She doesn’t laugh.
Instead, she takes a deep breath, her way of controlling her responses. Kind eyes meet mine. They’re the color of deep brown, the shade a mixture like German Shepherd’s fur, reddish-gold flickers along the edges. Salma is my mother’s age, but tall and thin. If she were a teenager, I’d call her lanky.
She’s in her fifties, so I won’t.
Her hair is pulled back in a severe bun, streaked with gray here and there. No makeup. No manicure. I know very little about her. Does she have kids? Grandkids? A husband?
Hell, a wife?
Don’t know. I came here for more than a hundred sessions and all the information is a one-way street.
That’s the point of therapy, though.
Right?
“Drew.” My name rings out in the small room. A seagull makes a strangled sound outside the window. “Drew, why don’t you start with the newspaper?”
“The newspaper?” I repeat dumbly.
She nudges her chin toward the coffee table.
Huh.
I’m on the front page.
“You don’t have to guess, then,” I say with a sigh, shifting in the overstuffed chair. There’s a box of tissues on an end table to my right, and another, larger box on the coffee table between us.
Not that I ever needed a tissue.
Two years, no crying.
They ought to give out awards for that.
“I don’t have all the details. Why don’t you tell me?”
I predict she’ll shift her position next, just enough to trigger some primal instinct in me to fill the silence.
She does.
I stay quiet.
I stay quiet until it eats away at me.
The anticipation, that is.
Not the anticipation of what’s coming next in this session, this room, this conversation.
But the burning anticipation of how close my own secrets are to being revealed to the world.
Lindsay’s not the only one with a past she wants to bury. But she trusts me now, and I can’t live with myself if I keep the truth from her.
That’s a more brutal form of betrayal.
“I’m back together with Lindsay.” The words aren’t the first ones I want to say. But they’ll have to do.
Salma doesn’t really react. Her eyes stay on mine, the skin underneath crinkling up, a non-reactive reaction.
The look encourages me to talk more.
“They let her come home. They made her stay at that mental institution for four years. Harry Bosworth called me and hired my company to be her security detail. Yesterday, Blaine appeared at Harry’s big announcement. It sent Lindsay into a tailspin.”
“Only Lindsay?”
I give a half shrug and say nothing.
“How does it feel? To be around her again?”
I can’t talk. The room fills with air, like a balloon being inflated. My eyeballs float in my head, my scalp rising up to meet the ceiling. My fists close and my thighs tense.
I have no control over my body’s reaction to Salma’s question.
“Great,” I rasp. It’s hard to choke out the word.
I tell the truth.
“You still love her.”
Notice how that’s not a question?
“Yes.”
“And when you saw Blaine near her?”
“I was prepared to kill him with my bare hands right there.”
She looks at the newspaper. “You showed remarkable restraint, then.”
“I should get a medal.”
She gives me a somber smile. “You have quite a few already, Drew. Do you need more?”
I can’t really react to that. So I don’t.
She breaks the silence.
“You punched him.”
“Yes.”
“Wanted to hurt him.”
“Yes.”
“For revenge.”
“Yes.”
“Who were you avenging?”
“What?” My brow tightens.
“You or Lindsay?”
The feeling that the room is growing extends, the walls stretching like taffy, the floor dropping into a pit, the space dark and blindingly white at the same time.
I know what she’s really asking.
“Both of us.”
“The unfairness of the sexual assault would make any person experience a triggering episode, Drew, upon seeing their attacker.”
My lips are numb.
“But the level of sexual assault that you experienced four years ago from those three men, combined with your combat experiences, make your encounter with Blaine all the more traumatic.”
She said it.
It’s out there.
I haven’t told anyone other than Salma. Emergency room doctors, my parents, my sister, and probably some NSA officers know what those bastards did to me that night.
And that’s it.
Salma blinks rapidly. It’s a sign she’s trying to approach me carefully. Finally, she asks, “Lindsay still doesn’t know the full truth from four years ago?”
“No.”
I can say that loud and clear.
Because the word is screaming like a bass drum in my head. No. No. No. No. No.
NO.
This is the part where I admit I’m a hypocrite. I’m a Grade-A bastard. I hold Lindsay to a double standard. Where I have one set of rules for the rest of the world and a very different set for me.
I do.
I know I do.
Because I want Lindsay to confess to me and trust in me and lean on me and let me protect her and love her.