I ran my tongue along my teeth, attempting to remove the acidity from my mouth. But it was pointless because that bitterness was coming from my very core. The bitterness was me.
“Thenyoutellmewhy I’m here, Lacey,” I said. “I’m sure you already have your theories, so let’s hear ’em.”
“I really don’t. That’s not how I work. That’s not howthisworks.” She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, tugging the sleeves of her pale pink cardigan over her hands.
“I don’t know why the fuck I’m here,” I admitted. “I’m sure no sooner than I walk out your door, it’ll be on fucking TMZ.”
“It won’t. I can promise you that.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, do or don’t, that’s up to you,” she said, her voice even as a set of parallel lines. “The only way someone will ever know you were here is if you told them yourself or if they followed you, and I tried to preventthatby seeing you at a later hour.”
I squinted at her. “You mean you don’t normally see patients at 8 p.m.?”
She shot me a look that called me a dumbass in thirteen different languages.
“Why the fuck would you do that for me? Because I’m famous? Did you want a front row seat to the shit show?” I fired off my tirade of questions one right after the other and waited for a reaction, but she was immovable. “Oh. Let me guess. Because you fucking ‘care’?” I curved my fingers around the invisible word, hugging it. It was the closest I’d been to anything resembling a hug in months.
“Yes. I do care.” Lacey gave me a faint smile and shrugged as she leaned forward, resting her hands on her lap. When she did, the sleeve of her sweater slid up her wrist an inch, revealing a swipe of black ink I couldn’t quite make out.
Little Miss Priss has a fucking tattoo?
“I didn’t take you for the tattoo type,” I said. “What is it? A fucking butterfly? No, wait. A sparrow. Chicks fucking love bird tats.”
She pulled her sleeve up farther and turned her arm so I could see. “It’s a semicolon.”
I snorted. “What? Why? You big into grammar or something?”
She chuckled and tugged her cardigan back down. “No, nothing like that. Though I do have strong feelings about people who don’t know the difference betweenyourandyou’re.” Her gaze dropped to the floor for a second before returning to me. “To me, the semicolon represents a sentence not yet finished. It means there’s more left to say.”
“You couldn’t have come up with something better than punctuation?”
Her jaw tightened, letting me know I’d successfully made a chink in her armor.
Fuck. What am I doing? This lady worked me into her schedule when she didn’t have to, and I’m being a prick.
“I…” I swallowed hard, heat rising to my cheeks. “Shit. Sorry. I’m wasting your time.”
“It’s okay.” She raised her brows, the corner of her mouth tugging upward. “You’re paying me by the hour.”
Something shifted inside my chest, as though her witty comeback had made an impact and cracked across my sternum. Maybe it wasn’therarmor that was breaking down.
“Fuck. I don't know why I’m such a goddamn dick all the time,” I said, sinking onto the leather couch across from her and digging the heels of my palms into my eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“You’re hurting.” She said it so simply, as though I’d asked her for the time or a weather report or if she liked weird grammar tattoos. “And hurt people will hurt other people sometimes. Luca, everyone is fighting battles we can’t see.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face and blew out a breath. “I still don’t trust you.”
“I don’t expect you to. Trust is earned. And I’ve got the time if you do.”
“Because I’m paying you by the hour.”
“Exactly.” She grinned. “And since you haven’t sprinted for the door, I’m guessing you’re not in a hurry to leave just yet. So, how about we begin by you telling me a little bit about yourself?”
My mind was screaming at me to bolt, but my legs were heavy and weary. I was exhausted of fucking running, and if I was being honest, running hadn’t fixed a damn thing. Maybe it was time to try something new.
I finally answered with a single nod. “Okay.”
