Cade...

With impatience, I am tapping the wooden edge of the seat with my nails. With no real rhythm, they just keep on annoyingly tapping while I continue to impatiently wait for Grant. Looking at the plain white door to his session room, I wonder whether he's in there now, helping someone else to understand their fucked up lives?

Hearing mumbled voices from the other side of the door, I stand to do the rest of my agitated waiting. As Grant politely guides his female client from out of the room, his eyes widen at the unexpected sight of me. "I'll see you next week." In his kindly and soothing manner, he shows out the woman with a genteel smile before turning his surprised attention back onto me. "Cade? Is something wrong?"

Without even giving him the option to say that he doesn't have time to see me, I'm already walking right into his room. "I apologise, but I really need to speak with you."

Grant thoughtfully steps back into his room, closing his door quietly behind him. "I have half an hour until my next client, so you'd better sit down."

Taking his usual place opposite of me, Grant settles back into his comfy chair with a very professional demeanour. "Tell me what has happened, Cade?" He knows me so well. He knows that for me to just show up like this, that something must have happened.

Arching my back forward, I rest my elbows on my parted knees and start from the most important part. "This morning, my mother told me that I was the result of her being raped."

Grant doesn't give much away, he merely nods to tell me that he's taken on board my mother's bombshell. "Why do you think she has only decided to tell you this now?"

Trying to keep my anger contained, I clasp my hands tightly together. "Because it was the only thing left that she could hurt me with." Staring down at my angrily clenched fingers, I start telling Grant the rest of the story. "Last night, my mother tried to split me and Sophia up. I'm not going to rake up every single detail, but that's what my mother did. If Sophia wasn't the beautiful soul that she is, I think my mother would have succeeded in destroying us. Because of her, I could have ruined everything with Sophia. Being so close to losing the one and only thing that I love in this big and shitty world, I made the decision to part ways with my mother."

"In what way?" Grant quietly interrupts.

"In every way." I resolutely tell him, still so very sure about my decision to do that.

"And your mother is aware of your decision?"

Looking straight at Grant, I nod hard. "When I told her that I was going to leave Lapley Law Firm and not have anything more to do with her, that is when she dropped the rape thing right into my fucking lap."

Grant then asks me something that I've often asked myself today. "Do you believe that she was raped?"

And I give him the answer that I have come to truly believe. "Yes."

"And how does it make you feel, Cade?"

My lowered eyes slowly lift. "It makes me feel shit. It makes me feel shit because it also makes a lot of sense."

Grant places both his hands onto his relaxed lap, crossing them together as he placidly addresses me. "It certainly does explain why your mother found it hard to show you any kind of affection. Following such a traumatic incident, without help, her feelings would have simply become completely shut off."

Becoming more agitated by the second, I snap at Grant. "Don't you try and make me feel bad for her. What she did to me can't ever be excused because she was raped. I know she didn't choose to have that happen to her. But she certainly chose to not ever love me." I angrily rise from my seat, just needing to walk around whilst I think.

"Don't you feel bad for her, though, Cade? No matter what has happened between you both, don't you now feel just a little bit of sympathy towards your mother?"

Looking out of his window, a sullen answer passes through my stress-clenched jaw. "Of course I feel fucking bad for her. That's why I am here. I don't want to give a shit about it happening, but I do. Why is that, Grant? After everything that woman has done to me...why do I give a shit?"

Still, Grant remains calm. While I am completely unravelling before him, he remains absolutely calm. "Because you're not her, Cade. You have been facing your troubles head on. It sounds to me, that your mother clearly never has. Sophia has opened up your closed off heart, making you see and feel things differently now. Which is why you now have the capacity to sympathise with what happened to your mother. For all of the wrongs that she has done to you, you know that it's only right that you feel sorry about the rape—you feel sorry for it happening to her."

As always, Grant is right. Sophia seems to have unlocked so much within me. But what she has unlocked, overwhelms me. As sorry as I am for my mother, I just don't think I'll ever be able to get over what she has so cruelly done. All of those unloved years, just can't be erased. I'm also angry because it's taken her this long to tell me what happened. And I know she only did, because she wanted to use it against me. I was turning my back on her, and she had to have the final and twisted say about it. The rape and who my real father was, that was the last weapon in my mother's armoury to hurt me with. My angered thoughts about that, soon start tumbling from my mouth. "I can't forgive my mother for telling me in the way that she did, Grant. Because she knew that I'd fallen in love with Sophia, and that I'm now willing to walk away from her and all that the Lapley name has cursed me with, she used her rape to hurt me one last time. She used something that she knew would completely fuck me up." A lump of hardening emotion forms in my throat, as I struggle to carry on spilling out my guts to Grant about the thoughts that are truly destroying me. "I'm the son of a rapist. I am one half of an evil violator, and another half of someone who has had her emotions completely snuffed out. I always knew I was different. Now I know why." I slowly turn my head to look at Grant, my voice desperately becoming more broken. "Do you think I was born bad?"

Unexpectedly, Grant blinks at me with a soft shake of his head and a confidently given smile. "Cade, you haven't been born bad...you've just been created in a bad way." He then leans forward, wanting to enforce what he is saying. "Who your parents are, doesn't define the man that you have now become. You are your own person, with your own thoughts and feelings. How we are treated can shape us, yes, but we humans are perfectly capable of shaping our own lives in the way that we want them to be. You mustn't let this mould the rest of your life, Cade. You can't control any of the past, but you certainly have every control over your future. If you love Sophia, then you must move forward with this. You have to lift the burden of the rape from off your shoulders, and put it down on the ground and then walk away from it. Because ultimately, it's not your burden to carry."

Slipping both of my hands deeply inside of my suit trouser pockets with a fractured sigh, I turn my whole body around to face my insightful therapist. "I'm scared that I'll hurt Sophia."

"In what way, Cade? In what way are you scared that you'll hurt her?" I just can't seem to pull the heinous words from out of my narrowing throat. I can't seem to extract them through my shame-stained lips. In complete desperation, my troubled eyes stare across at Grant. I know he can see my tortured thoughts. I know he sees them ravaging themselves through my irrational membranes. With the same desperation, and without using any words, my shamed spheres plead with him to extract those sinister thoughts from out of me. Understanding my tormenting fears, Grant suddenly articulates them for me. "Are you scared that you'll become a rapist because your father was?"

There it is. My shameful thoughts, so bluntly and sickeningly laid bare by Grant. "Yes." Is my just as nauseating and shameful reply.

That sickening answer will only ever be free to bounce within these confidential four walls. I know I'll never talk of them again to anyone else. Not ever. Still feeling so sick, I need to morbidly admit something else to Grant. "If I ever hurt her, it really would kill me. I couldn't live with myself if I were to ever hurt Sophia. If I ever do, that will be it for me."

That is when Grant decides to stand, knowing that he needs to talk to me without there being too much space between us. "You are not who your father is, Cade. His deviant behaviour is not who you are. You're a barrister, you know what these individuals are like. Which is why you must know that you're nothing like them. All of your problems with drink and sex, are not because you are the son of a rapist. They are because your mother has been emotionally stunted because of that rapist." He strongly holds my gaze, hoping that what he is saying is somehow being taken in by me. "I know that what your mother has been like with you has deeply affected your life, Cade, but I hope that because you now know why she treated you that way, it will help you to move forward from it."

Thinking about what Grant has just said, my lips thoughtfully purse. "I hope so, too." Then I stand straight, quickly glancing down at my watch. "I'd better get going, your next client will be here soon."

"I can see you again tomorrow if that would help?"

Forcing a grateful smile in Grant's very kind direction, I shake my head. "You've already been a big help. I have loads to do at work tomorrow, making up for what I've missed today." Softly shrugging, my smile becomes much less forced. "And I'm taking Sophia away for the weekend." I keenly add.

Genuinely pleased to hear that, Grant warmly smiles. "That is just what the doctor ordered." He casually jokes, flicking his eyes up at mine to check that it's one that hasn't been taken by me in the wrong way.

Agreeing, I nod just the once. "I think it is." My thoughts soon drift off to being alone with Sophia in Bath. After I have told her everything, and if she still wants to be with me; I intend on spending every single moment that I can with her. "Anyway, thanks for seeing me." Feeling far lighter-footed than when I first came in, I walk across the airy room, wanting to leave all of my shameful thoughts and fears right here.

Grant is not far behind me. "Cade?" He quietly beckons me to turn around.

"Yeah?" I ask, just as I open the door.

"Just think about all that I've said. You are not a bad person. You just happened to be conceived in a bad way—there's a very real difference, Cade." My well-meaning therapist then smiles, smiling his wisdom my way. "And have a really great weekend."

Although I am still dreading having to tell Sophia the truth, the truth no longer seems so terrifying. It's still truly awful, just no longer so terrifying to have to tell. "I intend to." Is my newly hopeful reply. "Thanks again."

As I stride out of Grant's, I stride with a new kind of determination.

I cannot be responsible for the actions of that rapist.

I also cannot be responsible for the actions of my mother.

But I absolutely can be responsible for my own actions.

All day, I have been driving myself quietly insane with such terrible thoughts of which parts of myself are my mother's, and which parts of myself are that rapists?

Well, as of now—neither one of them define me.

As of now, I am only myself.

Grant has made me see that I need to make peace with all that has happened. I can't change the past, but I can choose how to live the rest of my life. And my life, is Sophia. I made a promise to her that they'll be no more booze and women, and I'll keep that promise. My incompleteness has only ever been fuelled by those two destructive things, but I now know that Sophia is the only person who will ever be able to fully complete me.

Before I walked into Grant's, I doubted her love for me. Because the whole situation with my mother is all kinds of fucked up, I doubted whether Sophia could still love me after being told the truth.

But now, Grant has managed to help me believe that Sophia will love me. No matter what, she will love me.

I now know that.

I now believe that.

And if there's no belief in love, there's no belief in nothing.

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