Staring at the same plain white walls repeatedly was enough to make any sane person insane.
Heath Callahan tried to put his mind at ease but it was hard when the four walls were lacking any source of entertainment. There were no generic words of affirmation or corny prints decorating the eggshell colour.
He wondered how the office was supposed to help him talk about his feelings when he felt like a fucking prisoner.
"Mr. Callahan, my sincere apologies for keeping you waiting so long." Short blonde locks and warm honey-brown eyes made contact with him as the tall woman entered through the once closed door. "I do hope you managed to help yourself to the tea and coffee."
He tried to not pull a face, looking over at the hot beverage station behind her desk.
"Oh, thanks but I'm not really a big hot drinks person." The hot drinks person was his wife, he missed out purposely.
She was always cosied up after a long day on the farm, feet tucked into the edges of their couch as a hot steaming chai rested in her hands.
Ex-wife, Heath reminded himself. She wasn't his wife anymore.
"Ah, I feel you on that. My husband can have a scalding tea whatever the weather is whereas I need to be seriously sick to enjoy a warm beverage." She mused, laughing gently.
He offered her a polite head nod, watching as she sat down on her desk and opened up a journal book and a yellow folder that was set out for her.
He had known Mary and her husband since he could remember and he knew what she was telling him could not be more like the couple.
He was sat on the chair across from her, his work attire on and his laptop bag neatly placed next to his feet.
"So..." she started by saying, searching through his notes with her busy eyes. "I see you wanted to talk about something a little more personal today, any reason why?"
Heath swallowed his anxiety back and let out a long sigh. He shrugged, trying to seem as unaffected as he could.
But this was his childhood therapist and the same one who he went to whenever life seemed to get too real.
She knew him better than that.
"I told Mo about the affair and we got a divorce three months ago." He said bluntly, causing the woman's brows to shoot up in surprise.
"Wow," she muttered, shutting the journal and focusing on the man fully. "I wasn't expecting that at all. You finally told her?"
"Yeah."
"And about the divorce, she took it well I presume?"
"Better than I thought she would." He replied lowly, ashamed of his own truth.
"Okay. How did that make you feel?" Before she could start psychoanalysing him, he shook his head and brought his hand up to his face to rub his jaw.
"I'm not here to talk about the marriage or her or the affair. I'm here because I've been feeling like I need to talk about something stupid, and I don't know how the fuck I can say it without sounding like a fucking loser."
"Heath," she stopped warily. "You can talk to me about anything in this room, no one is going to judge you. Especially not me."
A quick flash of annoyance lit his face, and then he shook his head in resignation and met her eyes. "I've been feeling sort of...off lately."
"Oh? Off how?"
Then it started to get real and he suddenly felt stupid for even coming into this part of town.
"It's, uh, it's nothing important. I shouldn't have called you, Mar, shit. I shouldn't have come here." He rambled, reaching down to grab his belongings when she albeit sighed.
"Spill, Heath. You can't just leave after forcing me in on my day off."
He hesitated, hating that she could read him so well so quickly. He would usually turn to his go-to defence mechanism, sarcasm but he decided that he had troubled the poor woman enough.
"Fine. You're right." He considered her a moment, wondering how he could say it without cringing. "I..." forcing a cough to part from his lips, he tried again. "I've been having that sinking feeling where my body doesn't feel like my own. And it all started about a year or so ago."
The sinking feeling as in...
Her eyes flashed with genuine concern and she frowned immediately. "Like the time when you were ten and your mother organised for you to come and see me for the first time?"
He couldn't even look into her eyes, tilting his head back against the chair and shutting his eyes. "Mhm. Exactly like that time."
"Oh, Heath. I'm so sorry, are you sure you want to talk about it right now?"
"I need to, Mar, otherwise I'm going to spiral. I know I will. The more the days pass by, the more I want to rip my skin apart."
Mary remained seated and calm, allowing him the floor to continue in his own time. Which he did, but with a lot of willpower.
"I blacked out. I don't remember much from that night, but it took me back to those days. She was touching me in the same way. I feel like a fucking idiot, what kind of man would get so bothered about fucking sex?"
"Don't belittle yourself. No one should ever touch you without your consent, it doesn't matter if you're a man and it sure as hell doesn't make you less than one."
He clenched his jaw tight, fighting through his emotions. "I guess after being nothing but a cheating dick to Mo, I finally got my karma and it's been unbearable. I can't stop thinking of how she touched me, how I tried to say no but I was too far gone to make any sense. You wanna know the worst of it?"
Letting out a pathetic laugh, the man lifted his head and looked at her straight on. "I stayed awake until sunrise, waiting for her to rinse me clean with soap. Waited for her to rinse the evidence off. I mean that's what aunt Celia always did, and I thought she would do the same."
He was embarrassed by the attention but also relieved at being able to finally stop trying to keep up appearances.
"When I returned home after a couple of days, and the same woman who I had been cheating on for the last few years was there waiting for me like she always did. I don't know how but I think she knew something bad happened that trip." This was the part he found the hardest to admit and he shook his head in defeat. "I couldn't move, couldn't even fucking talk for days. I had to take work off, and she was the only one taking care of me. My Mona. She looked after me, showered me like I was a fucking child and had me sleep in our bed whilst she fixed me up some food. I've never felt so worthless, do you know how pathetic it feels to have your wife shower you because you're unable to touch your own skin?"
Silence. That was what he needed though.
"She didn't try to ask what was wrong because she already knew. Somehow, she always knows."
He could still feel the genuine warmth that had radiated from her that day. It was the wake-up call he needed to realise how much he had fucked everything up for them.
He held onto her like there was no tomorrow, burying his face into her neck whilst they slept as the broken man tried to make sense of it all. He had never felt so used in a long time and the only person who made him feel true comfort was the woman in his arms.
She didn't know the full extent of it, but she knew about some of his trauma. His trauma with touch. It had been something he had shared with her after three years of being together, truth be told, he didn't want to tell her ever but he had told her as a drunk morbid passing joke.
Of course, she didn't find it funny and he found himself telling her something he had never told anyone other than his therapist. His parents knew but they were better off dead to him, he hated them with every fibre of his being.
He couldn't get the whole story out, but she knew he didn't like being touched without him being in total control.
"Now I don't want any advice or any reassurance from this. I just want you to listen to me while I get this off my chest and then after that, we can go back to never talking about this again. Understand, Mar?"
"Of course, I understand that, Heath. You have my word."
Well, no shit, he thought. After all, he didn't pay her for nothing.
"I can't do life without her. She's everything to me, and I get that I fucked this up but after that night, I never once touched Dove again. I was stuck in this weird limbo stage and I didn't know how to get out of it. The divorce pushed me to where I needed to be so that I could cut ties with Dove for good and blame it on anything other than my marriage."
Although he doesn't really recall much, he can see the bruises that remained on his body for days after the attack to serve as evidence of its reality. In addition to having bruises around his unbandaged wrist, he also had bruises on his lower back from repeatedly hitting the ground while a well-known woman rode him.
"I want her to move on from me. I seriously do. I want Mona to get the happy ending she deserves, I want her to live a life without me but in my head, she's the only person who's ever understood me. I love her, I really fucking love her. Yes, I made a mistake by being disloyal but I know she's my ending. She's the only one I want and need."
Although before he could finish off what he needed to say, the phone in his trouser pocket started to chime loudly.
Cursing under his breath, he jutted his hand into his left pocket and pulled the phone out.
He was going to decline the call and mute the phone when he saw Mona's contact flashing on his screen.
He hadn't spoken to her in almost a month so it was enough to make him worry.
"Shit, sorry. I have to take this, do you mind?"
Mary simply shook her head, still clearly taking in his confession piece whilst he pressed the answer button.
He went to speak, though it seemed he couldn't get there fast enough.
"How could you do this to me, Heath?!" He heard her heartbreaking cries, giving his therapist a perplexed stare, he held a finger as if to say 'sorry, one second.'
He was quick to reply, clearing his throat. "What's happened, Mo? Why do you sound so upset?"
But all he could hear was genuine hysteria from her, she was sobbing uncontrollably into the phone. "How fucking could you! How could you, Heath!"
How could you, those three simple yet alarming words echoed in his psyche like a broken record as he drove his car in silence.
He arrived at the farmhouse within a few hours and that was when all hell broke loose.