But yet, she continued to come at him. It was time to shut her up. “Oh, yeah? Please enlighten me, Ms. Therapist Lady.”

Glaring, she held his gaze for a moment and then looked down at her file, clearing her throat. His chest seized up right as he realized what she was about to do. Before he could stop her though, she was talking.

“Well, let’s see, shall we?” she said very slowly. “But first, you’re okay if I share?” she asked, her eyes challenging, and he shrugged. He refused to be weak in front of these wack-jobs and her stuffy ass.

“Do you, lady.”

She smiled coyly. “Okay, well, your mother has been married ten times in the course of your life. When you were four, you were raped by her third husband, more than once. You were found on the bed bleeding and unresponsive from multiple areas after he beat you almost to death—”

“I don’t see how this has to do with anything. I don’t even remember it.”

“Fuck, man, did the fucker rot for it?” Manny, a tight end for some pro football team, asked and Jordie shrugged, not wanting to shed any light on that drama.

“Oh yes, he’s still in jail. But he is up for parole this year,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “I understand that you don’t remember this, and that’s fine, but your drinking started up more than usual this year. Such a coincidence that the year Gary Davis goes up for parole is the year you’re forced to go to rehab.”

Sucking in a breath at the sound of his abuser’s name, Jordie shook his head. “That’s not the reason I drink.”

“Then what is?”

“I don’t know,” he answered quickly.

“Fine then, but this is part of your history, and I am reviewing it to remind you why you are here. Now, please allow me to finish. I let you talk when you want to complain and moan about being here, now allow me to finish,” she snapped, and Jordie glared as the stares from his fellow group members made the room feel as if it were closing in. So mousy therapist lady had a tough side. Good to know, not that he fucking cared. Sucking in another breath, he crossed his arms tightly over his chest for protection as she went on. “Now, after years of therapy, they deemed you to have extreme trauma from the episode, which was expected—it was a very horrifying experience. You didn’t speak to anyone for two years, but somehow, your therapist writes that you recovered when you started playing hockey. He says you were a different child, that hockey healed you. It does say that you did shut down whenever anyone said his name or even brought up what happened. They feared you had suppressed the tragedy and suggested more therapy, but your mother pulled you.”

God, this was torture. Of course, he had suppressed the whole thing. It was horrible and he could still, to this day, hear his mother bitching from the bedroom about all the trials and how fucked up he had been. Hockey saved him because Lord knows his mom was too consumed with her own issues to worry about him. He loved his mother…but only because he had to. She didn’t make his life easier to say the least, and she may have been the reason for a lot of the discrepancies in that file. Their relationship had always been strained, especially in his older years. He was more a problem to her than her child.

“But then the ADHD and anxiety started when you turned fourteen, which resulted in more therapy and meds. They said the anxiety was brought on by the multiple men that your mother married and divorced during your childhood. But when they suggested you be removed from the home, you fought it because you didn’t want to leave your mom.”

He’d thought maybe if he stayed, she’d love him, but it never happened. She cared more about the different men that were “Daddy” each year than she did about him. Sad, yeah, but he’d hardly call that a reason to drink. Letting out a long breath, he watched as the therapist met his gaze and she shook her head.

“And then came the death of Robbie Lincoln.”

Hearing that name made all the hairs on Jordie’s arms stand at attention. His chest seized, his breathing became labored, and he had to look away. He didn’t think of Robbie much because he wouldn’t allow himself to. He wanted to tell her to stop but she was proving a point, and he refused to let her know that she was slowly but surely killing him from the inside.

“He was your best friend who was stabbed by a boy when he tried to stop three other boys from killing you, according to what the report says. After that, you didn’t show up to therapy anymore, and then the drinking started. You were arrested for DUI and public intoxication twice before you were eighteen. Your coach told you to clean up or you would lose your scholarship to Wisconsin.”

“And I did. The end,” he said when she paused, clapping his hands. “All that says is that I’ve had a shitty past. It doesn’t define me now.”

“It does,” she said, meeting his heated and embarrassed gaze. “All that is the foundation of the reason why you drink. It started young—when something bad happens, you shut down and check out of this world. This time, it was your injury, I’m sure. But then something is telling me it’s more. A woman, maybe? Because the last girl you were with that you considered a girlfriend was the one who almost got you killed. Since then, you’ve jumped from bed to bed, never allowing anyone in.”

He shook his head, slowly taking in breaths through his nose and letting them out of his mouth. “You don’t know shit.”

“I know a lot. And, Jordie, the thing is, I’m here to help you. How are you going to really learn how to deal with your feelings if you won’t share them with me? Are you scared?”