Pregnant With Alpha’s Genius Twins

#Chapter 40 – Therapy call

That night, I’m not surprised to hear the phone ring in my closet. It’s another unscheduled call – Victor is used to getting what he wants, when he wants it – but he’s starting to develop a pattern with when he needs his therapist.

Checking to ensure that the boys are asleep, I tuck Archie into my lap on the closet floor and pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hello,” Victor’s voice is brusk, unsettled, and – as usual – robotic. “Is this a bad time?”

“No, I can talk. The…usual overages, will apply, of course.”

“Yes.” Victor hurries on, dismissing this. “I’m having trouble,” he says, “balancing…well, balancing my life. My responsibilities to the people who I love, who love me.”

“I see,” I say gently. “Did something…happen? To bring about your unsettled state?”

He pauses. “Yes, it did. It’s amazing that you can intuit that.”

I press my hand to my forehead, warning myself to be careful. “Comes with experience,” I say, pushing forward. “Please continue.”

“We had…an incident tonight, I guess that’s the right word for it. My son tripped my fiancé – I don’t think he meant to hurt her, but she was hurt. Everyone was very upset.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” I murmur.

“Thank you. The issue becomes that I took your advice, although it is perhaps also…instinct, knowing that my son was in the wrong. But I backed Amelia, and we left.”

I note, silently, that Victor has – for the first time – accidentally dropped a hint about his identity. “How do you feel about this?”

“Honestly? I feel horribly guilty. The boys were crying so hard when we left, and they accused me – falsely, of course – of not loving them. I know that they’re just kids, and they’re overreacting, and that they will, of course, not think that I don’t love them forever. But I have to admit – it’s just killing me that they think that. Even for one night.”

“That sounds really hard,” I say, my heart in my throat. “As a mom…I can definitely emote with how difficult it is when your sons challenge you like this.” Little does he know that I know precisely what he means, as his sons are, in fact, my sons.

imagine him, leaning against the kitchen island, his forehead in his hand. “Amelia needed me in that moment – I’m glad I stood by her…but how do I balance this?

impossible task, unfortunately. You just have to do

can hear his frustration. He wants fast, direct

“That sometimes helping your fiancé means you have to let your sons wait for a minute. Sometimes being there for then means you have to let her wait. You have to weigh everything in the balance and perhaps

“What?”

I thank Mark for the knowledge and the metaphor. “You let the other, less dangerous flames wait until you deal with

wait, letting him

says, murmuring it. “Going where I’m needed

fiancé really needed you – or so it sounds – and it was good that you

I wait for a few minutes, seeing if he’ll take the conversation

to be something that throws you off more than anything else. That’s typically when I get these unscheduled calls, when you’re feeling unbalanced, torn by your

rather a…pattern in my life. Well, an old pattern. One

you like to

is therapy, I suppose. I frequently felt this way as a child – torn between my allegiance to both my

the case, that you were eager to reproduce something you experienced when you were young. Children from

that what

out of ten times,”

the tenth

extraordinary cases,” I say slowly, “I usually find that…the patient is eager to be married in order to fix their childhood trauma. To demonstrate that they can hold it all together, that it is

is silent so, again, I push. “Do you feel that

felt a lot of pressure, as a child, to hold my parents together – or to be…perfect. So that

a way that you’d like

begins to enter his voice. “I’d…I’d

that it’s okay to mess up, and make mistakes.

isn’t that exactly what I’ve failed to do tonight, when I took

when he raises his voice. “I think you need to embrace a little of the chaos. This is you, again, seeking the balance, wanting to be everywhere fixing everything at once. You’re that little boy again, wanting to fix it. But,

with their frustration. That just because you don’t attend to them immediately, it doesn’t mean you don’t love them. They have to learn to trust