Thank you to the loyal, kind readers who truly understand this story, and have been such a support. It makes writing this so fun. And to the ones who have flounced for various reasons (who won't see this AN but lollll), thank you for doing so in a ~polite~ manner, which speaks volumes to your character.

See you next week! MWAH!

44
- fix you -

Edward POV

"It's good to see you again, Edward," Dr. Molina, my therapist, says over Zoom.

When I reached out to him yesterday, I wasn't expecting an appointment for at least a week or two. He must have sensed my desperation because he agreed to fit me in for a quick thirty-minute session today.

I'm already so fucking nervous, but seeing him on screen instead of in person keeps my anxiety a little more subdued.

I see he's sitting at a desk in an office, but it looks different. Behind him isn't the familiar wall-to-ceiling bookshelf containing literature and framed degrees I used to focus on when finding words was hard.

As if reading my mind, he says, "I moved offices so I'm not in downtown Seattle anymore. Still trying to figure out the feng shui."

"Ah. I'm, uh, in my car," I tell him, even though he didn't ask why I'm sitting in my vehicle. I just wanted more privacy than my dressing room, especially since Cecily has approached me twice already today about my decision. "Thanks for fitting me in with such short notice. And on a Saturday, too. It's been a minute."

He lets my casual comment about how long it's been since we've spoken pass by, but it's been more than a minute—it's been close to four months since I've talked to him.

The last time we spoke was also on Zoom, after I moved to LA. That session was rough. I'd mentioned how I had someone at the network hire Bella for my promo shoot and that I was gonna try to talk to her. Dr. Molina disagreed that was the way to go about things and suggested I personally reach out to her and set up a scheduled meeting so we'd have equal expectations and power going into it.

At the time, I didn't want equal anything with Bella. She left me. She gave me zero choice in that decision. Why would I give her the choice to meet with me when she always turned me down every time I asked?

I insisted to Dr. Molina that my idea to blindside her stemmed out of love. But he was right—it was just my ego and desperation guiding that decision because I wanted the upper hand for once.

My plan backfired, and it's one of the main reasons I stopped going to therapy. I didn't want to tell Dr. Molina he was right and I was wrong.

I didn't want to be a failure yet again.

"How are you doing today?" Dr. Molina asks.

"I'm okay," I say vaguely.

Behind his graying beard, I see a small smile. I sigh, knowing what I need to do. In past sessions, he always made me identify exactly how I was feeling without using the words okay or fine.

I try again.

"I'm…" I stall.

"I can pull out the wheel of emotions if you need help," he offers.

"Not the wheel," I laugh self-deprecatingly. I always feel childish looking at the colorful board because I already know how I'm feeling. It's voicing it and acknowledging it that's hard. "I'm just feeling anxious. I don't know."

"Anxious about what?" he asks, but I don't answer. "Why don't you tell me about what I've missed over the last few months? We can start there. Share whatever you feel comfortable with."

"Okay. I, um. I stopped taking my antidepressants," I say after a brief pause, unsure why I started with that.

"What prompted that decision?"

"Ironically, depression did," I say with a bitter laugh. He doesn't smile, though. "Shit went sideways with Bella like you probably assumed. She wanted to go through with the divorce. It's pending."

His eyes momentarily leave the screen. I think he's writing something down.

"I'm sorry to hear that you two weren't able to work it out."

"Yeah. Me too." My knee bounces, bumping the steering wheel.

"Would you like to tell me more about how that decision was made?"

A brief pause lingers, and I decide to open up to him because I'm not sure I'll actually commit to therapy and I might as well get what I can out of this session. I may want to stick with it, but that doesn't mean I will.

After a long exhale, I recall everything that led to me and Bella splitting, from the second I walked into the ESPN studio and blindsided her, to us saying goodbye two days later at her house. I don't hold back, uncaring—knowing, even—that a lot of what we said and did during those two days paints Bella and me in the worst light.

"It sounds like it was a very intense time you both shared," he says simply, a fucking understatement. "Who pushed that decision along—to officially divorce? Or at least, to continue with that process? I know she's the one who filed originally."

"At the time, it almost felt mutual. That morning she kept insisting it needed to happen, and I just… gave in. I was exhausted. Mentally and emotionally depleted. Deep down I hoped she'd change her mind. Like she'd give it a week or two and then reach out. But she didn't. So… I guess she pushed the decision along."

I can hear him scribble something down but his eyes don't leave the screen. "So, you would have been willing to work things out."

I swallow hard. "Absolutely."

"I have two questions I'd like for you to explore. One, if Bella had been the only one to sleep with someone else and lie about it, would you be as willing to reconcile?"

I scrub a hand through my hair and think. It's hard to imagine because Bella didn't lie to me about Levi. But if I'm feeling this betrayed about hearing the truth of what she did, then I don't want to know how I'd feel if she lied.

Putting myself in her shoes like this and thinking back on how my lie affected her, I'm overcome with so much guilt, so much shame because I don't know if she'll ever truly be able to trust me again. I want her to. I need her to. But that doesn't mean she can or will.

"It would have taken a long, long fucking time for me to trust her again," I admit. "But… I can't imagine my life without her. I know I would have eventually forgiven her. Not forgotten. But I think I could have moved past it with time and reassurance from her. So why couldn't she do that with me?"

"Why couldn't she do what? Offer the same courtesy and move past your lie?" he clarifies.

"Yeah."

"Because she isn't you. Everyone brings a different perspective and experiences into a relationship. How she handles and processes situations isn't going to be the same as you."

I nod, taking in what he's saying, feeling stupid for not being able to recognize that myself.

"Now I want you to think about if you hadn't lied and had been honest with Bella about that other woman," Dr. Molina says. "Where do you think you two would be today?"

I'm a little confused. "Like, if Bella forgave me for sleeping with Kim and we were able to move past that?"

"Yes."

"This sounds a lot like a 'what if' scenario. I thought I wasn't supposed to think about stuff like this. Like trying to predict an outcome?" I ask, remembering what he'd suggested in a past session.

"It might seem like a 'what if' scenario, but the outcome has already happened. And I'm guiding you along. This isn't a question that freely popped into your head and has the ability to spiral," he explains. "So, if you're comfortable answering, I'd like you to."

"Okay. Well… if I hadn't lied to Bella, we…" I pause. "I don't know. We'd be together."

He hums. "So, nothing else could have attributed to your split? It was simply your lie?"

I think about what she said on the phone yesterday, that she didn't love herself at all. Taking that into consideration with what Dr. Molina just said, that everyone has their own experiences that they bring into relationships, I'm realizing now that no, it wasn't simply my lie that caused us to split up.

I'm silent long enough for Dr. Molina to speak again.

"Do you think you two would still have problems if you decided to stay together?" he wonders.

My initial reaction is to say no again but I know that's not true.

"Probably," I admit.

"What kind of problems?"

"I mean… trust issues, I guess. I don't think she would have meant it even if she had said she forgave me for Kim. I think she would have said it at that moment, but I think eventually she'd still be pissed at me or throw it in my face if we ever fought."

"That's a possibility, yes. What about you?"

I swallow again, more nervous. "What about me?"

"What issues would have potentially come up for you, with Bella?"

"I guess I wouldn't have trusted her, either. I'd be worried that if she ever got mad again or if we had an argument, she would've left me," I say, voice low. "Even when shit was going well with us during those two days, it was always in the back of my head that she was going to leave me again. That our reconciliation was a fluke and… I wasn't wrong."

"Well, you also knew you were withholding the truth from her. So your conscience was likely guilty. You were waiting for the other shoe to drop."

He's right, and I'm a dick, so I just nod.

"Why do you think you didn't tell Bella the truth when you had the chance?"

"I was scared she'd leave me again," I say, quiet and shameful. "She left me after we agreed I could sleep with someone else. So why the fuck wouldn't she leave me again when it was a choice I made on my own?" I ask rhetorically, feeling myself grow embarrassed and agitated, heat pricking under my collar. "And I get it. By lying to her about Kim, I took away her choice to stay with me while having all the facts. It's the same way I took away her choice to meet up with me that day. I'm a shitty, manipulative person. Write that down."

Dr. Molina smiles somberly. "I appreciate you making the connection about taking certain decisions away from her. Yes, some of the choices you made weren't honest. Fear was guiding you. It's understandable. But now we need to work on that. Your fear, your impulsiveness. Understand your decisions."

I scratch the back of my neck. "It sounds like a lot of work."

"It will be. But you're already here," he says simply. "It would have been easy for you to continue avoiding the work you had started. It's hard to return to therapy. That's already a step in the right direction, so I'd rather you focus on the positive choices you've made rather than the negative."

I let his words sink in. "Do you think I'll have my shit together before six months?" I wonder, feeling closer to telling him more of why I'm here.

"That's a bit elusive," he chuckles.

"You could say I'm in a time crunch," I say with a small smirk.

"What we can do together is make goals to measure your progress. If a strict timeline is important to you, we can work with that, but I want to keep your expectations realistic. It's important not to rush anything, though."

I think about what my mom said—progress isn't linear.

"Yeah, I guess I just…" I pause. "When Bella and I were trying to work stuff out, we… slept together. And now she's pregnant. She's three months along."

Dr. Molina takes this news with ease. "Ah. So, this is why you're giving yourself the six-month timeline?" he concludes.

"Yeah."

"Well, first—is this exciting news for you?"

I can't fight my small smile or the sudden rush of anticipation I feel.

"It's good news, yeah," I agree. "That's not to say I'm ready or not feeling scared. But yeah. I'm happy."

"Then congratulations," he says kindly.

"Thank you."

"Second, I want you to take all of the pressure off yourself. Being a father is a huge change. Lose the self-imposed timeline of being perfect. You never will be, so accept that. It's normal. You're a work in progress."

I nod, grateful for his words. It's like an invisible weight has been lifted off of me just from hearing them, but I'm not naive enough to think I'll suddenly stop being hard on myself.

"Third, have you and Bella talked about how this will work? About what you both expect and need from this new life change?"

"No. Not yet. We're going to. There was a whole, uh… dramatic thing," I start to say, shaking my head, feeling the deep shame of that moment in my gut. "When she told me about the baby, that was also when I found out she had slept with someone else. And I accused her that the baby wasn't mine, so we're getting a paternity test and…" I clench my eyes shut, then open them, still reeling with regret. "I fucked up. I hate the way I reacted."

"You handled it the best way you could at the time," he reassures me. "You can't take back what you said or did, so learn from it. Don't dwell on it."

"Easier said than done. I feel like I'm in fucking limbo, though. My life is pending. That sounds stupid but that's the only way I can describe it."

"Pending because until you get the paternity results, you'll still think the baby isn't yours?"

"No. I know the baby is mine. Pending because the divorce isn't final and the baby isn't here yet. I'm not an ex-husband. Not quite a father? It's just a weird place to be in."

"I see," Dr. Molina says, giving me space to go on.

"I don't know what Bella expects of me. Or if she even wants… me." I can feel my chest tighten like all my fears are taking residence there. "And if she does suddenly want me back, then what the fuck, right? Like, she didn't want to stay married when we didn't have a baby on the way. Now if she does want to… how can I even trust that it's because she wants and loves me, and not just because she wants me to be there for the baby?" I ask rhetorically. "And if she doesn't want to get back together at all then… fuck. I don't know."

"These are all valid questions and feelings. Ones you need to share and talk through with Bella."

My laugh is a short breath. "Sharing, talking. It's always a gamble."

"How so?"

"Because sometimes I lash out. Say shit I don't mean. Or say shit I do mean and it just… hurts her. And me."

"There's a lot of pain, fear, and miscommunication surrounding divorce. It's all fairly recent, so it's understandable that communicating would be hard. And it doesn't sound like your communication with each other was ever strong to begin with. Do you agree?"

I want to defend my marriage and Bella, but maybe he's right. Clearly, our communication was lacking for us to even get to this point in our lives, so I just nod in agreement.

"If you think it would be helpful, maybe you and Bella could both join me for a session. Only if you think you need help getting your point across in an effective manner. Or you could see someone new entirely. But I do think you'd both benefit from it."

"Like couple's therapy," I say.

"In a way, yes."

I laugh bitterly at the fucking irony. "I suggested couple's therapy to her the day we decided to split. She said no, that I'd just gaslight her the entire time." Resentment rises, and I shake my head, reminding myself that she wasn't in the right headspace. Neither of us were. I remind myself that she was just reacting the best way she could in such a shitty moment.

"Well, that was months ago. The circumstances have changed significantly I'd say, so she might be more open to it now," he reminds me.

"And if she says no?" I ask.

"Then she says no. But you won't know until you ask."

"I don't know. I'll think about it," I mumble, already worried about all the ways Bella could further reject me. "She said something the other day," I tell him, glancing away from the screen for a beat. "She told me she never loved herself. I guess it's something she's been working on in therapy."

"How did that make you feel?"

His question feels cliche, but I automatically say, "Powerless and pissed."

He regards me with a surprised expression. "That was a quick reply."

"I've been thinking about it a lot ever since she said it. It's honestly why I even reached out to you because her saying that confused me and I knew my initial reaction was shitty," I admit, and his surprise shifts to thoughtfulness, like maybe it's a good thing that this has been on my mind.

"It made you feel powerless in what way?" he urges.

"Like… I can tell her I love her and how amazing she is. But I can't make her love herself. I can't make her see how amazing she is. How much she means to me. It's like my fucking brain changed when I met her. Something in me shifted. It sounds crazy. It's like, her her her. Everything. She was everything and then she was nothing because she made that choice and left me," I mutter, a rambling man. "I sound insane."

"To me, you sound like you're confused and hurting," he says with more empathy than I probably deserve. "I appreciate you sharing why you felt powerless after Bella confided that information with you. Can you now tell me why you felt angry?"

"I mean, you just heard me. I loved her so fucking much, so why wasn't that enough for her? That's why it made me pissed."

Dr. Molina smiles wryly. "It's a romantic notion, sure, but love is never enough."

"I mean. Why not?" I ask, feeling like an idiot. Like a soft, sappy moron who doesn't know jack shit.

"There needs to be more than just love present. There needs to be respect and safety. Reassurances. Honesty. Follow through with words and actions. Care and consideration of the other person. There needs to be value. And all of this doesn't need to just exist in the relationship, but in yourselves as well. If Bella thinks she never loved herself, then she likely couldn't understand or accept everything you had to offer her. Which is why no, love is not enough," he replies with ease, knowledge just oozing out of him. "It's important to know that how you feel about Bella doesn't determine how she feels about or sees herself."

When he says it like that, it makes so much fucking sense. And his reasons about why love isn't enough just highlight certain elements that were missing in our marriage. Not because we didn't do or feel everything he listed off, but comfortability happens. And a naive part of me thought when Bella and I said forever, we meant that. I didn't think about how we'd get there, though. I just assumed we would make it because it's what I wanted. What I fucking needed.

Now I'm even less certain it's something she wanted.

"This is going to sound really fucking lame, but I wanted love to be enough," I mumble.

"That would be nice," Dr. Molina says. "But all of those other factors make relationships that much richer. More meaningful."

A natural silence falls over us, and I look at the time on my phone, noting we have about ten more minutes left.

"So. Part of the reason why I made this appointment was to get some advice on something," I begin to say. "Bella's doing a photoshoot in the hills next weekend and I want to be there to help her. It's gonna be really fucking early in the morning and dark outside and I just… I'm worried. I can't help that. But it also coincides with a great work opportunity for me. So I'm torn. It feels like I'm still all about her her her. Which is pathetic, right?"

"You care about her and your unborn child," he states. "That doesn't make you pathetic. I'd say it makes you protective."

"Spinning shit into a positive light just comes naturally to you, doesn't it?" I ask, cracking a smile.

"You could say it's a side effect of the job," he says with a hearty chuckle.

"The work event is a time-sensitive commitment, so I have one day to decide," I continue. "Do I go to the work event, or with Bella?"

"What do you want to do? Which would be more fulfilling?"

I already know, but, "I want you to tell me."

"Unfortunately, I can't do that. I can help you get to a decision, but you need to make it on your own," he replies. "I also have a strong feeling you already know what you'll do. I just hope you know there's no right or wrong choice here. Being there for her isn't wrong. Prioritizing your needs isn't wrong either. You have to do what is best for you."

"I don't… I don't know what's best for me anymore," I admit, a raw, vulnerable edge in my voice.

"That's what I'm here for. To help you figure that out."

I nod appreciatively. "Okay, but in the meantime, can you recommend someone who will tell me exactly what to do?" I ask with a smirk so he knows I'm joking. "Or maybe a Magic 8 Ball would do the trick."

"It'd definitely be cheaper and it offers you the lack of responsibility for making your own decisions." His somewhat amused demeanor turns serious. "But trust me. There's more satisfaction when you put in the work. The question is, are you ready?"

Even if I'm still uncertain about some things, I'm not about this, so I offer a resounding, "Yes."