Something about her last sentence irked him. As if he’d been personally offended by the notion of wasting time.
His next words burst out of him before he could stop them.
“What the fuck do you expect me to say? I fucking hate it, alright! It’s a mind-numbing job, and it makes me want to pull my fucking teeth out. But with a bum leg and a fucked-up head, what the hell else am I good for?” He positively seethed with frustration and anger. So, yeah, maybe she’d been right about him being a hothead.
She smiled with satisfaction.
“That right there is what I’m looking for, Tanner. I want you to let it all out.”
He responded to her praise and encouragement with a short bark of a laugh as his head fell back in resignation.
She scribbled something else in her notebook and calmly glanced up at him.
“Have you managed to get in touch yet with some old friends?” Her head was cocked like that of a bird dog listening for a duck call. Somewhere in her 50s and mild-mannered, she was also sharp as a tack, refusing to fall for any of Tanner’s bullshit. Even though he tried his damnedest to get her to do exactly that during every session. But it seemed defeat was imminent. Again.
“All of them are dead now,” he said, shrugging, because he’d made peace with that a long time ago. His men were dead. The guys he’d worked with—his home away from home—had died in the same helicopter crash that had completely fucked up his life, breaking his body and his spirit. During his darker moments, he was glad they were dead, wondering if maybe their fate was better than his own. He wouldn’t have wished this shit on anyone he loved. Ever.
“You said yourself you had friends in the city before you shipped out. High school friends. Childhood friends. Why haven’t you reached out to them?”
“They’ve moved on. I’m dead to them. No longer a part of their lives, so what would be the point of dragging them into this mess?” He refused to show any kind of emotional reaction under her penetrating stare.
“Perhaps they would like to have you back in their lives.” He knew damned well that her suggestion was really a thinly veiled order.
“Right—and people like stepping on Legos,” he replied, hoping she’d be distracted by his ludicrous remark and abandon her line of questioning.
She sighed and jotted something down.
“What about sex?”
Tanner knew her well enough by now to recognize her intent to shock him with that sudden transition, to make him inadvertently divulge information that she’d been planning to get out of him all along.
“Doc, I’m flattered, but I’d rather keep it professional,” he replied quickly, not wanting her to think she’d caught him off-guard, even as he mentally scrambled for a better defense.
“What a shame, since I almost exclusively go for repressed men with erectile dysfunction.”
Tanner huffed and shook his head.
“That was low, even for you, Doc.”
“Stop pussyfooting around then,” she responded with a pitiless grin. “Have you managed to get aroused? Have you done what we agreed upon? Did you try—”
“Okay,” he said, holding up both hands in surrender, as he felt himself flush with embarrassment. “I feel like I’m havingthe talkwith my mother.”
“Would you rather I refer you to—”
“No,” he cut her off. “No,” he repeated, shaking his head. “I just—no. I haven’t—” He stopped abruptly and coughed while re-positioning his leg so it wouldn’t hurt as much. “I haven’t managed to getlittle Ton board.”
“Did you try watching videos? Fantasizing about past lovers? Reading—”
“Yes.” He could feel the tips of his ears burning as he squirmed uncomfortably. Staring at the arm of the couch, he scratched at the grain of the leather with his index finger, unable to look at her.
“Doesn’t matter what I do—there’s nothing. No interest,” he mumbled as his blush swept all the way up to his hairline.
“Have you tried branching out?”
“Branching out?” he asked, looking up for the first time since she’d brought up sex.
“Branching out, yes. Looking into things you hadn’t considered before.”
