*Julia*

Dr. Tremont is let into the apartment by Paul while I finish helping James with lunch. Mike is attempting to sleep it off on the cot in the living room, so we try to stay quiet, But I hear Jeremy's name come up as Paul and Trevor talk privately near the door.

"Got it." Trevor says before entering the kitchen. "I figured we could have our appointment here like always." The man in the expensive Navy suit says and makes himself at home at the kitchen table.

"How's Cara?" It's the first thing I ask as I wait for James's grip to kick in to hold his glass. Sometimes it takes a few seconds before I can let go but today he's doing great!

"Well......" Trevor scratches the back of his head. "She's having a hard time."

"Is she still in...." I can't bring myself to say the word restraints today after yesterday's complete meltdown. Trevor sadly nods. Poor Cara. I know the feeling.

"Listen, Julia. When you are done with lunch we should talk about yesterday."

"What's there to talk about?"

"Details."

I accidentally drop my fork and look at James for a moment before my eyes meet Trevor's.

"I can't."

"You need to. It will continue to eat away at you if you don't let it out. It's part of your therapy." He says. "Plus, if you are ever going to trust Jeremy to help you, you need to heal."

"I don't need him. I have you. Isn't that the point of the hire?"

Trevor hesitates before answering. "You still need him. He's much smarter than I am."

"I don't need someone smart, Trevor. I need someone I can trust."

"Finish lunch and meet me out on your patio." He says and opens the slider to go outside. Maggie jumps up and uses this opportunity to run out and play. Trevor isn't giving me options and he's letting me know.

"Talk Therapy DOES work, babe. Even if it's just a little at a time." James looks at me with those damn blue Efron eyes and I pout. He told me about remembering me talking to him while he was in a coma. I talked to James like he was my therapist. My best friend was still in there and I knew it. Talking to him helped me though one of the toughest seasons of my life.

"Fine. Ugh. You all drive me crazy, you know that?"

"I'm pretty sure you were crazy before you met me, sweetie." James raises his brows at me before taking another bite of a pancake.

After James finishes eating, I take the last bite of my own sandwich and reluctantly give in, going outside where Dr. Tremont waits. I sip my Diet Coke and watch him throw the tennis ball for Maggie a few times while sitting down at the patio.

"I don't know what it is that you want me to say here." I mumble while watching the dog play.

"How about we start from the beginning." Trevor throws the tennis ball one more time and then pulls out the char across from me to sit in. "I'll ask you some questions and you answer them."

"Whatever. You're wasting your time." I cross my arms and look away from the attractive man.  Sometimes I can't stand that he is so good- looking. Because it makes it easy to talk to someone easy on the eyes. I hate to admit it but it's true.

"When did you START trusting the doctor?" Trevor throws me for a loop with his first question. He has a way of surprising me during these sessions and we've only had a few so far. He's really going back to the beginning, isn't he?

I think about it for a moment.

"The first week." I give in. "My virtual therapist had me writing in these journals. Shit was starting to come back to me and the lady wanted me to write what I remembered. Apparently, I had trained my brain to shove things in the back of my head instead of deal with them so when the bad memories started to come back to me, I'd go into shock."

"What kind of things were you remembering?"

I feel the emotion boiling up to my eyes already. Because it still stings. Seventeen years of love and trusting someone. Someone I saw my forever with. Gone.

"I was remembering my husband's affair."

"Ok, talk about that."

"No. I can't. I've already hashed that one out and exhausted it. That was a really hard season in my life."

But Trevor stares me down and waits. He really wants me to do this? All of it?

"Fine." I huff. I tell him about Nicole. I tell him the ways she let me know she was with my husband. I tell him about the call the day my son died. How she was letting me know he was with her. How I had to make the decision to stop all the machines keeping Danny alive- alone. I tell him how I popped pills and shut down and how eventually Luke was no longer trying to hide the affair. I was too far gone.

"Jesus." It's all Trevor can say at the moment. He needs a minute to process it all before he continues. "Ok... so what about that first week here?"

"I went into shock during one of the workshops. We were told to write in our journals, but I just wrote the same thing over and over again filling the page. I don't even remember what it was but it happened before. The therapist had to page the doctor on call to come down. That doctor was Jeremy. And he knew how to treat me. From that very moment until the moment he fucked up, he knew how to treat me." My tears begin to flow just thinking about it.

"I was starting to heal! I was seeing an improvement. He was helping me get better! I was falling for him and trusting him and he ruined it!" I cover my face with my hands.

"When you say you fell for him...." Trevor balances his forearms on his knees and clasps his hands together, giving me his complete attention. I shake my head and sniff. "Take your time. I've got all day. I'm here for you and only you, remember?"

I huff. He's making me rehash everything. I don't know how this will help. It's making me feel one hundred times worse, not better. I do take my time. I take a long time where I watch Maggie play and try to calm down. There's so many things running through my head right now. Me and Jeremy. The way he made me feel. I felt... cared for. He really was helping me heal. 

Maybe I'm the one who ruined that when we became intimate. 

Maybe it's my fault because I let him in. He felt what he felt and then couldn't get enough.

 Maybe I caused it all.

"Julia...." Trevor is done waiting now that it's been a good five minutes straight of me in my own head.

"We crossed the line." My voice cracks.

"Oh...." Trevor sits up straighter.

"But he knew better. He knew my diagnosis. It's right in my medical files. He knew I have hypersexual tendencies. He knew I use sex to forget shit. To escape. Because I told him. I was so open to him during our sessions. I told him things I didn't tell anybody, and he took advantage of that." I cry.

"So was this," The doctor clears his throat. "Going on for a while before the rape?"

I shake my head. "Just one time. In the hospital. James was in a coma and I was having a really hard time. I needed to forget. I needed to feel something good. I wasn't in the right frame of mind- at all. We did it that one time and the next morning I confessed it to Nate in front of everyone. That same night-he had cheated on me with his personal assistant." I feel heat rise to my face thinking about it. That one hurt. That one hurt bad.

"Trisha?"

I nod and wipe my eyes. "A few nights later I had a bipolar episode...and needed to be put in.." I pause for longer than a normal person would pause for. "Restraints. That's when..." I close my eyes and shake my head, unable to say anything more.

Maggie stops what she's doing in the yard and makes her way to me, putting both paws on my lap wanting me to pet her. She can tell I'm crying.

"Hey sweet girl." I frown and pet Maggie, unable to make eye contact with Trevor. The silence is thick for a moment before I speak again.

"He kept me in restraints longer than I needed to be. He... threatened me when I wasn't in them that if I told anybody he'd put me back in and hurt me again. He said his name is on all my medical charts and he'd have no problem fucking with them to send me away."

"My God." Trevor gasps but tries to show no emotion.

I can't bring myself to tell the doctor about me and Paul's plan for room 460 of the Marriott. How it went too far. How it went terribly wrong. That is something I will bring to my grave. A skeleton that will never come out of the closet, just like me sleeping with Jeremy not that long ago. But I do manage to tell Trevor how Jeremy entered the room and raped me the second time. How Nate and Paul were witnesses and there was a whole police investigation. How I was sent to the hospital by rescue and even did the rape kit for evidence.

"I don't get it. Why did you go through all that and then drop the charges? You could have sent him to jail."

"I really don't think I should be talking about this. By law they said-"

"Julia..."

"Fine. He has money, Trevor.  Like you and that fancy fucking suit you wear that makes me want to puke." I scoff and Trevor looks down at his expensive suit and back up at me with wide eyes. "Money, good lawyers and threats that would not only affect me... but affect Nate. Nate would have to testify. The publicity alone wasn't worth it. Not only that, Nate was getting ready to travel around the world on tour. He'd have to cancel everything. There's no way management would allow that." I sniff and catch my breath.

"Plus, the threats were big ones. Jeremy said no one would believe me...a psychiatric patient over this well known, really smart, good doctor. And having Katherine Cohen on his side made this ten times worse. I'd be dragged through the mud and come out worse off." I explain through my tears. There's another long awkward silence.

"I'm sorry. I- I don't know what to say. It's taking me a minute to absorb all this." Trevor says truthfully. I appreciate the fact he's being real right now and not in doctor mode trying to fix me. Right now he's listening and trying to wrap his head around this. It's a lot. I'm aware of that.

"So how did you..or.. why are you back here? Knowing he works here? How are you not terrified being around him?"

"I am. Sometimes. I was getting worse and the only one who could ever help me was Jeremy. I had no choice but to get help and the best place was here at the Avalon. I came with a bodyguard and only did the partial program. That Melanie England doctor tried to help but she couldn't and eventually gave up."

I take a sip of my soda and look away for a moment as it all comes back to me. All the hard shit. All the shit that dragged me down even deeper into depression.

"I wasn't in a good place mentally. Things around me were falling apart. Nate started drinking and cheating on me with some supermodel. Mila Giovanni."

"Wait..." Trevor is putting two and two together in his head since Nate's publicity stunt was all over the news. But to everyone else it was a real relationship right from the start. "He was with you when he started dating Mila Giovanni?"

I shake my head and Trevor gives me a weird look of confusion.

"Maybe I shouldn't be talking about this. I could get Nate into trouble with work."

"Julia..." Trevor is reminding me once again this is all under the doctor/patient confidentiality umbrella protecting anything I say.

 "It wasn't his fault." I continue on. "Not at first. His management team set up this publicity stunt for him to be dating her. It's common in the industry to draw in a crowd. But it went too far. I was getting sicker and couldn't handle watching him with her on TV. He couldn't be seen with me. He was doing the fun things we had planned with her instead."

I pause and look down at Maggie, still right here for me to pet her.

"I stopped taking care of myself. I barely ate, fell into a depression. Slept on the couch day in and out. I lied to everyone telling them I was attending my therapy meetings and taking my meds. I wasn't doing any of that. I wasn't even showering." I admit and my cheeks flush up in embarrassment.

 But Trevor nods. He knows all the signs of deep depression and doesn't judge me.

"I got sick. Real sick. An awful UTI but didn't tell anyone until it was too late. I just dealt with the pain and fever. I stopped going to the bathroom."

"UTI's can trigger a lot of dormant mental issues to erupt. Just like what happened to Eric Furgeson." He thinks out loud.

"Jeremy was the only one to put it all together. He started my treatment right away. He's the only one who ever knows how to treat me. The right meds, the right doses, the right vitamins. But yes, I'm still terrified sometimes. Most of the time, actually. Then he told me about his own mental health issues."

"He told you about his diagnoses??" Dr. Tremont's eyes widen. "He has only told two people. Dr. Cohen who treats him for it and... well...me."

"He told me. He told me he was off his meds, in a bad marriage, not taking care of himself. He told me about the rage and how when has his manic episodes he can be unpredictable. He can hurt others. Me. And sometimes he doesn't remember everything. Like me. Like this-"

I lift up my sleeves to show Trevor all the small gash scars from the bathroom mirror. That day I became a human tornado and tore apart Nate's apartment. I don't remember much other than Paul and Jonah taking care of me and the scars to prove I did it.

"Jesus." He repeats and looks at my arms. "So.... you began to forgive him because he has a mental illness he can't control? Like you do?"

"I try. But then I'll have a setback. I'll remember shit. Something will trigger me... like watching Cara get put in those restraints. And then it's all I can see and I freak out when he's near me or I hear his voice. Sometimes it will last a day, sometimes a few days."

"To be expected. But Julia. That may never go away. Those triggers.... that type of severe trauma... that's stuff you may never get over. And you're not expected to. You're not a robot; you're a human with emotions and feelings and memories."

"So what do I do?! Tell me what to do because if he is the only one who can help me... then how??" I begin to get emotional again hearing that this stuff may be with me forever. I just want to forget.

"Maybe we should have Jeremy steer away from you for a few days. Give you a little space to heal. The only thing I can assure you right now is that he is getting the help he needs. I know that for a fact. He takes his meds and Dr. Cohen is on him like a hawk. He's always in her room for therapy sessions. He IS trying to get better. I know that doesn't erase the past. Nor does it stop you from your constant fear of him."

"It's not constant. It comes and goes."

"That's a good sign. That's you healing."

"You can't tell anyone we talked about this. I could go to jail, Trevor. Jeremy can't know. God, Cohen DEFINATELY can't know." I warn him.

"I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is what I read online." He smirks and I sigh in relief.

 I really don't know if I did the right thing or not but it had to be done. I need to trust SOMEBODY, and my options aren't many.

 "But thank you, Julia. I'm glad you told me this. We can get you back on your feet. And now I know some of your triggers so I can work with you on that stuff too."

We small talk for another ten minutes before Trevor decides our session is over.

"Well.... I have no need to go back into the Avalon. I only came here for you." The doctor stands. "Mind if I go out this way?" Trevor points to the fence door that leads to the back lot. "I parked my truck out back."

"Sure." I walk over and unlatch the fence once I see Maggie on the far end of the yard.

I look at the red pick-up truck that must be Trevor's but then freeze. Someone pulls in right next to Nate's Jeep, the one he purchased for me. It's a familiar looking vehicle that pulled into the spot and it sits idle while the person is on the phone. I can't see who is in it though.

I shake my head. No. It can't be the same one. I'm overthinking things. But the past fills my mind, and I have this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I can't tear my eyes away from the vehicle.

It's a large black Escalade SUV with tinted windows.

******