Page 32 of Letters From A Stalker

The laugh escapes before I can stop it, louder than anything I intended to produce inside a psychiatric clinic, and Mara looks entirely too pleased with herself.

There is something strangely comforting about her, though I noticed it during my first appointment only in passing because I was too busy trying not to crawl out of my own skin to appreciate it properly. She has none of the careful softness I expected from someone working in a place where people routinely arrive carrying the worst things that have ever happened to them. She doesn’t lower her voice when she asks how I’m doing or tilt her head with sympathetic concern because she knows why I’m here. She talks to me like I’m a person who happens to have an appointment, which turns out to be considerably easier to tolerate than being treated like someone who might shatter if spoken to at normal volume.

“He’s running a few minutes behind,” she tells me, glancing toward the closed door of his office. “You can sit. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“That’s fine.” The words are already out before my brain catches up with my mouth.

I stop beside one of the chairs. Mara stops typing.

Slowly, I close my eyes and exhale through my nose. “Thirty-eight.”

There’s a brief silence before Mara asks, “Thirty-eight what?”

“Nothing.”

“That sounded very much like a something.”

“It’s therapy-related.”

Her eyebrows rise above the frames of her glasses, but she seems to decide that whatever insanity Dr. Blackwood assigned me falls outside the responsibilities listed in her employment contract.

“Then I definitely don’t want to know.” She simply gestures toward the waiting area.

“Smart woman.”

“I’ve been working here for six years. Survival demanded adaptation.”

I’m still smiling when I sit down. Apparently that’s another thing therapy has accomplished in seven days. I’ve become suspicious of observant people and started discussing my emotional problems with receptionists through numerical codes. Peachy.

The door to Kai’s office opens a few minutes later, and the man responsible for my newly diagnosed inability to answer basic questions like a normal person steps into the reception area looking exactly as unnecessarily put together as he did last week.

The suit is pitch black this time, fitted across his shoulders with the same precision that made my phone conversation with Tessa deteriorate into accusations I continue to deny. His white shirt is open at the throat today, without a tie beneath the dark vest, which shouldn’t register as noteworthy considering I’m here to discuss trauma rather than evaluate his wardrobe. And yet, my brain apparently sees no reason the two activities can’t coexist. His glasses are on, his black hair falls slightly across his forehead, and there isn’t a single visible indication that this man has spent the last seven days haunting my kitchen through the medium of unsolicited self-awareness.

His eyes find me almost immediately. “Julia.”

There’s something about the way he says my name that makes it sound less like a greeting and more like confirmation, as though he expected me to be sitting there but still needed to see it for himself.

I stand and pull the strap of my purse over my shoulder. “Dr. Blackwood.”

His gaze passes briefly over my face before dropping toward my hands, and irritation sparks quickly enough that I don’t bother pretending I haven’t noticed.

“Don’t.”

He looks back at me, one dark eyebrow lifting behind his glasses. “I haven’t said anything.”

“You were about to.”

“Was I?”

“You looked at my hands.”

A hint of amusement moves through his expression. “I generally look at people when they walk toward me.”

“Not like that.”

Behind me, Mara makes a suspicious sound that could be a cough if it were allergy season, but it’s not. I turn my head toward her and find her suddenly fascinated by something on her monitor. Traitor.

When I look back at Kai, the amusement is still there, carefully contained around the edges of his mouth.