"I love you," I tell him, still crying. "I want to be with you next year. I've always wanted that."
"Liv," he says into my ear, part laughter and part desperation. "That's a good thing, right? Why are you so upset?"
"I can't keep you safe," I whisper, hearing how ridiculous and childlike the words are even as they fall from my lips.
"You can't keep anyone completely safe," he replies. "Not even yourself."
This is common sense, I know, but it's hitting me right now as if it's a new revelation. "I thought I might hurt you," I admit quietly, "but I never thought something else could hurt you instead."
"Hurt me how?" he asks carefully. There's a barely concealed note of dread in his voice, and there should be. I wish I hadn't said it. He's never going to trust me again, feel safe with me again, once he knows the truth.
"Those nightmares I've been having for the last few months? I told you they were about my dad but they weren't. They were about you, that you were dead and I was the one who'd done it. I don't know what they mean. I don't know if it's some kind of warning. I kept telling myself I would go somewhere, where you couldn't find me, but I just couldn't."
He freezes. How is it possible for someone to lie completely still and yet recoil at the same time? He is doing both. The room is silent but I still hear doors slamming shut, the sound of us coming to an end.
"Jesus, Olivia," he finally says. "Is that what this has been? You were going to leave?"
"Yes," I whisper. "I didn't know what else to do."
"When?" he hisses, and it takes me a second to realize that he no longer sounds horrified-he sounds pissed.
Reluctantly I lift my head, forcing myself to meet his eye. "Soon, I guess. After this morning I thought … I thought maybe it wouldn't bother you so much."
///
His jaw drops. "Not bother me? It would fucking destroy me. No matter how unhappy I am you need to know that I still love you more than anything on this earth."
"I just told you that I have dreams about killing you," I reply, "and it's me leaving that bothers you?"
"You would never hurt me, Olivia. Not physically anyway. I don't even understand how you thought that was possible. But the fact that you seriously considered just taking off without a word … You've got to swear to me that you'll never just leave. That you'll tell me when this stuff is going on."
"But what if I-"
"No," he says. "No, I don't care what your excuse is. I don't care what you think is wrong or what you think you might do, you tell me. Okay?"
"Okay," I sigh, shaking my head. "But I can't believe I just told you that and all you want me to do is stay."
"That's not the only thing I want you to do," he says with the start of a smile.
I raise a brow. I generally have a pretty good feel for things Will wants me to do.
He sees my face and laughs. "And it's not what you think."
Things I'd prefer to counseling: a 20-mile run. An entire afternoon spent hearing about Nicole's sex life. Letting Betsy beat me in a race. But when you tell someone you've dreamed about killing him and he doesn't run for the hills, going to counseling seems like the least you can do.
The psychologist is in Denver; someone Peter found many months before. He specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder, which is my apparent diagnosis. Really it's just a fancy way of saying that I'm a mess because something fucked-up once happened to me.
I give him my whole unfiltered history. He listens without betraying even a hint of surprise, as if it's the most normal thing in the world.
"A lot has happened," he says when I conclude. "What's led you to seek treatment for it now?"
So I tell him about the dreams I've been having, about Will's fall and how panicky it's made me. "I always felt like I was the only danger in his life, and now there's this whole universe of things that could hurt him and I can't control any of them," I say rapidly. I sound nuts. I know it, and it's exactly why I didn't want to be here in the first place. "It makes no sense, and I know it makes no sense, and I keep panicking anyway."
"It makes perfect sense," he counters, still completely unfazed, and I wonder if it's his job to assure everyone who walks in his door that they are normal no matter how crazy they sound.
"How could that possibly make sense?" I challenge him.
"Imagine being a child," he says. "A child who's watched someone kill people, who's been attacked by that person herself. How do you protect yourself against that?"
"You can't."
"Exactly." He nods. "Unless you tell yourself that it's you-that you're the monster, that you're the dangerous one, the crazy one. Because you can always feel safe from yourself. It's not uncommon in situations like yours."
"Situations like mine? You actually have more than one patient who watched a parent die and now dreams that she's killed her boyfriend?"
He laughs. "No, but plenty of people have suffered horrific abuse, Olivia, and the mechanism they use to cope with that is often similar to yours. You took on your father's persona because it made you feel safe. And it's taken being unable to protect someone you love to reveal the fallacy in that."
It sounds far-fetched, and yet something about it feels kind of, sort of, right.
Will waits for me outside. "How was it?" he asks.
"Okay," I sigh. It was better than okay, but I'm not going to admit that to him since he's been pushing me to do this for nearly ten months.
"Still want to kill me?" he teases.
"I don't want to kill you," I say, glaring at him. "And it's not funny."
He laughs. "It's kind of funny."
"Maybe I do want to kill you after all," I mutter.
He wraps his arms around me from behind and kisses my neck. "That's my girl," he laughs, and for some bizarre reason he sounds proud.
It isn't all solved in a day. It's not even solved in a month. But over time I finally believe that there is no monster under the bed, and I realize that I wanted there to be one. It made me feel safe, believing the evil in the world was housed somewhere inside of me. The truth-that none of us are ever completely safe, that there are no assurances-is scarier. But I'm getting used to the idea, the way everyone does.
///
The nightmares abate. My father gets life in prison without parole. And when Will turns to me, at Peter and Dorothy's wedding, and tells me he wishes it was us up there at the altar, I tell him I wish it were too.
A year to the day after our first kiss, the one that took place while I pretended to be asleep, I collapse on the couch beside him after afternoon practice, freshly showered.
"How was work?" I ask.
"Good," he says, lifting my legs and placing my feet on his lap. It's something I'd never have allowed anyone to do a year ago, but my days of barefoot running are over. On the rare occasions when I have a nightmare, I'm not even out of the bed before Will's stopped me.
"I took a family climbing at Garden of the Gods. It was their kid's first climb and you wouldn't believe the smile on his face once he got about 20 feet up."
"You're not taking any future children of ours climbing. I hope you realize that."
"Of course I will," he says with that sideways grin of his. "You know you're incapable of telling me no."
"In bed, yes. Parenting, no. But since today's our anniversary I'll let you think you're right."
He shakes his head. "Our anniversary isn't until December."
"But the first time we kissed was a year ago today. I know you remember it. In your bed at the farm."
His eyes widen and his jaw drops just a bit. "You were awake? You did it on purpose?"
I laugh. "Of course I did."
"Jesus," he says, grinning at me. "You were even more evil than I realized."
"You loved it."
"I loved it too much. Thinking about that kiss tortured me for weeks," he says, lifting one foot gently and kissing the arch in a way that has me trying to stifle a moan and failing. "You like that?" he asks.
"Yes," I say, my voice the tiniest bit breathy.
"Your feet are soft now," he says, kissing the arch again. "Almost like girl feet."
"These girl feet can still kick your ass in a race."
His mouth moves to the top of my foot, to my ankle. "We both know that's not true," he says with a low laugh.