gotten there. It keeps you stuck in that first, sharp, acute stage of grief and doesn’t let you move forward.”

“Okay? And what am I supposed to do with that?” I walked back to her desk, stopping behind the armchair I’d been sitting in.

“I’d help you move forward.” She offered me a soft smile.

I clenched the back of the armchair, the fabric warping slightly under my fingers. “You’d help me move forward?” I repeated, each word a little less kind than the last.

“Yes. We do a very specific form of therapy that’s been proven to help people just like you move forward in the grieving process.” She sat there calmly while my emotions boiled over.

“Move forward?” I shook my head. “Move forward to what? To a life without him? To a world where everyone around me is happy because they didn’t lose the only man they’ve ever loved? That’s not moving forward—that’s where I’m at now. There is no forward when it’s the same bullshit I’ve been living the last two years.”

“I can help you see past all this,” she promised, and the worst part was she believed that garbage.

“You want to help me? Then bring him back,” I snapped. “You rewind time and go to that godforsaken valley in Afghanistan and you tell him that his life is worth the same as Jagger’s—not less. You keep him from being the martyr.” My stomach twisted with something hot and ugly as my nails dug into the upholstery. “Then you go into a grocery store in Alabama and stop my phone from ringing, and you catch that jar of raspberry jam before I drop it all over the floor and it shatters.” I shoved the memory away with the chair, and it screeched across the hardwood floor. “You sew my heart back together, and you give us the chance we didn’t get!” A razor-tipped fist of emotion forced its way up my chest, prickling my eyes with pain, and I had to shout to be heard around it. “Everyone else got their shot! Josh and Ember, Paisley and Jagger, Sam and Grayson, hell, even Paisley and Will got their shot, but the minute he decides that it’s finally time for us to get our chance to be happy together, he dies saving my best friend’s husband.” I rubbed