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The only thing I could think of when he moved away and escorted me to my car, gripping the back of my neck from behind like I was a wild animal in desperate need of taming, was that my life had just gotten so much more complicated.
He tapped the roof of the Audi and smiled through the rolled down window, tipping his Wayfarers down. “Drive safe.”
“Fuck you.” My hands shook, trying to pull down the hand break.
“Not in a million years, kid. You’re not worth the jail time.”
I was already eighteen, but it hardly made any difference. I stopped, seconds short of spitting in his face, when he rummaged in his mother’s bag and threw something small and hard into my car. “For the road. Friendly advice: stay away from people’s pockets and bags. Not everyone’s as agreeable as me.”
He wasn’t agreeable. He was the very definition of a jerk. Before I could fashion a comeback, he turned around and walked away, leaving a trail of an intoxicating scent and interested women. I looked down at what he’d tossed in my lap, still dazed and disturbed by his last comment.
A Snickers bar.
In other words, he’d ordered me to chill—treating me like I was a child. A joke.
I drove away from the promenade straight to Tobago Beach, getting a small loan from Bane to pay my way through the next month. I was too distracted to try to hit another mark for some fast cash.
But that day changed something and, somehow, twisted my life in a direction I never knew it could take.
It was the day when I realized I hated Trent Rexroth.
The day when I put him on my shit list, with no possibility for parole.
And the day I realized I could still feel alive under the right arms.
Too bad they were also so, so wrong.
She’s a maze with no escape.
An ethereal, steady pulse. She’s there, but just barely.
I love her so much I sometimes hate her.
And it terrifies me, because deep down, I know what she is.
An unsolvable puzzle.
And I know who I am.
The idiot who would try to fix her.
At any cost.
“HOW DID YOU FEEL WHEN you wrote it?” Sonya held the whiskey-ringed paper like it was her fucking newborn, a curtain of tears glittering in her eyes. The drama levels were high this session. Her voice was gauzy and I knew what she was after. A breakthrough. A moment. That pivotal scene in a Hollywood flick, after which everything changed. The strange girl shakes off her inhibitions, the dad realizes he is being a cold-ass prick, and they work through their emotions, blah blah pass the Kleenex blah.
I scrubbed my face, glancing at my Rolex. “I was drunk off of my ass when I wrote it, so I probably felt like a burger to dilute the alcohol,” I deadpanned. I didn’t talk much—big fucking surprise—that’s why they called me The Mute. When I did, it was with Sonya, who knew my boundaries, or Luna, who ignored them, and me.
“Do you get drunk often?”
Chagrined. That was Sonya’s expression. She mostly kept it schooled, but I saw through the thick layers of makeup and professionalism.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”
Loud silence lingered in the room. I strummed my fingers against my cell phone screen, trying to remember whether I’d sent out that contract to the Koreans or not. I should have been nicer, seeing as my four-year-old daughter was sitting right beside me, witnessing this exchange. I should have been a lot of things, but the only thing I was, the only thing I could be outside of work, was angry, and furious, and—why, Luna? What the fuck have I done to you?—confused. How I’d become a thirty-three-year-old single dad who didn’t have time, nor the patience, for any female other than his kid.
“Seahorses. Let’s talk about them.” Sonya laced her fingers together, changing the topic. She did that whenever my patience was strung out and about to snap. Her smile was warm but neutral, just like her office. My eyes skimmed the pictures hung behind her, of young, laughing children—the kind of bullshit you buy at IKEA—and the soft yellow wallpaper, the flowery, polite armchairs. Was she trying too hard, or was I not trying hard enough? It was difficult to tell at this point. I shifted my gaze to my daughter and offered her a smirk. She didn’t return it. Couldn’t blame her.
“Luna, do you want to tell Daddy why seahorses are your favorite?” Sonya chirped.
Luna grinned at her therapist conspiratorially. At four, she didn’t talk. At all. Not a single word or a lonely syllable. There was no problem with her vocal chords. In fact, she screamed when she was hurting and coughed when she was congested and hummed absentmindedly when a Justin Bieber played on the radio (which, some would say, was tragic in itself.)
