I bent over and got dressed, wincing only slightly when I realized that I’d have to go throughout the entire day with no panties on.
Usually I wouldn’t mind, but I had a lunch date with my father, and that was going to be extremely awkward.
“How do you like the word cunt now?” Tate wondered.
I bit my lip, wondering if I should say what was really on my mind.
“I love it,” I told him honestly. “But only when you say it when you’re inside of me.”
He grinned, then winked.
Distantly I heard the jingle of bells on my front office door, and realized that our hour was up. My next client had arrived, and there would be no waiting for him.
This client’s name was Jeff Yates. He was a favor from a friend.
When Jeff was a small child, he’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Now, at the age of twenty-six, he was still suffering from the same episodes, but had them better under control.
He’d moved to Hostel from Austin, Texas about a year ago, and the woman that he used to see as a psychologist had been my teacher, and my mentor, during college. She’d called me and asked me to take on Jeff as a patient, and I’d agreed.
It was only after he’d come to see me for the second time that I realized how hard he’d be to deal with.
He also didn’t know the word ‘wait.’
I wasn’t even sure he knew the word ‘stop.’
“Can you get the blinds for me while I go let Jeff in?” I asked him. “He doesn’t wait well.”
Tate’s eyes held mine for a few long seconds, and then he nodded in understanding. “Yeah.”
As I left the office once again fully dressed, I felt Tate’s movement behind me. As each section of blind was raised, and my little world was exposed, I felt marginally better.
I could deal with the blinds closed with Tate. There was no way for me to feel scared in his presence.
Jeff, however, was a completely different story.
The man gave me the creeps, and I was on the verge of dropping him as a patient.
The only thing that kept me from completely freaking out was my old mentor and teacher. We’d compared notes, and I had a better understanding of how Jeff’s mind worked.
That likely wouldn’t be enough, though.
Not with the way he gave me the chills, and made me feel like I was a sitting duck in the eyes of a predator.
Jeff was smaller, about six inches shy of six foot.
He was lanky, had long hair, and looked like he didn’t step foot out of his house much.
He lived with his mother, or at least that was what he told me, but I had yet to see her.
Steeling my nerves and opening my office door, I smiled warily at Jeff.
“Nice to see you, Jeff. Won’t you come in?”
Jeff did, and glanced in the corner at Tate the moment he breached the room.
“What the fuck is he doing here?”
Tate’s eyes narrowed on Jeff.
“I was just leaving,” Tate said carefully. “See you in a couple days, Ms. Hanes.”
Then Tate was gone, glancing over his shoulder twice at me, and then at Jeff.
He must’ve felt it, too.
I shivered and turned to my patient.
“Won't you sit down?”
Jeff went horizontal on top of the couch.
“I need to tell you what I dreamed about last night.”
And then he proceeded to tell me a tale of a dark-haired woman that was dead on the side of the road, that had a remarkable resemblance to me.
Chapter 11
I hate it when those voices in my head go silent. I never know what those fuckers are planning.
-Tate’s secret thoughts
Tate
“You’re doing her, aren’t you?”
I turned to find Ariya standing directly next to the door I’d just exited. She was half in, half out, of the pediatrician’s office next door, holding the door open as she openly glared at me.
I frowned.
“What?”
“The woman,” she gestured to Hennessey’s office. “Knew you always had a thing for her.”
I inwardly winced.
I had, yet I’d been able to curb that ‘thing.’
Yet today, I’d lost control. Today, I’d finally given in to the one thing I’d wanted for a really long time, and I was glad that I did.
I was glad.
“Ariya,” I paused. “We’re not talking about this,” I said. “I’m there for my mandatory anger management classes that were assigned to me from the judge that was in charge of my release.”
Ariya didn’t take the hint.
“Was our relationship always a lie?” She looked back into the office, let the door close, and crossed her arms over her chest.
She was still turned slightly to the side, keeping an eye on whatever—or whoever—was in there. Maybe her sister’s kids. Though, Ariya worked somewhere. Maybe it was there.
“Ariya,” I sighed and took off my ballcap, running my fingers along my short hair, then resituated the cap on my head.
My fingers still smelled like Hennessy. God, so fucking good. Even thinking about her—tasting my fingers with the slick of her still on them—was making me hard all over again.
I needed to focus.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
I gritted my teeth and returned my focus to her.
“We weren’t a lie. I loved you once, but we were never good together,” I admitted. “We fought like crazy, you hated where I worked, and that I didn’t make enough money for us to do anything. You disliked how I dressed, and the way I shaved my hair. You seriously had something to complain about over everything I did, and that’s not including the fact that we broke up at least once every six months.”
That was no lie.
Out of the years that we’d been on again, off again, lovers, we were ‘together’ for a short year at most.
Most of the time we were off again, which was no exaggeration.
She’d broken it off three times while I’d been deployed. Then, I’d get leave, come back home, confront her, and we were back together.
That happened two more times before I finally decided that enough was enough. I didn’t contact her at all while I was away the rest of the time, but the minute I got out and came back home again, we were back together.
Well, together being a loose term for what we had. It was more like we were fuck buddies, and that was all there was to it. Then I’d gone to prison not long after that, and I’d not seen her, or spoken to her, again until I got home.
I didn’t get one single letter from her.
Not one.
So where was her accountability in all of this?
She’d been the one not to follow through with her promise to talk to me after I’d been sentenced—even though she’d told me repeatedly that she would.
I couldn’t tell you a time that we were happy together.
We’d gotten together in high school. It’d been fun.
However, nowhere in my memory could I remember a time when I said ‘She’s it for me.’
It hadn’t happened. I knew that Ariya wasn’t mine, and would never be.
We honestly didn’t like each other enough for that to happen.
“That makes this better,” she muttered.
Before I could question anything else, a little girl came out of the door, her eyes downcast. The little girl, about three or so, had deep bags underneath her eyes, and hair the color of the deepest red that I’d ever seen.
“M…”