The Fixed Trilogy: Forever With You(122)

That’s what’s on my mind—her.

But what could I tell Alberts about Alayna Withers? About a student I saw for twenty minutes at a business school event? Talking with him is supposed to help sort out my emotions, but these emotions are too vague and unidentifiable. Too intense and strange.

Instead, I choose to mention the detail of my last few days that will interest him the most. “I saw Celia.”

“You did?” Alberts shows his alarm with only a slight raise of a gray eyebrow. “What were the circumstances of that encounter?”

“I’d like to say it was innocent. But it wasn’t entirely.” I run my hands through my hair while he waits for me to continue. “She called me. She’s been using my identity to play someone—an employee of my sister’s.” I cringe thinking about how close to home Celia’s game was with Stacy. And how I did nothing to stop it until the other night.

“Were you aware she was doing this?”

“Yes.” I answer his next question before he has the chance to ask. “No, I didn’t encourage it, but I was aware.” I stand, needing to pace as I talk. “Celia asked me to help her wrap up the game. I agreed. I told her where I’d be and when. She made the arrangements for the rest to happen.”

Glancing toward Alberts, I expect to see a look of disapproval. It’s not there. The man is as careful with his emotions as I am.

Next he’ll want to know why I agreed to help. It’s an easy enough answer—the game needed to end. I didn’t appreciate my name being pulled into her scheme and being available for her staged embrace was the easiest way to end it.

But that’s not what he wants to know. “How did it make you feel? Playing again, after so long?”

I pause, considering his question. There had been a certain spark, a thrill that had run through my body as I’d kissed my childhood friend. Not because of the woman I’d been kissing or even because I’d been kissing at all, but because I knew the effect I was having on Stacy—on Celia’s intended target. In the moment, I wanted to immerse myself in the feeling, wanted to grab it and hold onto it. It was feeling, for God’s sake. Feeling, where I’d been void. All I’d have to do was stop fighting the impulse, and I could have the excitement back in my life. With Celia there, egging me on as she always did, it would have been so easy to fall back into our old patterns, to resume our games.

But all it took was the look in Stacy’s eyes, the devastation she felt at my supposed rejection to remind me that my entertainment came at the price of others’ emotions.

“There was a rush,” I answer honestly. “Then it was over, and until now I hadn’t given it a second thought.” Even without the reminder of the consequences of the game, I would have abandoned any notion to play again when I went to the symposium. That brief spark with Celia had been completely obscured by the charge that jolted through me at the sight of Alayna Withers.

Alberts clears his throat and I look to find he’s studying me. He narrows his eyes. “Then you aren’t concerned that you’ll be pulled back into the game?”

I let out a huff. I’m always concerned I’ll be pulled back into the game. But am I worried that Celia will pull me back? “No, I’m not.”

“Do you plan to see her again?”

My eyes widen when for a second I think that “her” refers to the brunette that’s plaguing my thoughts.

But that’s not who Alberts means.

“No, I don’t plan to see Celia again.” She’d like me to. She asks me over and over. I see her enough at family events as it is. Her presence isn’t a temptation to me as my therapist believes, but seeing her is still not a good idea. She’s a painful reminder of all the wrongs I’ve done in my life. Of all the wrongs I’ve done to her.

I resume my pacing, hoping not to go down that path of conversation today, not wanting to revisit my past.

“Hudson, sit down.”

I’m surprised he hasn’t requested this before. I sit, crossing my ankle over my bouncing knee. “Sorry. I have a lot on my plate at the moment.” I take a quiet but deep breath that does nothing to relieve me.

Dr. Alberts leans back, a distinct contradiction to my own tense posture. “I don’t sense that your anxiety has to do with your meeting with Celia. Is there something else you aren’t telling me?”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to bring up my strange reaction to Alayna Withers, but I’m again lost on how I’d phrase it. “It’s nothing. Work is stressful.” Work is always stressful.

Too late I realize I’ve opened the door to an old argument.

“I hate to beat a dead horse, Hudson, but if we met in my office instead of here, you’d have a chance to escape that stress, if even for a short time.”

I throw him a glare. “If I had to meet in your office, I’d never pull myself away.”

“That’s a problem, Hudson. I’ve tolerated it for the past two years, but I feel we’re at a point in your therapy that this will no longer work. If you want to continue with your recovery, you need to make it your priority. You must decide that pulling yourself away is more important, that your mental health is more important than the work you leave behind.”

I feel my jaw twitch. I agree that my therapy is at a standstill. He’s likely right that to progress further, I’d need to rearrange my current priority list. However, that’s not going to happen. I have no desire to pull myself away. I don’t believe that I am more important than the work I leave behind. I don’t believe that I am more important than anything. And while working with Alberts has kept me from ruining other people’s lives, it hasn’t given my own life any more dimension than it had. I still haven’t found a way to fill the emptiness that resides inside. At least the game was enough to distract me from that. Now I’m ever aware of my hollowness, of my inability to feel more than a dull hum of emotion.