Leaning back in her chair, she surveyed Anita’s office, feeling a sense of peace. Stacks of journal articles, rows of textbooks, carefully arranged teacups—she’d spent many an afternoon in this cluttered yet homey office as a graduate student, discussing research projects or helping Anita grade the undergraduates’ tests and papers. Though not quite as familiar as the therapy setting, the academic environment was wholly comforting.
A knock on the door made Sophie sit upright, and she tentatively called, “Come in?”
Once Sophie recognized the long brown hair and blue eyes of her former roommate, she popped out of the chair with an excited grin. “Kirsten!”
Kirsten’s smile was tempered only by a sad glance toward Sophie’s arm sling—a reminder of the trauma they’d endured at Carlo’s hand—and she gently hugged her friend.
“What are you doing here, Kir?” Sophie gestured for her to sit across the desk.
“I’ve got some problems making the deadline for the paper, Dr. Taylor,” she joked.
With a feigned scowl, Sophie informed her, “No extensions, you slacker. Ten points off for each day late.”
They smirked at each other, and Kirsten revealed her real reason for visiting the Psychology Department: “I just had a meeting with David.”
Humiliation overtook Sophie, but she feigned excitement. “Awesome! Did you set a date for your defense?”
“Yep.” Kirsten grinned proudly, “August twenty-fifth.”
“That’s in less than two weeks!”
Kirsten suddenly looked anxious. “Don’t remind me. I’m already freaking out.”
Sophie’s eyes filled with sympathy. Her roommate had finally finished writing her dissertation, and all that remained was an oral exam: a face-off with five faculty members who would fire tough questions. Sophie had adeptly endured her own dissertation defense three years ago, but she’d benefitted from Anita’s undying support. Kirsten’s relationship with her advisor, David Alton, was not as encouraging or productive, and Sophie hoped she wasn’t to blame for David’s lack of mentoring.
“Have you, um, run into David yet?” Kirsten asked.
Sophie blushed. “Not yet, luckily.”
“You’re going to have to see him sometime, you know.”
“I’m trying to delay it as long as possible.”
Kirsten watched her friend squirm. David was a Richard Gere lookalike whose graying hair made him even more desirable and debonair as he aged, just like the actor. The year he’d taught
Psychological Assessment
to their graduate class, Sophie had fallen hard for him, despite Kirsten’s warnings. Kirsten had been appalled that Sophie obsessed over a married man, but Sophie had insisted his marriage seemed unhappy, based on a few comments he’d sprinkled here and there.
It was precisely the type of inappropriate romantic relationship her psychologist was now trying to help her avoid. Hunter and Sophie had been processing the years of painful disapproval from her own father—pain that likely led her to seek solace in the arms of bad boys and older men. Sophie’s infatuation with her professor had ended badly when he’d firmly told her she’d misconstrued any possibility of a relationship between them. She’d never felt so embarrassed—until her prison sentencing, that is.
Shaking off shameful memories, Sophie assured Kirsten, “You’re gonna do great, you know.”
“This damn dissertation has been hanging over my head for so long. If I fail—”
“You
won’t
fail. I’ve read your manuscript and it’s awesome, Kir.” Noticing the seed of doubt still blooming on her friend’s face, Sophie added, “Did I ever tell you what Anita said about the dissertation defense?”
Kirsten shook her head.
“She said we shouldn’t call it a defense. That makes us think of a tense standoff or something. Your committee’s not against you. They
want
you to succeed.” Sophie giggled. “They want you to finally graduate and get the hell out of here!”
Kirsten narrowed her eyes.
“It’s not a dissertation defense,” Sophie continued, “but rather a dissertation
revelation
.”
Taking in her roommate’s words, Kirsten nodded slowly. “I like that. My revelation is coming soon then, I guess.”
“Damn straight. Hey, are you ready to go? I was just about to head to Grant’s apartment.”
“It’s your apartment too,” Kirsten reminded her.
“I know.” Sophie packed up her tote bag. “But it’s so new. It’s hard to think of as mine too. Are you, um, still staying with your parents in the ’burbs?”
Kirsten’s apartment was currently cordoned off as a crime scene. “Yeah, and they’re driving me
nuts
.”
The friends emerged onto the hallway of the academic building, chuckling, then froze at the sight of a self-possessed gray-haired man crossing their path. David’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Sophie’s heart hammered in her chest.
“Hello, um, Dr. Alton,” Sophie stammered, her face on fire.
“Please call me David, Sophie. I hear we’re to be colleagues now.”
To her surprise, she felt not one spark when he took her hand in his and shook it. Surely a man who’d been her crush for over a year would elicit at least some sort of physical reaction?
“What happened to your arm?” David asked, nodding at her sling.
Sophie was suddenly grateful that her meddling father had managed to use his influence to keep her involvement in the shooting out of the newspapers. Of course David knew about her ethical breach and stint in prison, but she didn’t exactly want to broadcast her latest Mafia misadventure.
Noticing her friend’s silence, Kirsten turned to her advisor. “Um, David? She had an accident, but she’d rather not disclose the details. She’ll be out of the sling in a couple of weeks.”
He hesitated, puzzled by the evasive response, but his suave demeanor soon returned. “Just in time for your defense then,” he nodded, aiming a polished smile at Kirsten.
Seeming to regain her composure, Sophie quietly corrected, “Her revelation.”
Shooting her a confused look, David studied Sophie for a moment before seeming to arrive at a conclusion. “Well, then, I must be off. My son’s got a baseball game later.” His smile now seemed plastic. “Nice to see you both.”
Once he was out of earshot, Sophie practically melted into the wall behind her, murmuring, “Oh my God.”
“
That
should be interesting—working with him all semester.”
Sophie gave a beleaguered half-chuckle. “No kidding. I’m in total hell right now.” She gave a dramatic sigh, but Sophie had to admit the interaction hadn’t been quite as humiliating as she’d expected. She was pleased to find herself not attracted to him one bit this time around. That ship had sailed…and now she had McSailor. A warm smile crossed her lips as she thought of her gorgeous, gentle, seafaring hero.
She sensed a buzzing in her bag, which was accompanied by dismay as she reached in to find her phone. “Please tell me my father hasn’t figured out how to send text messages.”
Her dismay switched immediately to delight as she read the message:
How’s my beautiful Bonnie today?
“Grant has a cell phone!” she said with a laugh.
As Hunter followed the attractive couple down the hallway to their second therapy session, his conversation with a colleague a few days ago floated through his mind.
“It’s wise of you to consult about this,” Michelle Mendota told him.
Embarrassed, Hunter glanced up at the psychologist across the table in the coffee shop.
“It’s difficult for any of us when we’re attracted to a client,” she continued, brushing an unruly strand of long, wavy black hair over her shoulder. “But as you know, consultation’s the best way to handle an ethical dilemma.”
He could sense her intelligent brown eyes boring into him, and his cheeks still felt warm after confessing he felt a physical attraction to Grant Madsen. However, Hunter already knew consultation was indeed the optimal route, so he faced the mortification of confiding in his best friend. “I don’t want to fall into the same trap my female client did,” he said with a shaky sigh.
“Yeah, her story’s rather horrendous,” Michelle agreed, shuddering. “But the guy—he’s heterosexual, right? So he won’t be returning your affection?”
“I think so. At least my gaydar isn’t picking up much activity there.”
Michelle returned Hunter’s smirk before she asked, “And you don’t think it’s a good idea to refer them to another therapist?”
“That’s a tough one.” Hunter sighed. “It was my first inclination—to make a referral—but my female client practically begged me to stay on.” He ran one hand through his neat blond hair. “And I’ve done some good work with her; she’s come a long way. She’s convinced her boyfriend is a good guy, but who’s to say he’s not just like his brother? I want to help her safely figure it out, and that’ll be easier if I can observe their dynamics, so I agreed to take them in the end. I guess I feel…protective of her or something.”
Michelle smiled. “Sounds like you’re drawn to both the man
and
the woman in this couple.”
Hunter chuckled. “Yeah, if she were a man, I’d probably have the hots for her too.”
“Oh, Hunter, you’ll be fine. I trust you to do the right thing. You’re the one who helped me through that awful case, right?” Michelle’s records had once been subpoenaed for a nasty divorce trial, and she’d struggled mightily with the ethics of breaching her client’s confidentiality. “But there’s one thing you could do to make it
impossible
for you to get involved with the client.”
Hunter’s eyebrows scrunched together. “What’s that?”
“You could tell Bradley.”
His eyes got huge as he almost choked on his coffee. “Tell Bradley? What the hell for?”
Michelle stifled a grin. “That’d make it totally above board,” she explained. “No secrets. It’s normal to feel attracted to clients now and then, and Bradley would understand.”
“If you haven’t noticed, Michelle, he’s kind of the jealous type.”
“Well, you’re not going to
act
on your feelings. And telling Bradley would just about guarantee that. You’ve been together ten years—Bradley can handle it…”
As he followed Grant and Sophie into his office, Hunter felt slightly ill. He hadn’t drummed up the courage to tell his partner about Grant, and he didn’t know if he ever would. Bradley was a brilliant plastic surgeon, but sometimes he didn’t behave very logically upon experiencing intense emotions. And Hunter even glancing at another man tended to arouse such emotions.
“So,” Hunter smiled at Sophie, ignoring Grant for the moment. “How’s your week been?”
“Pretty good. I can’t wait to start teaching.” She returned his smile and seemed to wait expectantly for Grant to add his two cents.
Grant uncomfortably cleared his throat. “It was, uh, fine, sir.”
Hunter stole a glance at the clownfish in the aquarium rather than meeting the stunning crystal-blue eyes of his client, then broke the silence. “One thing I typically ask clients to do in the first session is set goals for therapy. We had some, uh,
catching up
to do in our first meeting, though, and ran out of time.”
Sophie managed a sly grin.
“What would you like to accomplish in here?” Hunter continued. “What would you like to improve or change? Grant, how about you go first.”
Grant looked startled. Tapping his fingers nervously on his thigh, he eventually said, “My one and only goal is to stay out of prison.”
Hunter was dismayed. “Meaning that if you don’t come to counseling, your PO will put you back in prison? You’re only here because you’re mandated to be?”
Grant nodded.
“That goal sucks, Grant.”
Both Sophie’s and Grant’s eyebrows shot up, and Hunter decided to explain further.
“What I meant,” he said, trying again, “was that I understand you’re mandated to be here. But you could really get something out of this, Grant. You could work on improving your relationship with Sophie, which I know means a lot to you. You could process your grief over your cousin murdering your brother. You could explore some life goals for yourself, now that you’re trying to make a fresh start. The sky’s the limit. For you to just sit here and tell me you’re fine—well, that’s a total waste of time for you and for me.”
Grant had been inching up straighter and taller with each word out of Hunter’s mouth, and by the time the psychologist finished with the diatribe, he sat rigidly erect on the sofa. His eyes attentive and his mood sober, he replied, “Yes, sir.”
“So I’ll ask you again, what are your goals for therapy?”
Stealing a helpless glance at his girlfriend, Grant began sweating. He felt like he was back in college ROTC again, enduring a quiz about Navy history from a superior.
Sophie watched him squirm, and she offered, “Do you want to deal with your nightmares?”
Grant whipped his head toward her, disconcerted by her question. “Uh—um—”
“You’re having nightmares?” Hunter interjected.
“Not really,” Grant lied.
Sophie frowned. Although they’d only spent the night together perhaps four times, on two of those occasions Grant’s sleep had been interrupted by what appeared to be intensely distressing nightmares.
“You said something about improving our relationship, sir?” Grant quickly added, redirecting the conversation. “That would be one of my goals.”
“Okay, and what would you like to improve about the relationship?”
We need to stop lying to each other
, Sophie supplied silently on Grant’s behalf.
Then Grant turned to her and shrugged. “I don’t really know
how
we could improve our relationship. It’s perfect already.”
Hunter watched Sophie practically swoon over Grant’s comment, and he chuckled softly. “Well, my work is done here. Your relationship’s already perfect.”
Noticing Hunter’s grin, Sophie said, “Our relationship
is
awesome. Grant’s right about that.” She clasped his hand. “But I do have an idea for something we could work on.” Sophie took a deep breath. “Um, I think we need to be more open with each other.”
Hunter nodded. “I agree. There’s quite a bit you two seem not to know about each other.”
And a lot I don’t want Sophie to know
, Grant thought.
“So that’s one of Sophie’s goals: to be more open in your communication with each other. Grant, how about you?”
Grant met the psychologist’s inquisitive glance and chewed on his lower lip.
“Hunter, Grant’s never been in therapy before,” said Sophie. “Maybe we could explain what it’s like?”
Hunter sat back in his chair and peered at her thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s a good idea.”
Feeling the psychologist studying her, Sophie turned to face Grant. “So, in therapy, you talk about what’s going on in your life—the good stuff and the bad stuff. And the therapist helps you make sense of it all by asking you questions so you’ll see things in a different light, notice patterns—”
Continuing to sense the heat of Hunter’s stare, Sophie turned to him and abruptly asked, “What?”
“Speaking of patterns,” Hunter said, “I’m noticing one right now. Did you notice that was the second time you swooped in and ‘rescued’ Grant?”
She appeared indignant. “What do you mean?”
“He was uncomfortable—anxious—and you jumped in to answer the question for him. Twice.”
“I did not.”
The corner of Hunter’s mouth twitched.
Grant slowly began nodding. “Yeah, you did. I was trying to think of an answer to Dr. Hayes’ question—”
“Not that you minded her interference,” Hunter broke in, earning a rueful grin from Grant. Turning to Sophie, Hunter inquired, “Why won’t you let him answer my question?”
With an affronted look, Sophie mulled over what had just transpired. “Well, I know he hates therapy, and I didn’t want him to feel anxious.”
“I see,” Hunter replied. “And do you have any control over whether or not Grant feels anxious?”
Sophie squirmed while Grant watched with fascination. “No,” she admitted in a low voice.
“Exactly. I’m sure Grant has some difficult parts of his past—I can only imagine what it’s like to be the son of Enzo Barberi. He’s had experiences that undoubtedly create a lot of anxiety for him now. And perhaps he’ll share some of that with us when he’s ready. But his history happened long before he met you, Sophie, and you simply can’t stop him from feeling anxiety, or any emotion for that matter.”
Sophie groaned.
“Are you all right?” Grant asked, looking anxious yet again.
She exhaled loudly. “I’m doing that enmeshed thing again.”
Grant appeared puzzled. “Enmeshed?” He looked to Hunter for help.
“I’ll get to your question, but first I want to know what your college major was, Grant.”
Startled, he tentatively answered, “MT, um, military technologies.”
“Oh, right. You were in ROTC?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He went to Notre Dame,” Sophie proudly butted in before emitting a small gasp and clamping her hand over her mouth, glancing guiltily at Hunter.
“That’s okay, Sophie, you weren’t rescuing him this time,” said Hunter with a grin. “You were merely bragging about your boyfriend.”
She returned his smile and Hunter continued, glancing at Grant. “I was thinking you might be a visual learner with a major like that. Let me draw what Sophie and I were discussing—this idea of an enmeshed relationship.”
He extracted a pad of paper from the end table and began drawing a series of circles. “I want to talk about three kinds of relationships. If you envision a circle as representing a person in a relationship, here’s the first type: distant.”
He drew two circles rather far apart. “In a distant relationship, there’s not much caring or time spent together—it’s like two people simply coexisting. The two might disagree, but this doesn’t cause much conflict because they don’t really show much caring toward each other.”
Next Hunter carefully drew one circle right on top of another, and Grant was amused that the psychologist’s tongue stuck out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated deeply.
“This is an enmeshed relationship,” Hunter explained, “like the one between Sophie and her mother.”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“In enmeshment, the two people are very close. They spend a lot of time together. When one person feels a certain way, the other person often feels that way too, and they tend to take responsibility for each other’s feelings. You don’t hear about disagreement in enmeshed relationships, because disagreement and conflict tend to go underground.
“Common language used in an enmeshed relationship might be ‘You’re not mad, right?’ or ‘Don’t confront her—I’ll take care of it’ or even ‘You complete me.’” Hunter made a gagging motion and Sophie giggled. “When Sophie tried to rescue you from feeling anxious, Grant, I called her out because that’s exactly what she used to do for her mother. She took care of her mother’s emotional well-being while ignoring her own needs.
“Sometimes this enmeshed pattern can happen in families with addiction or abuse. Let’s say the father’s an alcoholic, and the entire family tiptoes around him, trying not to provoke him. Their needs are subverted to his needs. That’s enmeshment, or codependence.”
“Is that like enabling too?” Sophie asked.
“Hmm, could be. What do you think?” Hunter and Sophie’s curious voices faded as Grant felt pulled back in time.
The pounding noise of water gushing from the faucet flooded his senses, and he could feel his mother’s gentle touch on his ribcage, delicately brushing her fingers over the angry bruise. She’d just removed his T-shirt in preparation for a bath. He was five years old.
“Oh, honey,” she cried.
He shied away from her hand and turned his face to the wall, feeling color rise in his cheeks. He’d been a bad boy, and his father had thrown him against the wall.
“I’m sorry, Grant,” Karita choked out, her voice barely audible over the rush of water. “He didn’t mean it.”
The little boy closed his enormous blue eyes and nodded solemnly.
“You have to be more careful the next time,” she added. “No soccer balls in the house.”
He nodded again. Then he drew his small hand toward her face, cautiously lifting a veil of blond hair from her temple, revealing a purple contusion blooming above her high cheekbone. “You hafta be more careful too, Mommy.”
Her shiny, crystal-blue eyes welled up in tears.
“Grant?” He heard his name and tried to get his bearings. “Grant?” the male voice prompted again.
He found himself staring into Hunter’s concerned hazel eyes, and he swallowed hard, surreptitiously glancing next to him at Sophie, who appeared equally alarmed.
“Looks like you’re deep in thought,” Hunter observed, wondering what traumatic memory his client might have been re-experiencing.
“Yes, sir,” Grant responded in a trembling voice. He clamped his teeth together. They were both still staring at him, and he felt panicked as the heaviness of shame weighed down on his chest. “I was, uh, just thinking—” he nodded toward the drawing of stacked circles “—that, um, enmeshment doesn’t sound all that bad in a romantic relationship. Two people on top of each other, I mean.”
Grant’s nervous chuckle was met by dead silence and a palpable awkwardness in the room. Evidently his lame attempt to divert attention away from his sadness wasn’t fooling the two psychologists studying him suspiciously. He stole a glance at Sophie and found her looking back at him with such concentrated sympathy that he felt a catch in his throat, a wellspring of emotion threatening to erupt.