The Warrior God (The Ares Trials #1) - Eliza Raine Page 0,1
Remember that.”
I said nothing. Because he was wrong. My issue wasn’t a chemical imbalance. It was more than that, I was sure. I’d known something was wrong with me my whole life.
Joshua sighed. “Will you join us for the group session today?”
I nodded. I hated group therapy. Everyone there pissed me off. But Joshua insisted it was good for me, and I felt bad about what I’d done to his neck.
“Sure,” I said.
“Good. Are you sure you don’t want to carry on now?”
“I’m sure,” I told him. Like hell did I want to keep talking about being abandoned by my asshole parents, and then being passed between money-grabbing, child-hating families for the next ten years. “I’ll go for a quick run round the block, burn off some energy ‘til group starts.”
“Good idea,” he smiled. “See you in twenty minutes.”
“You’re a decent human, you’re a decent human,” I chanted to myself as I jogged down Fleet Street, avoiding tourists and biting back impatient comments. God, but those morons moved slowly.
Maybe I should relocate. London was filled to the brim with angry energy. It couldn’t be helping me calm down.
But I couldn’t leave London. Not because I had family there or anything. Hell, I didn’t even have any friends, let alone family. No, the reason I couldn’t leave London was the theaters.
Since I’d moved to England from New Jersey ten years ago, I’d saved every spare bit of cash I could scrabble together from the menial, shitty jobs I could never hold on to and my bouts in the underground fights, to spend on the theater. I didn’t have the patience for books, and I could barely sit still through an entire movie, but there was something completely mesmerizing about the theater to me. I attributed every moral fiber in my being to what I had learned through plays and musicals. Empathy seemed to pour into me from nowhere when I watched the fictional stories play out so vividly before me, the actors giving it everything they had and every second sucking me in further.
No, I couldn’t leave London. Although since losing my last shitty job I couldn’t actually afford the theater any more. But at least I’d learned a valuable lesson; I did not have the right temperament to be a bartender in a city. Drunken assholes were a big fucking trigger for my temper. I sucked in air as I jogged faster.
I’d find another job. Soon. I had to, or me and my stick-up-her-ass cat would end up hungry and homeless.
“You’re a decent human,” I repeated through clenched teeth, flipping my middle finger at a cyclist who was swerving around me on the wrong side of the road and swallowing back the desire to yell something obscene at him.
When I got back to Joshua’s building I headed straight for the washroom and changed my t-shirt. I let my hair out of its knot on top of my head and tried to make it look somewhat attractive, then gave up, glaring at my reflection instead.
Why the hell would a man who I regularly attacked and knew how much of a freak I was, be attracted to me?
I blew out a sigh. At least he knew I was a freak. Unlike all the other poor bastards I’d dated. The first they’d known of it was when something innocuous triggered the mist and I went freaking crazy on their ass. Me and dating did not go well together.
But Joshua... There was something in his eyes when he looked at me, I was sure of it. Something deeper than just professional patience. He cared about me.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, freakface,” I muttered at my reflection. But that was fear talking. Fear manifesting as shit-talking and aggression. He had taught me that, in our sessions.
I was scared he would turn me down, and then I wouldn’t be able to face him again. I would lose him, and his help.
But I couldn’t stop imagining how much better my life would be if he did like me. Imagining having someone to share each day, and night, with. Imagining him kissing me...
I stood straighter as I made my decision. I was going to tell him how I felt.
If he wasn’t interested then he wouldn’t be a dick about it, that wasn’t his way. I would just go home with a red face, eat my bodyweight in ice cream and then spend a few hours with my punch-bag. Maybe avoid him for a week.