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I shifted on the couch, biding my time. We had forty-five minutes, and we’d only eaten up maybe ten.
“How are you doing with your attachments?” she asked me. She pushed her glasses up into her hair. “Letting go of the things you can’t control. I know you’ve had trouble there in the past, and I think it’s important to really work on that now. During this time?”
During this time.
I fought myself from smirking, my hands open. “Please. Help me. Save me.” Daring her to, I leaned forward. “Because believe me, if anyone had the fucking remedy for my life, I’d take it right now.”
Dr. Singh had no reaction for my passive-aggressive shit, never did. She just continued to write, and I cursed. None of these behaviors would get me off her chair.
Nor make my parents back off.
They were the ones controlling shit right now, controlling me. These sessions weren’t optional. I threaded my fingers together. Dr. Singh wanted to talk about my grandfather next, so needless to say, the next thirty-some-odd minutes were deathly silent. I didn’t want to talk about my grandfather.
And I definitely didn’t want to talk about Sloane.
I was on my phone when I came out of the therapist’s office, and if I’d thought Ronald, our butler, had given me a chance to breathe by taking off, I’d been wrong. He was right there outside the room when I exited, a smile on his face and his hat on his lap. Standing, he held the expression. “How did it go today, Master Prinze?”
He knew how it went. I was here, wasn’t I?
If that wasn’t an indicator for how shitty my life was right now, I didn’t know what was.
Because I was respectful of our family butler, I kept silent. I saved all the attitude shit for Dr. Singh, and it wasn’t Ronald’s fault he was forced to babysit me.
It’s yours like everything else.
The self-deprecation I kept to myself too, swallowing hard. Ronald waved us on, staying close. I assumed he’d already done recon on the area since apparently, I was the president’s kid these days.
Our butler may be older, but he was also ex-military. He was security just as much as he was traditional household staff and had been assigned my personal keeper as of late. Not only had I lost access to my ride, but I couldn’t physically go anywhere without Ronald or a cop in tow.
My parents would justify these changes with having something to do with my grandfather, and though maybe some of that was there, I’d be hard-pressed not to know they were keeping me controlled as much as protecting me. They were still looking for Sloane, and they were attempting to keep me out of it.
And any breeches held consequences.
The last had gotten me Ronald, me sneaking out, going rogue. Since I didn’t sleep, I spent pretty much every waking hour doing one thing, and my parents were completely aware of that.
They weren’t dumb.
Ronald got us to the house in silence, never one to prod. That wasn’t his job. He was there to protect me, as well as get me from point A to B. In this case, that included my weekly therapy session, but that hadn’t been the consequences of a breech. Regular sessions with Dr. Singh were the result of my parents’ disappointment, their fear. I’d tried to kill my grandfather, and now, I was sitting on a shrink couch every week.
My parents were scared, scared for me, and they probably should be.
I was scared for me.
I was scared of what I’d do if something didn’t change soon.
If we didn’t find her…
A burn rolled like tight heat in my chest, my head lowered as Ronald cruised one of my father’s sedans past the gate into our neighborhood. The familiar news vans were there, all of them attempting to snap pictures and calling my name. Thatcher and Wells had similar activity outside their houses, and at Wolf’s house, it was difficult to get on the block.
I shielded my face from them all, people here for the story, and that was all. Once word had gotten out that Sloane and I’d been a thing, I especially had been slapped across the papers and internet search engines. I was now the boyfriend of the missing Mallick girl. I was Pilar Mallick’s boyfriend.
Not the kid with his fucking heart ripped out.
I didn’t know where Sloane was. For an entire week, I’d been left to wonder if she were alive or dead. I’d been left to wonder if she was even here, or if she’d skipped town entirely. She’d somehow gotten out of that hospital with her brother.
And the rest of us were left to simply wonder.
The restless nights began that night, no sleep ever coming to me. I spent all my mental energy either looking for her or thinking about her, but it wasn’t like I could do much.
