Page 120 of Hard Pass

The comment comes out of nowhere, a major switch of topics, clearly to throw me off guard. “What?”

She watches me carefully. “You mentioned her last session. The woman you had spent the night with. Who you said you kept thinking about but weren’t sure what it all meant.”

I said all that? Shit.

“She has nothing to do with my shit on the field or the tremors.”

“And yet you felt the need to bring her up.”

I shake my head and sit forward now with my elbows on my knees. “Yeah, so? Maybe I wanted to talk about a topic that wasn’t all doom and gloom or that would fuck with my head even more.”

“And that’s what I’m doing? Fucking with your head?”

I chuckle derisively. “Well, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”

“This is where I’ll reiterate that these things take time to figure out, and that I’m not taking offense to you feeling like this is doom and gloom.” She pauses and reads her notes before looking back up and holding my gaze. “My only point, Cole, was that she mattered enough for you to mention her.”

I emit a short laugh. “You’re good at this, you know that?”

“I am,” she agrees. “So try again. Tell me about her.”

Fuck.

Unable to sit still, I move again and drag a hand through my hair. “She’s . . . complicated.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“She’s not supposed to be in my life,” I state matter-of-factly, “and she is anyway.”

Dr. Hawley nods once. “How does that make you feel?”

I snort. “Like I should focus on football.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

She’s not going to let me out of this one, is she? And yet I remain seated in front of her, of my own free will, subjecting myself to this nonsense.

“How does she make me feel? Off-balance,” I admit finally. “Like I don’t have a handle on things the way I usually do.”

“And control matters to you.”

“Yes,” I say without hesitation.

“Why?”

I shrug subtly. “Because when you don’t have it, things go sideways, and it feels like a lot of fucking shit is going sideways for me right now.”

“Control isn’t the goal,” she says. “It’s the shield. And you have to have had an experience that created that shield at some point.”

Right back to where she got me angry last session. Like fucking clockwork. “You’re really desperate to dig into my childhood, aren’t you?”

“You’re the one that just connected a woman you like to control to . . . your childhood?” She swallows. “Even I couldn’t make that jump.”

“But that’s what you’re asking of me, isn’t it?” Panic flutters in my throat.

“Only if that’s where the answer is.”

“I had a normal one.” I pause. Lie. “Childhood, I mean.”