Stay With Me (Roman Reigns)

60.

Three months. Roman and I have been going to therapy for three months. She had a lot of suggestions for us after we told her everything. Everything from losing the baby to my attack and Roman witnessing it to this stuff with Gleb. It was an experience that made me uncomfortable at first. I mean, I never liked therapists. We went to one when we were kids to try and cope through our parents being gone and that didn't help. I went to one after my relationship with Dakota and that didn't help. This was the third time in my life I was in therapy and I had doubts that it was going to work. But I was trying. For Roman, I was trying.

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FLASHBACK

It was our first day in therapy. Roman and I sat on the couch across from the doctor who was getting everything ready with her pad and pen in her lap. I felt uncomfortable here. I felt out of place. I looked at Roman and he must have known that I didn't wanna be here right now because he grabbed my hand in his and held onto it.

"Okay. We are ready to start." the doctor said. "Why don't you tell me why you're here."

I looked at Roman and shook my head a little. I wanted to do as little talking as possible so I was letting him take this one. "Well, a few months ago, we found out we were gonna have a baby and I was happy about it. Um, Katie wasn't. She wasn't ready. I mean, really neither of us were. And I understood that. I didn't pressure her to feel happy. And then we lost the baby a few days later." he said. "We were both devastated but Katie suffered the most. She was depressed and she blamed herself for it. She thought that since she wasn't happy about the baby that she was being punished."

"What happened after that?" the doctor asked.

"I was home for about a week but I had to go back to work. I wanted to make sure she was gonna be okay before I left so we told her family and they helped out with taking care of her. She seemed like she was better when I left and that made it easier to go but a few days later I got a call from her uncle and he told me that she had only let me see what I wanted to see. She wasn't actually better. Not even a little. So I called someone to go help her. Someone I knew could get her doing something I couldn't. I called Gleb to get her to dance through her pain." he told her.

"And why did you call Gleb? Why not just go home and help her yourself?" she asked.

"Because I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to help her. I thought that if I said or did the wrong thing, it would make it worse. And I didn't wanna make it worse." he replied. "Dance is one of Katie's passions in life. She loves it. And I thought that if Gleb could get her to dance then it would all be okay. And I would just be able to come home to my wife being happy again. It was selfish of me. It was wrong. I should have been the one to help her. I was the one she needed and I thought of myself instead."

"Katie, how does that make you feel that Roman called someone else instead of coming home to you himself?" she asked me.

"At the time I didn't want anyone. I didn't know I needed anyone." I told her. "I just wanted to be left alone. But I think now I really did need my husband and he passed me off to someone else. I'm not angry at him. I don't hold resentment to him for that because I think even though he was the one I wanted to help me through that, I needed Gleb more. I needed dancing."

"Are you and Gleb friends?" she asked.

"Yeah." I said. "He's my best friend. At first he was only a trainer to me. He showed up and told me that he was taking me dancing and I tried to refuse because I didn't feel like I had anything left in me. But he made me see that dance could heal me if I let it in. So I did. And over time he's become my best friend."

"Where did everything go from there?" she asked.

"A month after I called Gleb, I saw a lot of progress and I felt like I had my wife back. She was happy, smiling. But deep down I felt a little jealous that I wasn't the one who made her that way. And then we got the best news. We found out we were pregnant again. And we were both a little hesitant to get too excited because we didn't know what was gonna happen. We didn't wanna get our hopes up in case there was a repeat miscarriage. And a few days after we found out, I had to go back to work again and I was there for a couple days when I got a call from Katie telling me that there was something important she needed to talk to me about and she was really upset when she called so I thought the worst. I thought that it was happening again. But when I called her back she told me that there was a guy that had been watching her for over a month and that she was almost killed by someone crashing into her car. And she said there was a letter that someone left at the dance studio and it was clear that this man who was watching her had been doing so for a while. So I told her to stay at Gleb's and I would come home and protect her." he said. He choked up a bit and I just kept my head down and let a few tears escape my eyes. "When I got home, I walked through the house and I knew someone was in there. So I called out and I threatened them to get them out of my house. And then they jumped me." he told her. "I'm pretty sure they texted her from my phone and told her it was okay to come home because the next time I opened my eyes, I was tied to a chair in my own house and Gleb was tied to the chair next to me and Katie was on the floor looking at me, scared. One of the men who did this to us, he told us that Gleb was in love with Katie and we knew it was true when Gleb wouldn't look at us. The man told us that he was hired to kill Katie by her biological father but that wasn't enough for him. He wanted to have sex with her too and he wanted me to watch. I fought with everything I could. Every ounce of strength and energy I had, I tried to tear myself out of those ropes to get to her because I did not want her to go through that again. And I watched her fight. She fought with everything she had but she was outnumbered and they had her held down. I didn't wanna watch them torturing my wife but I couldn't look away from her because I was scared for her. I wanted to get out of those ropes and kill those guys for touching her at all. And when she tried to fight more one of the guys cut her face. I watched her face because I couldn't look anywhere else but I knew. Right before the police ran in, I knew...... I knew he um......."