If I’d never questioned before this exact moment that Dr. Watkins was the worst kind of quack, this freak show would do it. Everyone’s eyes were on me, crawling across my skin like slinking worms, and it made me want to close myself back into the car and go back home. The other guys had lost interest in me quickly, but the two women were trying to suck my soul out of my body with the way they zeroed in on me.
I took a deep breath through my nose and edged my leg away from the blonde to my right as unobtrusively as I could manage, when all I wanted to do was plant my boot on her chair and shove it backwards. The smell in the massive, empty space of the gym was stale, and I wanted to be anywhere else.
When I cracked my neck and stared up at the rafters in the ceiling, trying to ignore the rolling knot of nerves in my stomach, I heard the guy next to me shift in his chair with an obnoxious creak.
“You shouldn’t even be able to see me right now, Doc,” he mumbled. “I’m not even here. I’m not even here.”
I rubbed at my forehead and sighed.
Dr. Watkins cleared his throat. “Derrick, would you like to take a turn and talk today? Did you try to interact with some new people over the last week?”
Derrick glanced nervously at me and I clenched my jaw together. When I turned my head away from him, I caught the eyes of the woman across from me. She had long brown hair that looked silky, and I rubbed the tips of my fingers along the tops of my thighs when I found myself wondering how it felt. Her head tilted to the side, and I wished she didn’t have the kind of big, long-lashed eyes that made me twitchy, made my muscles lock up. But the absolute worst part about her—beyond any of her individual physical traits—was that every single time I looked over at her, she was staring directly at me.
Slowly, she crossed her legs and licked her pale pink lips. I darted my eyes away from her and looked back at Dr. Watkins, who looked far more exhausted than usual in my individual sessions with him. Generalized anxiety disorder, the tidy label that they’d given me years earlier when I was still in high school, wasn’t something I was ashamed of anymore. It was just a part of who I was, something that I listed right above my consuming desire for my privacy, beneath my obsession with working out, probably equal to my general likes and dislikes. It was just … who I was.
Xavier Lockwood, age twenty-six, only son of a billionaire, neat freak, anxious wreck, occasionally paranoid, completely inept when a beautiful woman showed me a modicum of attention.
Pleasure to meet you.
I leaned forward in my seat, tuning out Watkins’ voice as he talked to “I’m not here” guy, and I braced my forearms on my knees so I could stare down at the floor. Her eyes were still trained on me, the Disney princess on the other side of the circle. I could feel them burning a hole in the top of my head.
What did she think when she looked at me? Did she wonder what my kind of crazy was? We all had something, of course. It was why Watkins wanted me to come. He was my fourth therapist in six years, and I didn’t hate him as much as the ones that preceded him.
“It’s not about sharing your deepest, darkest secrets, X,” he’d said the week before. “It’s about realizing that you’re not alone in the things you struggle with. You can just sit back and observe for a while until you’re comfortable, if that helps.”
Even the one word I’d let out felt rusty when it came up my throat. I hadn’t planned to help her, not until I was standing over her and offering her my hand. But no one had moved to help her while she laid awkwardly on her back, the chair impeding her ability to stand up easily. Unconsciously, my hand started smoothing back and forth, back and forth on the material of my jeans. We’d barely touched, because as soon as her feet were on the floor, I’d released her hand instantly.
When you intentionally lived your life to remove yourself as much as possible from the outside world, it didn’t take long to realize how little you experienced touch from other people. My parents were not affectionate, though their attempts at micromanaging my life were epic. But I didn’t receive hugs from them, not even a casual thump on the back from my father when he stopped working at his financial conglomerate long enough to share a meal with Mother or me. I didn’t go to their house often, because the weight of their eyes on me, the expectations that they had for my life felt like a choking weight shackled to my entire body. But that weight, that pressing sense of responsibility, was the trade-off for the lack of affection that they probably didn’t even notice.
Which is why the short burst of time that her hand slid into mine went off in my brain like a camera flash, like someone shot off fireworks underneath my skin. Even though I was curious if she was still staring at me, I didn’t look. The meathead who’d done nothing but scowl the entire time spoke, answered a question from Watkins in the sort of gruff, hard syllables that hurt my ears, and I leaned back in my chair again so I could pull my phone out of my back pocket.
“Dr. Watkins,” she said from across the circle of chairs, her voice smoother and sweeter than I expected and the surprise was enough to make me lift my head in her direction. Her eyes, a greenish bluish gray that looked like someone dipped a glass bottle into fog, were looking into mine so unwaveringly that I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “What happens if someone breaks the phone rule?”
“Well, Miss Connors,” he said distractedly, blinking over at her. “I’d ask them to put it away.”
She narrowed her eyes at me and a hot flush covered my chest while I worked to hold her stare. Moving slowly, I slipped my phone back into my pants and she gave me that same little half smile from earlier that made me notice how pink her lips were.
“Was that a question with a purpose, Lucy? Or were you just trying to find a way to add to the conversation?”
Lucy. She looked like a Lucy.
For a brief moment, her eyes flicked away from my face to look at Dr. Watkins and I drew in a heavy, relieved breath. Her focus felt strange, and absently, I wondered if she knew who my parents were. Chicago was a big city, but people who ran in the social and financial strata of my parents had recognizable names to anyone who was paying attention. It’s why I’d made Dr. Watkins promise that he wouldn’t use my last name in the group.
Lucy sighed, the sound dramatic and weighted. The girl next to me made a scoffing sound and shifted close enough to me that her shoulder brushed against mine. My skin crawled and I moved away from her.
“So, did I ever tell you guys about the time I got this scar?” Lucy asked, leaning forward so she was able to lift the side of her shirt. I swallowed hard at the smooth curve of her waist, and the “I’m not here” guy choked on his spit when she arched her back to point at a long, thin scar.
“No,” Watkins said, clicking the edge of his pen before he started writing. “But please, we’d love to hear it.”
Lucy looked back at me while her shirt was still pulled to the side and I glanced away when she dropped it back into place. “Well, this was a few years ago. I woke up on this random boat, right?” Her hands made some waving motions in front of her. “Middle of the ocean, and I had no idea who I was, with this gunshot wound right there on my side.”
I narrowed my eyes at her when she scratched lightly at the inside of her elbow. Briefly, I looked around the circle, and Watkins was the only one who was even listening to her speak. Real supportive group.
“Sounds serious,” Watkins said, eyes on his pad of paper. I glanced at him to see if he was being genuine, but he was harder to read than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Unless you could read Hebrew, which I could. It’s amazing how many languages you can learn when you don’t leave your house very often.
“It was serious,” Lucy continued. If she realized I was the only one looking at her, she did a damn good job of hiding it. “I made it to Paris and found this bank that supposedly had my personal shit in a safe deposit box. So, when the bank dude opens it up, there’s like … passports. Dozens of passports, so I figure I must be a spy, right? Or a criminal.” Then she laughed like she’d just shared some inside joke, and I pinched the bridge of my nose. The girl next to me shifted and sighed, staring at her fingernails like they’d teleport her out of the room.
“I thought you couldn’t remember who you were?” Watkins asked. He was looking at Lucy now, his tone dry but his face interested. Maybe he wasn’t a quack at all, because, God, he was good. I hope he got paid a shit ton. “What made you think you were a criminal?”
“Oh come on,” I said in an irritated burst. Watkins and Lucy both stared at me in shock. “You don’t actually believe her right now, do you?”
Son of a bitch, Watkins looked away and scrawled something on his notepad. Lucy kept looking at me like the cat who ate the canary. I rubbed the back of my neck at her scrutiny, uncomfortable with the fact that not only had I spoke without thinking, but that I’d seemingly played into her strange little game.
“Of course Doc believes me.” She straightened her shoulders and held my reluctant stare.
I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess, a pretty woman from the bank drove you around in her crappy car?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “She had a friendly face.”
Why wasn’t Watkins calling her out on this bullshit? “Listen, Bourne, that’s an appendectomy scar, not a bullet wound.”
“Or maybe it was a really big bullet.” She widened her eyes and leaned forward in her seat, and I found myself staring at the way her hair fell over her shoulder. “It was like, a fifty-caliber gun or something.” After she said it, she gave one of the bored looking guys a quick side-eyed look, but he’d fallen asleep in his chair. She frowned and then looked back at me. “Are you calling me a liar?”
Watkins had stopped writing and was watching us with unconcealed interest.
“I’m not calling you anything,” I said carefully, though in my head, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was a pathological liar. “But yes, it’s highly unlikely that happened to you considering it’s fiction.”
Her arms hooked around the back of her chair, which pushed her chest out. “Maybe the Bourne movies were based on my life.” She raised one eyebrow. “Did that ever occur to you?”
“No.”
She smiled at my curt answer, and the tiny glimpse of her white teeth made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Why was she smiling at me? I wasn’t being funny. No one ever thought I was funny.
I blinked away from her piercing, stupidly green eyes and tried to pretend like I wasn’t obsessing over whether they were all staring at me, only giving a quietly spoken answer to the blonde next to me when she asked my name. Though, the more appropriate description wasn’t ask. She practically eye-raped me, leaning over at an awkward angle so that her pink shirt gaped open. I kept my eyes straight ahead on Lucy’s shoes when I begrudgingly answered. Dr. Watkins beamed at the fact that I’d responded, which made me sigh. The entire exercise made me feel fifteen again.
My fingers tightened into a fist, and I longed to be home, working the punching bag in my customized gym in the finished basement.
“Okay everyone,” Watkins said after another prolonged silence. “Thanks for coming. We’ll see you again next week.”
I stood from my chair so fast that it tipped over behind me in a loud rattle against the shiny gym floor, and I could hear the low puff of laughter come from Lucy. While I walked to the door, I could feel her eyes on my back the entire way, and I had to fight not to turn back around to look at her.
The gym door popped open with a clang, and my driver Claude stood up from where he was leaning against the black Audi Q2, the most sedate of the cars that I owned, but rarely drove.
Seventy-seven percent of car accidents happened within fifteen miles of home, and every single damn time I crossed within that fifteen-mile radius of my Lake Forest home, I swear I could feel the knot in my belly ratchet up a half a size in intensity. A professional driver already paid by my father to serve our family felt like the most prudent way for me to get around. Plus, Claude respected the fact that I detested small talk, unlike the typical taxi or Uber driver.
Talking the weather with someone I didn’t really know made me want to gouge my eyes out on a regular basis. So when Claude opened the door with a brief nod and polite smile on his lined face, I gave him as warm of a smile as I was capable, which wasn’t saying much. As he rounded the front of the car and I clicked my seatbelt into place, I saw Lucy leave the building and glance at the car with slightly narrowed eyes.
Then the car took off, and she was out of sight. I breathed easily for the first time in the last two hours.