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go back to your feelings.”
    “I don’t know where they are anymore. I’ve lost them.”
    “They’re still there,” she said slowly and patiently. “They don’t go away—they just hide. Try to find them again.”
    He shook his head.
    “You can do this.” Her voice was quiet but uncompromising. “It’s important. Describe what you are feeling right at this moment.”
    “I’m just trying to figure out why she left me. I keep wondering whether she even loved me. If she—”
    “You’re focusing on facts,” she said, gently redirecting. “Go back to the feelings, Patrick.”
    He closed his eyes, took a quiet breath.
    She watched him in silent attention.
    He said, “I feel so lost… so abandoned.”
    “Good… anything else?”
    “Angry, but I don’t know if I have the right to be.”
    “You don’t need permission to feel something.”
    He looked toward the window again, biting his lower lip, struggling against his thoughts, and then, “I can’t do this… It’s too hard.”
    “Why is it hard?”
    “I don’t even know why she left me. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe someone took her… or made her do it.”
    “That could be, but it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel angry.”
    He considered her for a moment, looked down at jittery hands.
    She said, “You don’t have to place blame anywhere if you don’t want to right now, but it is important to focus in on how you feel. This is a difficult process for you, Patrick, something you never learned to do. Your fear takes you to the last place in the world you want to go, where you list your feelings instead of actually allowing yourself to experience them. It’s where your wires got crossed as a child. Now that you’re an adult, you can fix them.”
    “Fix them how?”
    “By taking this first step. By giving yourself permission to be angry with someone you love. This is where your emotions get tangled—it’s where you learned to disconnect. Let it flow. Allow them.”
    “But it doesn’t feel right.”
    “Nothing new ever does. You’re learning.”
    “It doesn’t make sense.”
    “Emotions don’t come from logic. They just come. And you can’t deal with them if you don’t know they’re there.”
    “I’m angry,” he said, nodding, as if coming into an agreement with himself.
    “Good.”
    “And I was lied to.”
    “Back to the feelings, Patrick. How does being lied to make you feel?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I think you do.”
    “I don’t know,” he repeated, shaking his head.
    She waited.
    A tear rolled down his cheek.
    “Allow it, Patrick.”
    He swiped at the tear, but like a bold act of defiance, another followed in its path.
    “Patrick… just say it. When you were lied to, how did it make you feel?”
    And then he said it. A scarce whisper in a cracked voice, but he said it.
    “Unloved.”

C hapter F ifteen
    C HAPTER F IFTEEN
    Punishing sunlight shot through the window, striking Patrick in the face like an angry slap. His eyes snapped open, and he threw his arm up, squinting against the rays.
    And then his vision adjusted, and he saw the notebook on the nightstand, offering him comfort—the wrong kind. Seductive and powerful, like a junkie’s fix kit.
    And he needed it so badly.
    He wanted to grab the notebook. He wanted to write
futile
over and over until his fingers hurt, until he couldn’t write it any longer. He wanted the pain—needed it—to shake him from this numbness, this sense of helplessness that was taking him over again.
    He snatched the pen, snatched the notebook.
    Bullet barked.
    He looked at the dog. The dog was staring at him.
    “What?”
    Bullet barked again.
    “Quit it.”
    But as soon as Patrick’s attention returned to the pad, Bullet barked once more.
    “Knock it off!” Patrick said. “Can’t you see I’m trying to get my fix?”
    Bullet collapsed onto the floor, rested his head between his paws, and made the sad face.
    “Oh, hell,” Patrick said.