Free When Faults Collide (Faultlines #1) by Claire Granger

all the sweat and grime from my run, washed and conditioned my hair, and then turned off the water and climbed out.
    I sighed, knowing what I needed to do next. I brushed my hair and slipped on my dress before walking over to my desk. I picked up my phone and sat on my chair, swiveling back and forth while I dialed her number.
    “Asha, dear! What can I do for you?” Katherine asked.
    “Katherine...” I said simply.
    “Uh oh. What’s going on?” She could tell by my tone that something had happened.
    “I had a flashback last night,” I said quietly.
    I heard her blow out a breath. “Uh oh. Ok, tell me what happened.”
    I went over the story of the homeless man with her, including Blake’s response to the whole situation.
    “Ok. So how do you feel today?” she asked.
    “Well, that’s the weird part, Katherine. I feel fine. I mean, I remember what happened, but today I’m okay.”
    “Mmm,” she said, rather cryptically.
    “Why the ‘mmm’? What are you thinking?”
    “Well, it sounds like Blake interceded before you got to the point of no return, and it sounds like he brought you out of the episode fairly quickly. It also sounds like you’ve come a long way, because a few years ago, with or without help, you would be a mess right now. This is tremendous growth, Asha,” she said proudly.
    I bit the tip of my thumb, still swiveling from side to side in my chair.
    She took my silence as permission to continue. “Are you worried that this opens the door to more brutal honesty?”
    Not that she could see me, but I nodded and my lip quivered. I sniffed as a single tear fell down my cheek.
    “It’s too much,” I responded.
    “What is too much, dear? The truth?”
    “Yeah. It’s too much for anybody to deal with.”
    “Asha, you deal with your history every day. Was it too much for me? Did it change the way I behaved towards you?” her voice was firmer now, as if she were chastising me.
    “That’s your job, Katherine. And I would hardly say that I’m dealing. I would say I’m surviving, at best.” I said, wiping my nose.
    “Dear girl, I think we surpassed our relationship as a job status a long time ago, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you are doing far more than surviving.”

Chapter Ten

          
Jane Austen says in Persuasion that “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequence of an unnatural beginning.”
          
Why is this relevant to me? Well, romance was not only something I avoided to the point of complete social rejection, but it was and is something I don’t have a clue about. I have repelled any form of it for so long that other than parental love and the love I have for my friends, I didn’t and still don’t understand it
.
          
Then, out of freaking nowhere, in walks “Mr. Green Eyes.”
          
Complicating things
.
          
Forcing me to
feel
things
.
          
Forcing me to
face
things, in some ways
.
          
Is it fate? Is it just good, or bad, timing? Or is it simply the natural order of things?
          
Are we predesigned for love, even when we spend our lives running from it? Is it something in all of us, on the basest of levels that we can’t escape even if we want to?
          
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying “I
love
Mr. Green Eyes.”
          
I would call it a strong
like.
          
Or something
.
          
I don’t really know, because these are all new feelings
.
          
I don’t respond well to new
.
          
I know that I’m at the point of no return, I just hope that navigating all of these
feelings
doesn’t ruin me even more than I’m already ruined
.
          
So back to Jane Austen. Is it possible that having to learn all of these things
now
is the natural order to my own unnatural beginning?
          
If I had a “normal” childhood, would I have had enough healthy