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That was an interesting choice of words, and like any trained therapist, I honed in on it.
“So, someone else taught you how to cook?”
His eyes flicked up to me, fixing hard on my face for a second before looking back down at his preparation of the food. “Yeah. A friend.”
Jesus. It was harder to get information out of this man than squeezing water out of a rock. “That must’ve been an interesting arrangement. Was it someone that you went to after school or something?”
He gave me a small nod and a smile and tossed the veggies into the pot. They made a satisfying sizzle as they hit the bottom of the pot, and he started moving the onions around so that they cooked evenly.
I decided to try a different track. “Why a police officer?”
His face snapped up to me at that, and his eyes hardened to chips of green glass in an expression that had probably petrified numerous suspects in the past. “Why an art therapist?”
“I asked first,” I said, crossing my arms and feeling like I was finally getting somewhere with this frustrating, impossible, gorgeous man. That intimidating face did nothing to quell my need to know more; all it did was throw fuel on it.
He held my gaze in silence.
I sighed. “I became an art therapist because of an art therapist. When my mom left my dad, I was… well, I was a shithead. A nightmare kid. My mom tried taking me to three different therapists before one of them put a pad of paper in front of me, and I spent the rest of the session drawing.” I laughed a little at the thought. “I never went back to that guy, but the next week, my mom took me to another woman, and things actually started to get better.”
“But you went to art school, right?”
I had, and I’d told him so, but I’d already told him a lot, and the balance of power between us was starting to feel dangerously out of order. I leaned over so that I met his eyes fully, holding his stare with all of its intensity. “Answer my question first. Why a cop?”
He finally looked away from me, turning away from me and grabbing a canister of lentils from a cabinet above the coffeemaker.
Sometimes, all people needed to know was that people were interested, and that there was someone who cared. Since he and I were stuck together for the foreseeable future, it wouldn’t do any good for me to shut him out and pretend that I wasn’t curious about him.
“Is it because of your parents? Did something happen to them?”
I saw his hand freeze and spasm a little. Bingo.
“Were they the perps or the victims?”
The cabinet door slammed shut, and he brought his hand down on the counter with so much force that I almost jumped. I waited for him to start yelling at me to mind my own business, that I was a nosy bitch, anything… but he didn’t say a word.
I knew the question had been a risky one, but I was trying anything I knew how to try to get him to open up to me. The tactic had failed miserably.
Suddenly, the whole day set in on me, and I was tired of beating my head against this wall along with the knowledge that Alex had broken into my apartment. The reality of my situation seemed to settle in on me, and I felt heavy as a lodestone. Without saying another word to him, I turned away from the counter and headed down the hallway to my room, shutting the door behind me.
I didn’t say a word to him for the rest of the day. He came to get me when the soup was ready, and I silently filled a bowl and took it back to my room with me, refusing to acknowledge him beyond the bare minimum.
Despite my refusal to speak, though, my body was acutely aware of him and I silently scolded myself for the rest of the day.
9
DILLON
It had been a full day of Macy not talking to me.
I didn’t know if I’d just been on my own for too long, or whether I just had never spent enough time with a therapist, but I was starting to feel like the silence was getting to me.
I’d come out into the living room this morning, and she wasn’t out there yet, so I started the coffeepot, waiting for her to get up. It had been rough yesterday, trying to maneuver around her as she refused to speak to me.
To be honest, I hadn’t known how to react after she’d started asking me about my life and my history. I mean, it made sense to me, given that she hadn’t known anything about me when she first came to stay. And, on top of that, her whole job had been to find out about people’s trauma, so had it really been a shock that she’d started asking questions about why I’d done what I did or how I’d come to it?
It wasn’t so much that she was asking; it was more than being asked in and of itself was a problem. I couldn’t let people past the mile-high walls that I’d thrown up between my heart and everyone else.
It wasn’t her fault. I could only hope that she didn’t take it personally.
