Forbidden: A Standalone by CD Reiss Read Free Book Online

lungs had been vacuum-packed into my rib cage. Elliot moved to face me as I gulped air.
    “I’ve never seen anyone have such an intense experience,” he said.
    “That’s me. Intense experience girl.” I grabbed his hand because I still felt as though I was falling.
    He brought his other hand over mine. “You still don’t remember.”
    “No. I’m tired.”
    His green-grey eyes looked at me as if they were peeling me open. “What are you feeling?”
    “Tiredness.”
    “Don’t shut down.”
    “I’m tired, and I want to…” I took a deep breath.
    “You want to use.”
    “Yes. But I got it. It’s not a problem.”
    “You’re so sure? You haven’t promised yourself this before? That you would stop using drugs or having sex to keep from feeling?”
    “Don’t push me. Please.”
    “It’s my job to push you.”
    I leaned back and closed my eyes. I shut him out. He may have said something. I felt his presence in the room, his breath, his existence, his virility, and I closed myself to it completely.

CHAPTER 7.
    I  didn’t sleep in the dark.
    I didn’t really sleep, period.
    I wasn’t a woe is me kind of girl, because it wasn’t as though I actually had problems. I didn’t pretend I was ever going to live under a bridge. I didn’t pretend bad shit didn’t exist. I didn’t pretend I didn’t live in some wider world. I got it. I had a television. I had the internet. But what was I supposed to do? Devote my life to serving the poor? Take away all the suffering in the world?
    But usually the minutes before sleep was when the woe-is-me cantered in, and if it was dark and I couldn’t see something to focus on, they got bad. I hated them.
    Your best friend died. You’re in a mental ward. You nearly killed the only man who ever understood you. Half your life floated in a grey blur. Big fucking deal. Buck up. Fuck everyone. There was nothing they could do to me I wouldn’t do to myself first.
    Assholes.
    Fucktards.
    Animals feeding at a trough of fucking bile.
    I didn’t even know who I was cursing anymore, but fuck them.
    I was fine. And when I got out, I was going to bathe in hundred-dollar bills and cocaine just to prove it.
    I crossed my legs and blacked into an orgasm that was flat and rageful and over too soon. In the aftermath, I wept, because my best friend died, and I was in a mental ward, and I’d nearly killed the only man who cared for me.
    Fuck me.

CHAPTER 8.
    “Y our parents are in the waiting room,” Elliot said when I entered.
    “Should I go see them?”
    “After the session.”
    “Making my dad wait?” I said, lying on the couch. “You’re a brave man.”
    He seemed unimpressed with himself. “I want you to start with something pleasant,” Elliot said, getting into the seat behind me.
    I wanted to turn and look at him. Without seeing his face, the calm, dusty timbre of his voice was without flaw, and it soothed me, which made me anxious. I didn’t trust my soothed, unregulated self. “I can just tell you about stuff. We don’t have to do the hypnosis.”
    “Do you not want to?”
    “Well, what do you want?”
    “You have to make your own decision about how this goes.”
    I didn’t trust my ability to make a decision. That had been my problem from the get-go. I could have just said that, but I was starting to think he didn’t trust me any more than I trusted myself.
    “Can you tell me why you like the hypnosis?” I asked.
    “You have an anxiety disorder. We’re medicating it, but the hypnosis backs up the relaxation without making you tired. And there’s a time limit on how long you can be in here. I think we need to do whatever we can to move this along.”
    “I like all that.”
    “Okay, you can stop any time you want by saying a word.”
    “Like what? Like a safeword?” I wondered if he could see me smile.
    “Sure. A safeword.”
    “Pinkerton.”
    “Pinkerton? The assassins of the old west?”
    “The assassin of the 405.” I didn’t elaborate, because