Teaching Willow: Session Three by Paige James Read Free Book Online Page B

would’ve stayed away.  I would’ve stayed away, but you had to save your precious name, didn’t you?  No matter the cost to everyone else.”
    “You think we wanted that?  You think we wanted to have a daughter who was the victim of sexual abuse and child pornography? You think we wanted to have to commit her because she tried to kill herself not once, but twice?  Willow, we did everything we could to help you.” 
    “Except listen.  You wouldn’t listen. You just came in with a blowtorch and burned down my entire life.”
    “We had to do something!  What would people have thought if we hadn’t?”
    “God forbid the neighbors judge! What a travesty!  You might’ve tried talking to me, asking me how I was doing, what I was feeling.  But you didn’t. You were in damage control mode.  Hide the evidence, sweep it all under the rug.  Or under a pitiful little psychological diagnosis. That was your answer.  And it’s your answer now, only I’m old enough to say no.  I’m old enough to tell you to go to hell and to never speak to me again until you can learn to listen, to give me a little credit and have some respect for my feelings.”
    Neither of my parents is saying a word. Sage is standing in the doorway behind them, eyes wide, listening.  My mother is holding her chest like my audacity is a physical knife to her heart.  My father just looks pissed.
    “Maybe what happened with Gray was the result of some sort of childhood obsession.  We’ll never know. You never asked and I’ve had so much therapy and medication I can barely remember what I felt for him, what was real.  But it’s different this time.  I was clear-headed when I met Ebon.  I was clear-headed when I fell in love with him. I was clear-headed when I stayed away because he was dating Sage.  And I was clear-headed when she betrayed me by giving him something that was personal to me, giving it to him without my permission.  Have I made the best possible decisions since then?  I admit that I’ve screwed up.  Really badly.  But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy. It just means I’m human.  Fallible.  Just like the two of you.  Just like Sage.  I’ve made my bed and now I have to lie in it.  You can’t save me from it or send me away from it.  All you can do is go back to suburbia and hide from it.  Which is what I suggest you do.  Go play golf.  Go drink with your country club friends.  Go on with your life.  Just don’t tell them about what a mess your daughter’s life is.  Sweep it right back under that damned rug.  In the meantime, I’ll do what I have to do to straighten things out, to make this right. Because I’m perfectly healthy, I’m perfectly sane and I’m a perfectly capable adult who can handle consequences!”
    There is a palpable silence in the room, only the sound of my labored breathing sharp enough to slice through its thickness.  I needed to say those things.  I needed to say them and my parents needed to hear them.  Now I just have to prove—to them, to Ebon, to myself—that I’m true to my word.
    I have to do whatever I can to fix this, at least for Ebon.
    Sticking my chin into the air, I march to my dresser, take out clean underwear, grab some yoga pants and a tee shirt and breeze past my family.  No one says a word until I turn from inside the bathroom door and announce, “Now, I’m going to get a shower and get my life back on track. I suggest you three go have dinner and talk about me somewhere that I can’t hear you.”
    With a flick of my wrist, I send the door slamming shut and I turn on the shower to scalding hot.
     

EIGHT- EBON
     
    Risk versus reward.  Every risk needs to be analyzed in relation to and weighed against the possible reward the endeavor carries.  I didn’t want Willow badly enough to risk my career, so I stayed away.
    Until I found out that I’d been fucking her all along anyway.
    In a way, that should’ve allowed me to move on more easily, not make