I’m not sure which is the more powerful incentive, but something urges me across the room toward Alec and has me sitting cautiously on the end of the couch, opposite him. He already knows my secret. Answering a few more questions surely won’t be the end of the world. In fact, some small part of me almost looks forward to finally being able to bare my soul to someone, even if I have to use the excuse of quid pro quo to do it.
“I go first,” I say as I lean forward to wrap my cold fingers around the even colder glass.
Alec nods, his eyes never leaving mine. “Okay.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Alexandre Buraquinho. My parents are of Brazilian descent.”
“Why do you use a different name to do your work in—”
“I believe it’s my turn,” he interrupts calmly. I nod and wait for his question. “Did your mother involve you in her…work?”
My mouth drops open.
I start with a reasonable question and he jumps in with this?
“That’s not…I don’t think…”
“I answered your question, Samantha,” he points out nonchalantly.
“But I—”
“It’s not my fault you chose to start with such banality.”
I feel the tension around my mouth as my lips draw into a tight, straight line. Already, I feel like I’ve been had. If I’m to continue this, I need to be smarter about the questions I ask because I have no intention of answering all Alec’s probing inquiries about my childhood.
But this one, I have to answer if I’m to get any insight of my own. “No, she never did.” Which is true. It was never her.
Alec nods, his eyes piercing my soul as he searches for…something.
“Why didn’t you introduce yourself as Dr. B when we met in Charleston? I was already your patient.”
“I knew you weren’t ready to meet face-to-face yet.”
“Yet you came to see me anyway. Don’t you think that’s a bit unprofessional?”
Alec shrugs, completely unconcerned. “Maybe. But I wanted to see Laura Drake in her natural environment.”
“Why?”
“She fascinates me.”
“Why?” I ask again.
“Because I felt like we had a lot in common?”
“You don’t know anything about me. You—”
“Oh, I can deduce plenty from reading your work.”
Understanding dawns, and with it comes crushing disappointment. I feel a lump form in my throat. “So I’m like some sort of work project to you? Some kind of freak to observe and dissect?”
Again, he shrugs. “I have a clinical interest in you, yes.” Hearing him say it aloud is nearly devastating. On top of everything else, I feel like such a fool. I take another sip of scotch, focusing on the sting of the fluid as it sears my throat. I have to get out of here.
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Dr. Buraquinho, but you won’t be getting inside my head.” My smile is tight and sarcastic, and my jaws ache from gritting my teeth.
I set my glass down and move to the edge of the cushion, preparing to stand. Alec’s words stop me. “But I have a very different interest in you as a woman. As Samantha.”
“And what’s that?” I ask sharply, anger rising up as a natural attempt to conceal hurt and humiliation.
Alec looks down at his glass where he swirls the amber liquid inside it. “Well, that’s a little more complicated.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I think it’s my turn to ask a few questions, don’t you?”
I want to pout and refuse to answer any more of his queries, but that would make me seem like a petulant child, and I don’t need to make a bigger fool of myself than I already have.
Relaxing back into the cushion in a manner that belies the tension I feel on the inside, I clasp my hands in my lap and answer, “I suppose so.”
There are a dozen questions I can think of that I hope and pray he doesn’t ask. I hold my breath in the silence before he speaks.
“When was your last relationship?”
I’m both puzzled and caught off guard by his question. For whatever reason, I wasn’t expecting for him to go in this direction.
“Two and a half years ago.”
“Why did it end?”
My muscles tighten defensively. This is the tip of an iceberg that’s haunted my entire adult life. I have to be careful how I answer. I can’t risk revealing too much.
“It just…didn’t work out.” I pick at my pants, knowing my answer is a cop out. I hope he doesn’t dig deeper.
“I thought we were being honest here, Samantha.”
There’s something about the way he says my name. Even now, in this office, surrounded by tension, it’s like a caress. I feel it all the way to my core. And I shiver in response.
“I am being honest. That’s the—”
“All right then, let me be more specific. What was the exact cause of death? Did you end it or did he?”
“That’s two questions.”
“Stop deflecting.”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are.”
I want to huff. Or stomp my foot. But I don’t. Thankfully, being Laura Drake has taught me a lot about maintaining a façade, even during difficult times. She’s a strong rock behind which I can hide. And I do. Very often.
I clear my throat. “The ‘cause of death’ as you put it was a result of my own insecurities. It always is.”
“Self-sabotage?”
I think on this. “No, I want nothing more than to have a normal relationship, but—”
“Normal? How do you define normal?”
I feel color bloom in my cheeks. I’m at a total loss on how to answer him without giving too much away, without giving him a glimpse of my shame.
I remind myself that I could just get up and walk out. I don’t have to answer anything. It’s only my curiosity about Alec, my unwillingness to just let the possibility of him go, that spurs me on.
“You can tell me, Samantha,” he says softly. “There’s no judgment here.”
Something inside me clicks, as if for one moment in time, all the walls and the guile and the scars shift just enough to let someone in. And it all happens before I can make the conscious effort to stop it.
“A normal sexual relationship, where I can…receive pleasure as well as give it.”
“Do you feel that you don’t receive pleasure?”