"I'm glad that you came back, I haven't seen you for a while," Dr. Phelps smiled, his eyes filled with sincerity.

"Yeah, it's been a while," Quinn agreed with the nod of her head. She glanced around the room, her eyes landing on the plethora of familiar inspirational posters, her hands running along the bright red couch that she knew all too well.

"So, what brought you back, anything in particular?" he implored while adjusting his glasses.

"Nope, the same reason as last time," the teenager sighed, "my sister. She felt like I needed to come back here."

"Do you know why she feels that way?"

"I'm still having those...nightmares that we've talked about and for whatever reason, she thinks they're dangerous or bad or whatever, I don't know. She just wanted me to come back to see if you could somehow fix it," she shrugged.

"Well, I don't think that fixing it is necessarily the right term," Dr. Phelps chuckled. "I'm not here to fix anyone, I'm here to help."

Quinn raised her eyebrows while forcing a small smile onto her face.

"So, these nightmares, what exactly do they entail?"

Dr. Phelps sighed quietly once his question was met with silence.

"You know, Quinn, I realize that you've been coming here because your sister wants you to but, it's really important that you have your own reasons for doing this. You don't have an obligation to your sister, but you do have an obligation to yourself. She realized that something was going on with you and she got you here, but now it's your turn to take the reigns."

"Look, I feel like we're kinda going in a loop here," Quinn chuckled. "I've already told you everything I was gonna tell you, everything that I was gonna talk about. I'm only here because my sister dragged me here, it was either this or she wouldn't let me leave the house for an indefinite amount of time. I don't mean to waste your time, but...honestly I don't have much to say."

"Why is it that now you don't have anything to say?" the therapist pondered softly. "I know that it took a little while at the beginning, but I felt that we were really making some great progress, you were being open and discussing things and you seemed a little bit brighter. It seemed like your thoughts were a little more clear because of our sessions, but then suddenly you stopped coming around. You've told me why you're back, but why did you ever leave?"

Quinn blinked a few times, Dr. Phelps' question surprising her. "Well, things got better, I didn't think I needed these sessions anymore. I don't need them anymore," she reiterated. "I do well in school, I got a job, friends...a boyfriend."

The redhead smiled shyly as a blush crept onto her cheeks at the warm thought of the boy who was always on her mind.

"A boyfriend, huh?" Dr. Phelps smiled. "It's great that you have other people in your life, someone that cares about you in a romantic way. This period in your life is new and exciting, I'm sure, but there's also something that a lot of people don't quite understand about relationships."

Quinn furrowed her brow, her interest was officially peaked. "What's that?"

"Relationships are built on trust. That's the only way they last, it's the glue that keeps them together and makes them real. Lies and deceit are like tape and sincerity and trust are like glue. Everyone knows that glue holds things together a lot better than tape."

"...What's your point?"

"Is it safe to assume that your boyfriend doesn't know about these nightmares that you're having?"

"Yeah, no," Quinn scoffed. "I didn't tell him about that or me coming here or...anything."

"You care about him, right?"

"Yeah, yes, of course. But, I'd never be able to talk about stuff like this with him. I like him a lot and we have fun but, you know...that's it. We haven't dealt with anything real, just typical stuff, I don't want to put all of this crap and weight and strain on the both of us."

"What so you just force yourself to carry it around all by yourself?" he tried.

"He doesn't deserve to have to deal with all of my crap."

"Neither do you," Dr. Phelps stated adamantly. "It's not healthy for anyone, no one deserves it. You don't deserve it. And if you keep carrying it around, eventually, slowly but surely...it'll drag you down. The human mind, our thoughts and regrets, if we let it fester, it has the power to destroy everything in its wake. It can destroy our self worth, all of our relationships, or even ourselves entirely. Our minds are powerful and can almost be quite dangerous. It's not natural for people to keep things in, that's not how it's supposed to be."

Quinn pursued her lips while she let his words sink in. "So, what you're saying is, if I don't talk to someone about what happened, not to say that something did," she quickly assured, "but if hypothetically something happened and I kept it to myself, then you're saying that it could destroy my relationship with my boyfriend?"

"...Possibly," he nodded slowly. "Even if you don't talk about it with him, that's okay, sometimes it's better that way. In the beginning at least, if you're still trying to figure everything out for yourself. But, you should talk about it with someone."

The teenager rubbed her sweaty palms together, her eyes glued to her lap. "And my sister won't find out about this?"

"As long as I'm sure that you won't do any harm to yourself or others then no, she won't," he promised with a smile. "I haven't lied to you before have I?" the man laughed softly.

"Okay, um," Quinn began, "well, it's just something that kinda happened before I was living with my sister."

Dr. Phelps nodded his head, urging her to continue.

"With my uncle, when I was with him."

"...Did he...hurt you in any way?"

"No. Well, not really," she uttered in thought.

"Well, it seems to me that he did," the therapist said quietly. He watched her carefully, his eyes following her gaze towards the large cross that remained branded onto her pale wrist.

"Well, yeah, kinda but technically not really," the girl rambled.

"Did you do that to yourself?" he pondered.

"What? No," she shook her head frantically.

"So, he did do that?"

"Yeah," she interrupted.

"He hurt you."

"No, he didn't do that until after..." she sighed heavily and allowed her voice to trail off.

"...Until after..." he motioned for her to continue, "What? Did he do something else too?"

"No," Quinn groaned in annoyance, she wished that she could get her point across without having to utter a word. "It's not what he did, it's what I did."

"And what did you do?" he pressed.

She shook her head slowly, her eyes distant as though she was the only one in the room, "I tried to..."

"You tried to what?" Dr. Phelps questioned with a sense of urgency as he attempted to meet her gaze.

Quinn's chocolate eyes met his and she cleared her throat before emitting a forced laugh, "Never mind, I can't. Anyway, our time is about up, so..." she quickly pounced from her seat, the leather couch squeaking in the process, before strutting towards the door.

"No, it's not, Quinn, there's still plenty of time," he assured while racing towards the exit and luckily, he beat her to it. "Listen, just take a seat, okay? There's still time, I know that you want to tell me."

"No, I don't. I changed my mind, so if you'd just excuse me."

"Look," he urged while holding his hand up in attempts to calm her. "I get it. You want to say something but something inside of you won't let you."

Quinn shook her head and opened her mouth but was cut off again by Dr. Phelps, "So, what I suggest to my patients with this problem, what I suggest for anyone with this problem...what I suggest to you is to not think. Just get out of your head and say what you want to say," he begged through his sincere smile. "This is the one place that you can do that...so do it. You can."

Quinn squeezed her eyes shut as she rested her head against the door frame.

"So, when you say that it was what you did, what did you mean by that?" he urged in a hushed tone.

"...When I told you about my uncle, about what he did to my wrist...I lied," she started, her head still resting on the frame of the door shielding herself from his gaze. "I lied to my sister too, she doesn't even know. I mean, he did do it, he branded it onto me but...it wasn't until after."

"It wasn't until after what?"

"It wasn't until after I..." she swallowed thickly, the therapist words suddenly reminding her to just let the words pour freely from her mouth, "After I slit my own wrist," she whispered just loud enough for the man to hear.

Dr. Phelps' eyes widened in realization.

"I said that he did this to me after I tried to call my sister, but that's not when it happened," she muttered, the emotion left her words and instead came out almost in a monotone. "It was after I tried to...after I cut myself. I only did the first one before
my uncle caught me. He's the one that stopped the bleeding, then he put the cross on me as punishment, as a reminder never to do anything like that again. The cross...hides what I did, my biggest regret. And I'd never do it again, I'd never try that again," she promised as she finally looked up towards the therapist. "Especially since now I have Paloma. At the time I didn't think that it mattered or that she needed me or that she even cared, but she did and she does. That's what my nightmares are always about. I'm back there, at my uncles place but, in my dreams...I actually do it. I kill myself, like actually kill myself...and I die. My uncle doesn't come in, he doesn't save me, I'm just gone. Then, it's like I float away, outside of my body and I see Paloma all alone. She's really sad, she's crying...sobbing," the redhead whispered. "Because of what I did. I think about it everyday, I mean, I can't even stop thinking about it when I'm unconscious. God, what I did was so stupid, that's why I can never tell her. She'd kill me for trying to kill me," she chuckled dryly but soon stopped once she noticed the somber look in the man's eyes. She took a deep breath and allowed her gaze to travel elsewhere.

"I'm so sorry that you felt that that was all you could do," he said, his eyes remained fixed on the girl despite her refusal to look at him. "And still, what your uncle did to you was completely wrong. I'm so glad that you're still here."

He'd seen it a hundred times before. Children committing suicide, or at least trying to, and their families failing to get them the help that they needed, practically waiting for their child to finally do it...to succeed.

"Despite everything, you're still here. There has to be a reason that your uncle got caught, a reason for you coming back into your sister's life, a reason for you being here today and enjoying your time with the people that love you. A reason for you still being here. There has to be a reason for it all...right?"

Quinn shrugged her shoulders while nodding her head slowly. "...Right."

So, I introduced Quinn's nightmares in the fourth chapter and we're finally finding out exactly what they've been about. I'm hoping I threw y'all for a loop. Haha. Please don't be a silent reader, drop a few comments even if you don't usually, and don't forget to vote if you liked it. Thanks for reading! 🤗