Page 14 of Hunt for You
Gerald sat back in his chair, staring at me with open frustration. “I have been on this earth more than twice as long as you and I’m telling you, the day will come that you will wish you asked your questions and got your answers before he was gone and there was never another chance.”
I sat forward, elbows on my knees and snarled through my teeth. “And I’m telling you just becauseyouhave daddy issues, doesn’t mean you can project them onto me.”
He shook his head and pointed at me. “Deflection.Again.”
I pointed at myself. “Fucks. Not given.”
I saw the corners of his mouth tighten because he was trying not to smile and got a tiny little warm fizz in my chest.
Gerald wasn’t bad when he wasn’t fixating on trying to solve me like a puzzle. He had a great sense of humor and could be extremely clever and cutting in his commentary on the world. It was my goal before our sessions ended to make him laugh outright—and to not let him know when I thought he was funny. I might have stolen a few of his better, intelligent insults to use in jousts against the trolls online. I thought if we met outside a therapeutic setting, we could have been friends. Or something.
But he was a respected Psychiatrist, and thought he knew everything about me. And because it was his job, he thought he had me figured out.
He knewnothing.
“You aren’t cute,” he muttered, all hint of humor dying on the crags of his aging face.
“So, now we’re listing traits wedon’taspire to? Okay, cool. You aren’t—”
“What happened this week? What are you so scared I’m going to notice that you don’t want to talk about?” he asked quietly.
I froze, then cursed myself when the triumph flashed in his eyes. Trying to play it off, I rolled my eyes and shook my head, sitting back on the couch as an excuse to look away.
“God, you’re like one of those irritating little dogs, yap yap yapping—”
“And you’re panicking. What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on! My life isboring.”
“You could get a job.”
“Why? I don’t need the money. Are you trying to tell me there’s some greater human experience in being forced to bend over and take it from a dude whose only outlet for his masculinerage is to lord the power of the swipe-card over the drones in the office?”
“How about, so you could find a purpose beyond your own impotent rage? Something to contribute to outside your own misery?”
“I have a purpose.”
“No, Bridget, you have an addiction to adrenaline caused by childhood trauma, erratic moods, andprobablyborderline anti-social personality disorder.”
“I’m not anti-social. I’m anti-dicks.”
“Oh, really? How many sexual partners have you had in the past month?”
I folded my arms and gave him a nasty grin. “Notthosekinds of dicks, Gerald. But thank you for taking the cheap shot again. I’m keeping a log.”
“And that, right there, is exactly why we’re never going to get anywhere, Bridget. I am here to help you, to guide you, to offer insight and advice. I am not your combatant to be manipulated or… or forced into submission.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Is that how you like it, Gerald? Do you want to be dominated?”
He gave me a very flat look.
I smiled. But my heart wasn’t in it.
I kind of liked Gerald. He wasn’t intimidated by me. He was the eighth “therapist” I’d had since I was emancipated at the age of sixteen, and the first one to have lasted more than a year since I hit legal adulthood and could tell the Powers That Be where to shove their ass-puckered, pearl-clutchers that called themselves professionals but got wheezy at the first mention of blood play.
God, if they only knew.
But they didn’t. And neither did Gerald. But he gotenough.He didn’t treat me like fragile glass that was going to shatter atthe slightest push. Of course, he was also a right royal pain in the ass, and not in the good way.