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I bob my head—like that even matters. I don’t care if he shares it with anyone. I don’t care at all. “I did what I had to.”
“What you had to do?” His brows raise.
“Yeah. Nila stepped forward, hit a hole, and fell. In the process, she knocked down the guy in front of her, who went off like a nutcase.”
“Samuel.”
“Yeah, that’s his name. I couldn’t remember it at the time.”
“And you saw it as coming to her rescue, right?”
“Well, duh, I’m not going to let some jerk berate a woman who tripped and fell. She tried to say that I was putting on a show—but I wasn’t. I didn’t even think that far ahead. I told him to back off and then he swung at me, so I finished it.”
Dr. Shadid chuckles, his pen scribbling something down on the pad. “I see.”
“I’m not going to sit around and pretend to be a punching bag. That’s stupid. I’m not a wimp. I’m a man.”
“So, you ended the fight because you’re a man?”
“Okay, that makes me sound weird.” I groan, running my hands over my face. “I don’t know ... I was just trying to protect her.”
“And what did she think about this?”
I let out an empty laugh. “She hates me. I think she seriously hates me now. She thinks I did it all for show or something. She told me that ‘maybe I do have a problem’—and that really hurt. I ... I don’t know. I like her a lot.”
“Are the two of you together?”
I blink a couple times, not sure how to answer him. “I don’t ... I don’t have an answer to that.”
“Are you sleeping together?”
I scoff. “Not like that.”
“Right, okay. But you do have a romantic interest in her,” Dr. Shadid points out, the cap of the pen pressing into his lower lip.
“Yeah, I guess,” I mutter.
How the heck did we get to this?
“And how does she feel about it?”
“Um, what?”
His lips purse. “Does she feel the same?”
“Uh ... I think so. I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
He nods. “She seems to have a lot on her shoulders. She strikes me as the kind of person that keeps everyone at arm’s length. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was doing the same thing to you.”
I take a deep breath, my head still spinning. I don’t care if she keeps people at arm’s length. I want to get through the walls she has...
And I seriously thought we were making progress. She was finally opening up to me.
But right now, I’m not sure she wants anything to do with me.
“I think you should have a conversation with her next,” he says carefully.
“I think I should be able to call my friends or dad or something,” I say flatly. “I feel cut off from them, and they’re my biggest support system.” I lean back in the chair, missing my teammates. They’re always there for me—and they’d understand why I punched that guy. They wouldn’t have even questioned it.
