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‘You want my help? Then yes.’
‘I don’t want your help!’ My voice is raised and I lower it with effort. ‘I never did. I don’t need help.’
‘Gabe apparently disagrees.’
My eyes narrow. ‘Don’t bring him into this like you know him. You don’t know anything about him, or me, or why he wants to force me into bullshit therapy. No offence,’ I tack on—the most useless phrase in history because obviously I’ve offended her.
‘If you think therapy’s so bullshit,’ she says, defiance in her eyes, ‘then submit to it and see.’
My breath burns in my lungs. ‘What?’
‘It’s simple. If therapy is bullshit, as you claim, then go and see the guy I’ve found. He’s good. He’ll help you.’
It incenses me. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s just...not necessary.’
‘So? You lose an hour.’
‘I’m not going to go and tell some man my inner secrets, okay?’
‘Then see me,’ she says, and I see wariness in her expression. ‘Let me help you, Noah. Give me one hour to work on you. If it’s just a load of crap, as you seem to think, you’ve only lost time—and not much. But if you’re wrong, that hour could change your life. For the better.’
‘You’re the one who said you can’t be my therapist,’ I point out, knowing I’m clutching at straws.
‘And I still think that. I still think you should see someone else.’
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘That the most important thing to me is helping you.’ She pauses, her eyes skimming my face. ‘I wouldn’t really be your therapist. It would just be you and me, just like we are now, but we’d be in my office.’
I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say.
But she looks at me with her big eyes and a hopeful expression. Inwardly I groan.
‘Come on,’ she says softly. ‘Please?’
It’s stupid, and yet I’ve hurt her and I don’t want to have, and so I find myself nodding. Smiling. A smile that is tight and wrong, angry and resentful.
‘Fine.’ I lean down and press a kiss to her nose. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’
* * *
I’m nervous. Despite the fact I’ve been doing this a really long time, I’ve never felt like a therapy session is as high-stakes as this. Even a weird one-off therapy session with the man I’m sleeping with. I know how important this is, though. If I can’t help him, then we have no future, and I realise that this isn’t a temporary thing for me. I want more. I want all of Noah, and I want him for all time.
‘Please have a seat.’ I gesture towards the chair opposite my desk, the seat he occupied the second time we met. Everything feels different now. Off-kilter.
He’s wearing black jeans and a white long-sleeved tee shirt that makes the tan of his skin pop. He seems relaxed and calm, but I know it’s a veneer, because I know him.
‘Sure. Why don’t you come join me?’ He gestures to his lap. To his powerful thighs. Thighs that have straddled me, pinned me to walls, wedged my legs apart. My mouth goes dry.
His smile shows that he knows it. He stands, slowly, purposefully, moving towards me, coming around to my side of the desk. He stands above me, then bends forward, dropping his hands to the armrests of my chair, imprisoning me.
‘Don’t I at least get a kiss?’
It’s been three days since we got back from Paris and to say I’ve been craving his touch is an understatement. I’ve been busy as all hell—I finally organised Ivy’s nativity costume and the pudding has been made—but, no matter how much I have on in my days, all I want is to see Noah. To hear his voice. To touch him. For him to touch me.
