Uncontrollable Temptations (Tempted #3)(14)

“No worries,” I mumbled, turning my head to glance at the framed degrees that lined the wall.

Fancy.

“This is a nice change,” she probed. And there it was. “You’ve been my patient…for what is it now…two, three months?” “Sixty-three days,” I said, lifting my eyes to hers.

“Okay. In sixty-three days I’ve never seen you wear anything other than sweats.” She remarked, staring at my face. “You have lipstick on.”

“So what?” I asked, shrugging my shoulders. “I didn’t have a chance to go to the laundromat.”

“And the lipstick?”

“I ran out of chap stick,” I replied, sighing heavily, tempted to wipe the lipstick off my lips with the back of my hand. She remained silent, her gaze worked me over as she tried to pick apart my inner thoughts. I squirmed uncomfortably in my chair, wishing like hell I’d disappear, snap my fingers and just vanish. It worked for Barbara Eden.

“I have a closet full of nice clothes,” I whispered. I don’t know what it was about this woman, how she managed to make me confess my deepest thoughts with just a simple glance. I think a part of me believed if I didn’t speak my mind she’d still know everything I was thinking and I’d only be lying to myself. I was very hesitant about therapy at first. I naively believed that speaking to a shrink meant I was crazy. But I learned that it did help, especially for a person like me who had no one else to talk to. I left every session feeling a little less broken and took comfort in the shreds of clarity I gained from my time with Dr. Spiegel.

“Go on,” she encouraged, causing me to stare into her hazel eyes.

I took a deep breath, shrugging my leather jacket off my shoulders and laid it across my lap. It was a splurge I had indulged in before the fire, trying to keep with the latest fashion trends and all that. Dr. Spiegel never met ‘the Reina’ who used to love pretty things. She never got to see the girl who would wake an hour early just to curl her hair or went for weekly manicures. No, she never met ‘the Reina’ who had stock in Macy’s shoe department. Vince Camuto, Michael Kors, Sam Edelman, I had them all: high heels, low heels, boots, booties, even shooties. They all sat in my closet collecting dust in clear plastic bins.

Dr. Spiegel only knew the Reina after the fire, the one who moved to the Projects hoping to hide from the rest of the world. It seemed like a good plan at the time, ditching the sweet life of the suburbs where status mattered, where the neighbors talked shit about you if you walked out of the house without makeup. No one looks at me now. I’m just another struggling soul living amongst the rest of the world, fading into the crowd.

“I had a momentary glimpse of my life before the fire, of the person I was before I became…well…me, I guess,” I frowned because the truth was that girl was just a memory and the girl that hid from the world was who I was now.

“You aren’t two different people, Reina. We’ve discussed this before. There is you, before the traumatic experience, and you now, who is trying to evade that person because of what you’ve been through. They are one and it’s up to you to merge them,” she explained. “What’s happened that has provoked this epiphany?”

“Remember when I mentioned the man that comes into the diner night after night?” I asked, watching her glance down at her notes.

“Jack,” she declared. His name instantly bringing me back to the night before, feeling his body against mine, the soft touch of his hand when he cared for my burn. My hand subconsciously touched the sleeve of my silk blouse that covered the gauze bandage I had placed over it this morning.

“I had an accident last night at work. Johnny, the cook, had gone out for a cigarette and asked me to take the food off the grill and plate it for my customer. I don’t know how I did it, but somehow my arm snagged a burn from the grill. I lost it,” I confessed. “I felt the sting of the burn and all I kept seeing were flashbacks of being trapped in that house, the flames chasing me, lapping at my skin.” I paused, shuddering as I remembered. “I felt like I was there, like I was begging the firemen to help us, even knowing that Danny was already dead,” I continued, lifting my eyes to Dr. Spiegel. “I don’t know if I mentioned that before,” I said.

“You mentioned that you didn’t want to leave Danny. You told me you fought the firemen off at first, begging them to rescue the both of you,” she commented, reading from her notes.

“He was dead,” I whispered. “I came home from dinner with my girlfriends and found him dead in the living room.” I closed my eyes picturing Danny lying face down on the floor, surrounded by his own blood. “I went to check for a pulse, turned over his hand and screamed.” Even now remembering that night, my own screams still echo in my ears. “Whoever killed him had cut off his pinky finger.” I continued, as tears slipped down my cheeks. Quickly wiping them with the back of my hand, I tried to keep talking. “Danny was brutally murdered before the fire started. I didn’t realize at the time that the fire was already on the second floor because I was in shock.” I threaded my fingers through my hair and kept going. “I begged the firemen to take us both because he had suffered enough. He had been brutalized and tortured. He should’ve been spared being burned too.”

Dr. Spiegel leaned over handing me a box of tissues. I plucked a few from the box and wiped at my face.