Chapter II: Weep, Little Lion Man

  The couch was red. A deep, earthy crimson—the kind of color that might’ve once been regal before it faded into something warmer, more personal. Comfortable. Nathaniel Blackwood sank into it like a man finally given permission to relax. The air was thick with the hum of a standing humidifier in the corner, its steam curling like ghost breath in front of the framed inspirational posters. They were standard-issue therapy décor: a mountain peak with the word “PERSISTENCE,” a sailboat slicing across a calm ocean labeled “CLARITY.”

  Across from him, a woman with sunlit hair and eyes the color of blue glass scribbled notes in a leather-bound pad. Her smile, when it came, was automatic but sincere, bright and disarming, like something out of an old Renaissance painting. Her name was Alex. In a different world—a warmer one—she could have been a princess. Here, she was Nathaniel’s therapist.

  She knew as much about him as he did. Probably more.

  She looked up from her notes and pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Her voice was steady, warm, and practiced. “So, Nathaniel, let’s recap. Last time we talked, I asked you to start identifying the pain. The events that still have their hooks in you. And what you think you can do to loosen their grip. Let’s go over them.”

  Nathaniel sat up a little, pushing himself off the embrace of the couch. They were eye-level now. There had been a list. He remembered it vaguely—scribbled on a legal pad in a moment of forced honesty. Seven sessions deep, and still he sometimes felt like he was lying to her. Or maybe just hiding from himself.

  He’d picked Alex from a wall of faces. Aurora Counseling had sent him a PDF of profiles: smiling professionals with bland credentials. He chose her because her smile wasn’t bland. Because she looked curious. Because she specializes in PTSD. And, if he was being honest—and he always tried to be honest here—because she was his age, and beautiful, and he needed to believe someone who looked like that could understand someone who felt like this.

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  She leaned forward. “We had a list, right?”

  Her tone was bright, but not unkind. It was the practiced empathy of someone who walked a tightrope between clinical distance and real human connection. She always sounded nurturing, like a memory of a mother who never yelled. Nathaniel tried not to grin when she smiled again.

  “We can start…” She glanced down, reading the page in front of her. “I know it’s hard. That’s the point of this, though, right? We face the hard things. Let’s start with the crash.”

  A cold prickle washed through his stomach. Not pain. Not quite. A recoil of the soul. He swallowed, nodded.

  “I’m ready.”

  —

  It had been raining that night. That much, he remembered clearly. Arizona rain—rare, fast, chaotic. The kind of storm that made the asphalt gleam like obsidian under a dying moon. They were on the highway. Nathaniel behind the wheel. Sarah in the passenger seat. James, Greg, and Mac in the back. The windows fogged from laughter and the remnants of fast food wrappers and jokes that lost their edge in the silence that came after.

  He didn’t remember what made him glance down—his phone? The radio? Sarah’s hand brushing his wrist? He didn’t remember the sound of the tires losing grip. Just the sudden absence of control. The world tilting sideways. The shattering of glass. Metal folding in on itself. Screams. One voice louder than the others. Sarah. When he came to, everything was red.

  Rain still fell, but it couldn’t wash away the blood. James was convulsing. Mac had been thrown halfway through the passenger window. Greg was screaming for someone, anyone. And Sarah—

  She was quiet.

  Her body slumped against the door. Eyes closed. A cut blooming across her forehead like a crimson halo.

  He remembered screaming. Not at her. Just into the air. As if something could hear him. As if something would answer. Nathaniel was suddenly dropped onto his couch, heart hammering. Kevin barked in the hallway. The world felt wrong and lucid, he tried to call out to Kevin. He tried to make sense of this mirage that had thrown him back into his home, instead his body felt like smoke wafting in the air floating without input as to where it went.

  Then suddenly the television flickered. Static, white noise exploding through the speakers. And a single image of Sarah, standing on the edge of a bridge, soaked in red light. Then nothing. Just the hum of a humidifier and the thrum of memory. And the silence of a haunted mind.

  It took him a few seconds to re-register the reality in front of him. The smell, the sounds, the calm. Alex was again lean over in front of him, her eyes fixed intently on his. Ready to help him face a new horror.