“By doing what I say, please. Just wait in the lobby unless security is called, okay?”
“I heard you, loud and clear.”
She gives me a long look that only lets up when we park. I lock the door so she can’t get out and hear her banging against the passenger door until I open it. I reach in and take her hand, pulling her out and against me.
Hope squirms, but then I bend down and whisper in her ear. “You’re a good girl for me, baby. You can be bad with everyone else. That’s one of the benefits of having me in your corner.”
“I liked you better with piercings,” she grumbles.
“I know,” I tease.
“You know?”
My lips curl slightly. “You love pulling them out and scratching them out of my face when you’re sleeping,” I taunt.
Her face goes bright red and she starts to say something but cuts herself off before touching my lip. Something like regret sparks in her eyes.
I wink. “I deserve it. Especially considering I get hard every time I pull you against me and hold your wrists above your head.”
“Jaxon,” she gasps.
Smirking, I take a step back and rub the small of her back, guiding her forward. She keeps grumbling under her breath, something about sleeping on the couch, as if I’ll let that happen. I open the door for her and pull her against my side.
“You don’t have to hold me so close. I’m not going to run,” she hisses.
“I’m holding you close because I like how you feel,” I tease. “And because it has the fun effect of you not overthinking.”
She pushes out of my arms and checks in. She sits down with the tablet and starts filling this simple questionnaire she has to fill out every time. I keep trying to rub her thigh, forgetting about the laptop before I huff and settle for keeping my arm around her shoulder.
I leave it there when the therapist comes out. She glowers at me, then softens her face when she looks at Hope. “Hope, are you ready?”
“Yes,” she answers.
I squeeze her shoulder once, then kiss her temple. “Pretend you’re talking to me if you need some rage.”
Eight
HOPE
Jo keeps glancing at the laptop on my lap, then to me. It’s like she’s trying to figure out what I have planned before I’m ready to tell her. She smiles gently. “Well, I see you brought Jaxon today.”
“That’s not what I want to talk about,” I say confidently.
She arches an eyebrow. “He’s considered a security risk. I’m not sure how I feel having him in the office.”
“Well, honestly, I don’t care how you feel. I didn’t think you would be this unprofessional,” I counter.
Her eyes widen slightly. “Excuse me?”
“Do you think that he’d steal my file and not show me what’s in it? Includingyournotes. About me being delusional? About knowing my dad? About bringing personal biases into our sessions and using that to make judgements?”
Her mouth opens and closes, then she takes a breath. “Hope, plenty of people have terrible things happen to them and end up filling in the blanks. I’m not questioning that you’ve been raped. I’m not questioning that you have PTSD. All of that is very obvious and I know that someone was routinely and regularly abusing you in your home. Considering the troubled boys that your father took in, three of them still existing around you, it would be very easy for them to—”
“Save me from my father. I agree,” I say, then open the laptop and with one press turn on the video. I hear myself sobbing, begging for my dad to stop while he gives me orders.
I flinch slightly but try to stay focused on Jo’s face. Her expression goes white, her eyes bulge, then she drops her pen. “Turn that off.”
“Why? I lived it. You said you didn’t have proof. Here’s my father raping me on the table in the cabin. He kidnapped me. All those bruises on me, the scratches on him, that’s from me fighting him off the first time,” I say, my voice apathetic. “I told you he recorded it.”
