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“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m studying under him.”
“I pray to God that’s the only thing you’re doing underhim.” Her elbow dug into her hip as she scrubbed a plate in the sink.
“Why? Are you jealous?”
The scrubbing stopped.
Alex’s hands covered one another over her breastbone. “Excuse me for trying to save you from what he put me through.”
In the shrill words and wild eyes, Kenna identified a brightly burning fear that Alex had been passing off as resentment.
She brought her coffee into the living room and nestled on one end of the couch. Kenna felt a growing—and quite frankly, sickening—allegiance to Dr. Merino, but the loyalty did not run so deep as to keep Alex in the dark. “You’re not the only one.”
“What does that mean?”
“Other students are involved in this. I’ve tracked down and spoken with two. You’d be the third, and I’m pretty confident there are others.”
“Others?” she echoed, joining her on the couch.
“Alex, I know you want me to stay away from him, but I’m already in way over my head. You have to tell me what you know.”
* * *
“I wasmiserable when I moved here for school. I missed Phoenix, I missed my family, my friends. Homesick barely covered how I felt. I was a scared freshman who hadn’t found where she fit in. To top it all off, I was living with a dormmate I hated.”
“So, that’s when you started seeing Dayton?”
Alex nodded, continuing, “He was nice in the beginning. He made me feel safe, secure, especially since he spoke Spanish, but our sessions ended after a few weeks. He said he couldn’t see me as a patient anymore because he’d gotten too social.”
“Social how? What did he say to you?”
“That he’d moved here from L.A. a few years earlier. That he knew how I felt. Alone. I didn’t think it was enough to justify ending my treatment.”
“Even being privy to small details about your psychiatrist can …” Kenna shut herself up in a hurry.
Now was not the time for rambling.
“I started hanging out in his office. After hours. It’s not like I was attracted to him. He’s no Channing Tatum, you know? But damn if there wasn’t something alluring about him. He called me Lexi, which I hated, but the way he said it always gave me butterflies.”
The faintest trace of happiness resonated in her tone. Was it possible they had some good memories despite whatever Dr. Merino had done? Kenna knew better.
This wasn’t a fairy tale. There would be no filter glossing over whatever Alex had yet to say.
“He took me to this cultural festival in Portland. It felt like a date and I was young and naive enough to believe he was my boyfriend. There was a firework show at the end of the night and … he kissed me.”
Alex’s teary eyes transported Kenna back to her conversations with Charlee and Erin. She was struggling to identify any commonalities among their emotion-rich retellings beyond the obvious: Dr. Merino had hurt them.
Were he a sadist, she was certain there’d be more to these stories than breaking hearts. Kenna registered the likelihood that he was setting her up for the same, inevitable heartbreak. However senseless, however unwise, she yearned to be his anomaly. She wanted to canonize herself in the church of his love and be the one to put an end to his cruelty.
Remembering the call with Charlee, Kenna asked, “Did you give him a book? One of the girls mentioned it.”
“Yeah. He’d done a lot for me and it was a small way to thank him, and he’d mentioned learning photography for some project he was working on so I thought it’d be useful. That was before I knew he was a whackjob.”
“What?”
Alex drew her knees to her core, arms wrapping around her legs. Her throat bobbed in response to the sobs trapped within. “The first time we slept together, he cooked dinner for me. He bought me lingerie. I thought it was the sweetest thing, but looking back on it now makes me sick.” She wrung her wrists. “One time, in the middle of things, he grabbed my hair and said I needed to repent for my sins. Then he recited a fucking repentance prayer in my ear. I can still hear his voice. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, you are the Lamb of God,’like something straight out of a scary movie.”
Kenna’s scalp prickled.
