Forgetting August (Lost & Found) Read Online Free PDF Page A

believed everyone in the world was out to get him and I was their means to do so.
    Parties and social events became a thing of the past, and I eventually became a prisoner in my own home, unable to leave because he was too paranoid to take me anywhere.
    “You’re mine. Only mine,” he’d chant over and over as he pinned me against a wall and came hard and long inside of me. “I love you, Everly. Forever.”
    Ryan once asked why I’d never run, why I didn’t seek help.
    I knew the answer, but I just shook my head and said I didn’t know, averting his gaze.
    Because sometimes the truth hurts worse.
    *  *  *
    “How are you feeling about your decision today, Everly?” Tabitha asked, in that soothing tone that used to drive me up the wall but now seemed to have the opposite effect.
    I curled my feet under me on the worn couch, holding a cup of hot tea in my hands as I contemplated my answer. We were never supposed to blurt out an answer in therapy. Think before you speak —that was Tabitha’s motto, and as much as I’d despised it and everything about this place years ago, when I’d entered and found her sitting in front of me with her weird, frizzy gray hair and long, flowing skirts, I had to admit it worked.
    Because of this woman and her soothing ways, I’d managed to break out of the rock hard tortoise shell I’d buried myself into after August vanished from my life. Although his coma had been something of a blessing—pulling me out of a life no one should ever have to live—suddenly I’d been forced back into a world I no longer understood.
    As much as I hated to admit it, I’d been lost and alone without him. The world was scary and far too big. I wanted nothing more than to run back to the confines of my prison and never come out again.
    But somehow, I’d found Tabitha. Attempting to venture past my own driveway, I’d gone for a walk that turned into more of a hike, and found her sign in a little neighborhood not too far from the one Ryan and I currently live in. Her eclectic ways and throwback looks were mind-boggling at first, but I soon found a home with her, or at least a place to return to once a week.
    Slowly, she gave me a direction in life. I got a job at a coffee shop nearby and months later, I met Ryan. I took each day as it came, and eventually I stopped wondering when life was going to come crashing down again.
    And then it did—or it was about to.
    “Everly? Your decision regarding visiting August? How do you feel?” Tabitha asked once more, bringing me back to the present.
    “Honestly?”
    “That’s all I ever ask for,” she stated.
    “I don’t know.”
    “It’s okay to be unsure.”
    “Even about this?” I asked, biting my bottom lip with uncertainty.
    “What are you unsure about?” she questioned, tapping the butt on her pen against her crisp yellow notepad.
    “Everything. What will happen if I don’t go? Will he come find me—invade the life I’ve made for myself? If I go see him in the hospital, can I avoid all of that, or am I just perpetuating it? I feel like I’m stuck in this damned if-you-do, damned–if-you-don’t scenario. No matter what I do, he’s going to destroy everything.”
    “So you’ve thought about seeing him?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
    “You don’t have to feel ashamed in front of me,” she consoled, the smooth tone of her voice giving me the comfort I’d come to find within these four walls.
    “It’s more than that. Admitting it makes me feel like I’m betraying Ryan. Just saying the words—Hell…even thinking about the action of doing so makes me feel like I’m cheating on him somehow.”
    Silence settled between us as I let my words evaporate into the air.
    “Have you ever thought that maybe this is the closure you need?”
    “What do you mean? I’ve had my closure—you went with me. You held my hand as I said good-bye to that man,” I pressed, my hands wrapping around my knees like a child.
    “I