“Sorry,” she finally managed, laughing nervously. “I just…I feel like I’ve really been in the hot seat here today. I don’t think I’m comfortable with”—she shot a sideways glance at Shane— “this situation. Going any further down this road.”
Dr. Deena nodded. “I understand. We can move on.”
When the session was over, they walked out of Dr. Deena’s office in heavy silence, Shane holding the door to the emergency stairwell for her. By the time they reached the bottom of the first set of stairs, Lilah was still so shaken that she couldn’t help herself.
“You were laying it on a little thick in there,” she said.
Next to her, Shane kept his eyes forward. “What do you mean?”
She pouted dramatically and assumed an Eeyore-esque cadence. “ ‘I felt soused.’ ”
He looked down, like he was suppressing a smile. “Well, what about you?” He turned to her, his voice becoming breathy and high-pitched, stopping just short of outright mocking her. “ ‘I didn’t want them tosellus.’ ” When they reached thethird-floor landing, he stopped. “Was that all bullshit? You feeling some type of way about me back then? ’Cause this is the first I’m hearing about it.”
Lilah stopped, too, a few steps below him. She looked up at him for what felt like a long time.
“No,” she said softly. “It wasn’t bullshit.”
“Well. How about that.” He looked a little too pleased with himself.
She braced her arm against the banister, peering up at him skeptically. “Come on. You’re really telling me if I’d wanted to…if we’d decided to…you would’ve just…” She snapped her fingers. “What about your little friends?”
“I don’t know. Fuck those guys, I haven’t talked to any of them in years. I would’ve picked you.”
“Why?” The question slipped out in a vulnerable exhale. She forced herself to stop there, the rest of it only implied:Why did you love me?
A hard line formed between his eyebrows. His gaze dropped to the ground, then back to her.
“How could I not?” he asked quietly.
The look on his face made the remaining air in her lungs escape in an involuntarywhoosh.
She suddenly understood, with a nauseating surge of regret, what a precious thing she’d been so careless with all those years ago, too blinded by distrust and self-loathing to see it standing right in front of her, if she’d only been brave enough to reach for it.
“But that was before,” she said, her throat tight, once again unable to finish the thought. Before she’d spent years systematically dismantling the pedestal he’d put her on, dead set on showing him what bad taste he’d had to fall for her.
He nodded slowly, then descended with purpose, closing thegap one stair at a time. She pressed her back to the wall to create as much space between them as possible. Once he reached the stair she was on, he leaned against the banister on the other side.
Her heart thudded in her ears in anticipation of what he would do next. But he just stared intently at her for a long moment, his forehead creased.
“We really made a mess of it, huh?”
She raised one shoulder. “We were young. It was a weird situation. It happens. We just have to move on.”
“Do we?”
“Yeah. We do. That’s why we’re here.”
He shook his head slightly. “That’s not what I mean.”
It felt like the stairs had dropped out from beneath her. She leaned her full weight against the wall, resting her head on the rough cement. “What, then?”
“I mean…” He pushed himself off the banister, slowly moving closer to her. “You weren’t being totally honest with her back there.”
“I wasn’t?”
“The show isn’t the only thing we have in common.” His gaze swept over her from head to toe, the sudden heat behind it making her light-headed.
He was messing with her again. He had to be. Or maybe he was deluded enough by the dangerous combination of post-therapy vulnerability and misplaced nostalgia that he thought they could get away with sleeping together a few more times.
