“I really don’t think whips and chains are going to be my cup of tea,” he said, rolling his eyes, because he was pretty sure if he was ever cuffed to anything, ever again, he’d lose his fucking mind. For real this time. It would probably seep out of his nose and take off running.
“Branching out does not mean extreme. It could mean choosing different types of relationships, settings, and partners.”
He shook his head. No. That wasn’t the solution to his problem. He knew the kind of porn he liked. He’d devoted too much private time in high school establishing his preferences not to know what they were. But now, when he watched those videos of perfect women on their knees while pleasuring guys, he felt remarkably detached. Uninterested. Disconnected.
“Unless you identify as asexual, having a healthy sex drive is just as important as eating right and getting enough sleep,” she reminded him as she had many times since their first session.
“Yeah, well, I live on frozen dinners and haven’t had any real sleep in over three years. So—sex is gonna have to stay on the back burner for now.”
“Still having nightmares, then?”
He snorted derisively and vigorously rubbed his face in annoyance.
“What is the maximum number of rhetorical questions you are permitted to ask in a session in order to maintain your license to practice psychiatry?”
“As many as needed when my patients are unwilling to fully participate in their own recovery,” she answered with a too bright, TV commercial smile.
“It’s not just nightmares. I can’t get to sleep—and then when I do, I wake up for the stupidest reasons, and then—sure, yeah, I’ve had lots of nightmares,” he confessed, and itdidfeel like pulling teeth to discuss this ongoing problem.
“Why do you think it is that you can’t get to sleep?”
He sighed and returned to scratching at the grain of the leather couch. He was worse than a fucking cat, but he needed the distraction.
“The apartment is empty, but the complex isn’t. Feels like I’m alone again—but being watched—again.”
“Why not sleep at your sister’s place? She seemed more than happy to—”
“I’m almost 30 years old. I’m not going to sleep at my sister’s house forever like a fucking wimpy-assed loser. Besides, I kept waking up her kids when the nightmares—” he shook his head. “I’m fine. I get enough sleep to get by.”
She hummed and squinted at him, appearing puzzled as if he was a real moron who had missed something important.
“What?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
“You can’t sleep because you feel alone but watched from the outside. I assume that means it’s a feeling you heartily dislike.”
Tanner nodded.
“And yet, that’s exactly what you perpetuate in your life. You refuse to see friends. Refuse your sister’s help. You won’t let anyone in. Until you’re all alone with everyone observing you from the outside. Surely you can see the irony of that, Tanner.”
There was nothing intentionally cruel in her gaze or observations, but he grimaced anyway at her accurate assessment.
“I think I liked you better when we were flirting.”
Her faint smile at his comment dissolved into a contemplative frown. “Only because you know it could never be. Sex demands vulnerability, Tanner, and for that—you would have to let someone in.”
Chapter 1
Sipping an electric blue drink, Lance felt about 18 for the first time in over ten years. His frat party drink tasted like mostly rotgut vodka with melted ice and a splash of sugar free Cool Blue Gatorade. Sugar free was important since his brother and his friends were all college athletes—never mind that vodka was basically nothingbutsugar. But he’d kept that to himself, smiled and nodded his thanks to the frat boy mixologist, as he pretended to drink the God-awful concoction.
He'd never been a big drinker. During college, he’d stuck to beer, worried that hard stuff would turn him into someone like his drunkard father. But he couldn’t really diss Gatorade and vodka, since it had helped most of his friends and teammates deal with the stress of college, same as it did now for his brother Parker. That, however, didn’t mean he had to enjoy the stuff now that he was an adult with a job and a decent-sized bank account.
“How long you staying?” One of Parker’s frat brothers was asking. Chad, or Jared, or—Kyle? Maybe?—was leaning against the doorway, a red plastic cup most likely containing the same poison as his own, tilted precariously in one hand, as he idly scratched some of the paint off the door frame with the other.
The frat house had definitely seen better days, and no one would notice the lack of paint in that one spot come morning. Not when half of the front porch railing had rotted off, and most of the second story windows had been replaced with garbage bags and duct tape.
“Well, uh,—” he looked around at the crowd as the thought of staying longer than strictly necessary made him shudder with disgust. “I’m not,” he said, striving to sound casual and non-judgmental.
Chad/Jared/Kyle nodded dejectedly and sighed. “We were gonna have a pick-up game tomorrow, and we could have used a really good arm.”
