Confidential(85)

He visibly chafed at that, and I enjoyed the sight. He was battling himself, deciding whether he could contradict me or if he had to continue this little routine of contrition. His pride was vying with his pragmatism. “I’m sorry,” he said. Apparently, pragmatism had won out.

“You’re sorry for your pattern of seducing your clients? For making me feel special when I’m just one of a long list? For convincing me that I’d be better off with you than with a husband who was actually trying to make me happy?” The news of Young’s engagement still burned. Sometimes I had the crazy thought that if we’d just picked a different therapist, we might have had a different outcome. That I could be pregnant right now with my husband’s child. Another therapist would have used our individual sessions to teach me to love what I have. What I had. Who I had. The bird in the hand. Now my bush was empty, and it was all Michael’s fault.

“I see that you’ve worked yourself up, that you’ve started to believe this narrative—”

“It’s not a narrative. It’s the truth. I’m alone because of you.”

“We’re both alone because we weren’t good for each other. It wasn’t healthy, for either of us.”

I gave a nasty laugh. “Oh really? You’re alone? You’re not with Lucy or with that other woman, the one who used to see you on Wednesdays?”

He paled. So it was true.

Kate had told me, and I hadn’t wanted to listen. Now he was walking around, and she was in a hospital bed, the living dead.

When he spoke, he was trying to control his voice, just like he’d tried to control me for so long. But he couldn’t anymore, and that was fast dawning on him. “I don’t sleep with my clients. You need to stop this obsession. It’s no good for you.”

“You don’t give a shit what’s good for me! You don’t want me talking to your clients because it’s bad for you.”

He shook his head, as if I’d gone truly crazy but he was willing to bear with me. For my own good, surely, so I could stop this obsession. How arrogant and infuriating. “You’re hurting my ability to treat my clients. Now we have to spend valuable time in the sessions with me clearing my name.”

“You mean covering your ass. Lying to them. I’m sure you tell them I’m some stalker nutjob.”

“Aren’t you?” He must have seen how dangerous that remark was because he backtracked. “I know you’re not. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m hoping you can separate those mistakes from my work. My clients shouldn’t have to pay for them.”

“When I told you I’d made mistakes, you weren’t willing to forgive me. You tortured me.”

“That’s one of my mistakes. I am truly sorry.” He was able to look it, but that didn’t mean shit. He was a monster who could behave like a human, and he could behave well. I’d been fooled, and how many other women had, too? He was dangerous, and he had no conscience. If I didn’t stop him, I didn’t know who would. Like he said himself, I was formidable, so the job fell to me.

“You want me to stop talking to your clients. What about the licensure board?”

“Are you saying you’ve filed a complaint?”

“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you yet. Because if I try to punish you that way, I get punished, too. Scrutinized. Humiliated. Is that part of why you were able to pay off those two women to withdraw their complaints?”

“I didn’t pay anyone off.” But he was clearly rattled. “They realized what they were doing was wrong.”

“Oh, what they were doing was wrong.” The chutzpah of this guy.

“It’s hard for you to believe that, since I violated the ethics of my profession to be with you. But you know that our relationship was entirely consensual. It had been building for months during the therapy, and yes, I should have resisted. But you were irresistible.”

Had he always been this lame, this transparent, and I’d been blinded by what I thought was love? Kate told me to choose, and I chose Michael. That meant I was as much to blame for her destruction as he was, but he had so many more crimes under his belt and the potential to keep on committing them. I couldn’t go back and change what I’d done to Kate, but if I stopped him, I could start to rebalance the ledger, in some cosmic sense.

“Save it, Michael. You’re just going to have to wait and see what my next move will be. You’ll live knowing I’m out here, and I understand exactly who and what you are, and I’m not going to let you get away with it.” I stood up, walked back to my front door, and opened it. It was his turn to get kicked out onto the street. His turn to feel powerless.





CHAPTER 70





GREER


Maybe I shouldn’t have left my company in Chenille’s capable hands quite so soon, because now, I had way too much time on my hands, time to contemplate what a colossal mistake I may have made. I finally decided to trust my instincts, and now, what if I might have chosen a monster for the father of my child? That was the word Flora used.

Might. That was the operative word as far as I was concerned. I didn’t have any proof yet. But if this was a Rosemary’s Baby situation, what could I do? She was in there. Or he was. Someone was growing inside my uterus, and I couldn’t just boot him or her out.