For too long, Jessica has allowed the men in her life to shadow her dreams. This time she is determined to stand on her own.
But falling in love with the Shaw brother who is a notorious player hadn't been part of her plan.
The struggle between her...
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"After that it was a bit of a blur. I don't know if it was just too much to deal with." Jessica sniffled, trying her best to remember.
Dr. Reed nodded. "It's your mind's way of protecting you from traumatic events."
Traumatic. It was an event that would have a cumulative effect on her two years later. Life-changing seemed to be a better phrase to describe what had taken place that night.
"What do you remember?"
"Rob trying to console Mr. Shaw, but what could you say to the man who had just lost his son?" She shook her head, hating how raw she felt inside. It amplified the emptiness that Dylan had left in her when he had died.
There was almost a minute of silence before she could talk again. "I kept thinking back to the moment when I last saw Dylan. I went over every detail again and again..."
While she had some difficulty in remembering some things, the last memory she had of Dylan was as clear as the day she had lived it.
She sighed, trying to expel some of the pent-up emotion. "But no matter how much I tried, I never found any hint of what was to come." She leaned forward to rub her hand over her face, trying to pull herself back to the present, but the past still had a hold over her.
"Even while I watched, shocked, as the sun began to rise a few hours later, I don't even think I understood that my life would never be the same again." She settled back in the chair, feeling emotionally wrung out. Each time she relived that horrible night she lost a piece of herself she would never get back. It was probably why she avoided remembering that night at all costs.
Dr. Reed was studying her.
She let out a heavy emotional breath as she tried to collect herself. "I found out later he had waited until his father had gone to bed to swallow all the sleeping pills in the bottle. He just went to sleep and never woke up again." Her heart ached for the brother and friend she had failed. "Myles was the one who found him."
A wave of emotion made it too difficult to continue as she swallowed.
"The light in his room was still on so when Myles got home, he knocked and when no one answered he opened the door. He thought maybe Dylan had fallen asleep without turning off the lights... but when he found Dylan on top of the covers fully dressed and a letter propped against the lamp beside the bed, he realized what had happened. He tried to wake him, but he couldn't. He called the paramedics, but it was too late. He was already gone."
She couldn't imagine what Myles had endured discovering Dylan that way. She pressed her hand to her heart to help ease the pain in her chest.
Gone then had held a different meaning to what it held now. Now it held every family gathering without him, every event in her life she couldn't share with him and every life event he wouldn't get to live.
She trembled. "It was an open casket at his funeral, but I couldn't.... I couldn't see him like that." The worst moment had been watching the coffin lower into the ground. "I had to remember him the way I last saw him, smiling even if it was only to hide his inner pain."
Lost in the past, she paused for a few seconds.
"It was only days later I read his note. It wasn't very long. He had ended his life without telling anyone and there were only a few paragraphs."
"Do you remember what he wrote in the note?"
She exhaled. She remembered every word, but she didn't want to repeat it to him. In some way it felt like she was betraying Dylan in some way.
"A little." She shrugged. "He was sad, just really sad."
Remembering made her tear up again. "He was in a dark place, and he just couldn't take it anymore." A tear slid down her cheek. "He wanted it to...stop." For him there had been only one option.
She wiped the tear as it ran down her face. "He wrote how sorry he was for the pain he would cause us...and how much he loved all of us."
She let out a shaky breath. "None of the words he left behind eased the pain or helped us understand why."
"Had he ever attempted suicide before?" he asked, writing something down as he waited for her response.
She shook her head. "No. That's why it had been such a shock. He had issues but who didn't. We all had stuff, it just seemed more debilitating for him. What others seemed to be able to work through he just couldn't. He had struggled at school, and he seemed to struggle with his way in adulthood."
She wanted to be able to go back in time and hold him one last time to whisper how much she loved him. It broke her to think that in his time of need she hadn't been there and that was difficult to process.
"Tell me how this made you feel," Dr. Reed asked, with his pen hovering over his notes ready to write something down.
For once she really wanted to be able to see what he wrote down while she was splitting her heart in two to show him all her faults and fears.
She crossed her arms, feeling defensive. "How do you think I felt?" She stood up and began to pace, feeling like the walls were closing in on her. "I could have stopped him. If I had just answered his call. It was my fault he felt he was so alone that his only choice was to end his life."
Taking another tissue, she slumped down onto the sofa as the unwanted tears began to fall again. How many tears could a person cry before they ran dry? Surely, she had surpassed it ages ago.
"There's nothing in this world that'll change what happened and nothing will change how I feel about it, the responsibility I carry," she told him fiercely. "It doesn't matter how many people tell me it wasn't my fault or tell me that I might not have been able to stop him."
Her chest was rising and falling with every deep breath. Her heart felt like it was trying to thump out of her chest.
"You weren't the only one he could have called."
She frowned. "He didn't open up to anyone else the way he did with me. That night he called me. Not his brothers."
"What about friends?"
"He had friends, but I think when he started to struggle, he seemed to go out less. I think he just lost touch with them." It was something she hadn't really thought about before. Had that been a sign she should have taken heed of?
How was this supposed to make her feel any better? Going through everything again felt like she was ripping the wound open again. It made her feel resentful that she was being pushed to do this.
Dr. Reed closed his notes and straightened up in the chair. "Do you know if he was suffering from depression?"
She shrugged. "He was never diagnosed. I never would have labeled it that. He got down sometimes. Everyone has good and bad days, you know, he just seemed to have more bad days than good."
"Was he prescribed the sleeping pills he took?"
She nodded. "He had trouble sleeping."
He spoke as he studied his notes. "I never treated him but from some of the information you have shared it sounds like he was suffering from depression."
She bit her lip while she listened.
"If he chose to end his life, I don't believe there is anything you or anyone could have done to stop it."
She wanted to take hold of his words and allow them to set her free, but they didn't. They were just words, and she was still caged in her guilt.
"I want to believe you, but I can't stop feeling like if I had just picked up the call, I would have let him talk it out."
