I nod and take a seat at the breakfast bar. “Sounds perfect,” I say. Like you. I keep that thought in my head—it has no place here. She plates up the food and passes it to me followed by a coffee. I can’t help watching her ass sway to the music as she moves around the kitchen. “You not eating?” I ask through a mouthful of eggs.
“No. I’m gonna shower, grab a coffee, and head to work.” She goes to leave the kitchen, but I stand, blocking her way.
“You need to eat,” I say. She shakes her head, but I’m already leading her to the table. “You can’t go around not eating,” I add, pulling her onto my lap. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want her to rush off that I choose to sit her here. I spoon some of the eggs and hold it out for her. She side-eyes me and I raise my brows, letting her know this is not up for discussion. Eventually, she rolls her eyes, accepting that it’s the only way she’ll get to move from my lap, and she takes the eggs. I take a bite and then load it up again for her. This time, she takes the food without argument.
When the plate is clean, she twists slightly to face me better. She raises her hand slowly, watching me carefully as she moves it towards my chest. My jaw clenches, and without realising it, the hand that holds her on my lap bites into her thigh. My chest rises and falls faster as I watch her bring her hand to my chest, and when she finally places it there, I’m so tense and wound tight that the breakfast threatens to make a reappearance.
“Tell me why you hate it so badly?” she whispers. I stare hard into her kind blue eyes. There’re flecks of grey in her irises and they give them a unique glint that almost distracts me from the anxiety I currently feel from having her gentle hand laid against my chest.
I stand suddenly, and she almost tumbles to the floor. I have her wrist gripped tightly in my hand, and when she winces, I release it like she’s burned me. “I’ve gotta go,” I mumble and rush from the house.
Doctor Chapman looks surprised when she arrives at her office to find me sitting on the steps outside. She must read the distress in my face because she smiles kindly and produces a set of keys. “Let’s go inside.”
I watch from the doorway of her office as she hangs up her coat and bag. I don’t know why I came here. Usually, whenever I’m triggered like that, I find someone willing and fuck them until the anxiety eases. “I tried. You said to talk to someone I liked. I talked.”
Doctor Chapman assesses me from her spot by her desk. “And it didn’t go well?”
“Yeah, no.” I sigh and scrub my hands over my face. “I slept. For the first time in, I don’t even know, I slept. I spent the day with her yesterday. We hung out. I’ve never done that before,” I muse. I step further into the office. “We watched movies. We had dinner with her mum. She showed me her charity work.”
“That sounds amazing. I asked you to try and talk and you did all that. Elijah, that sounds like progress.”
“Then she touched me,” I add, and Doctor Chapman presses her lips together. “I took off.”
“She didn’t know you don’t like to be touched?”
“We haven’t discussed it. I think she has an idea. Whenever she’s tried to before, I’ve stopped her. But what the fuck do I say?” I feel angry and I clench my fists again. “She’s gonna think I’m a fuckin’ freak. She ain’t like the other girls. She’ll ask questions. She’ll push.”
“If you like this girl, why can’t you open up?”
“I told you!” I snap. “She’ll think I’m a freak.”
“Or she’ll take it easy with you,” she suggests. I close the office door and flop down in the nearby seat. “How does it make you feel? When she touches you, what happens?”
“It makes my skin crawl,” I mutter. “I want to get her away from me.”
“Years ago, when you said you had sex for money, did those women touch you?”
I think back and nod. “Yeah.”
“Can you remember when touching started to become an issue?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe after social services got involved. I was arrested when I was sixteen for drug dealing. I only had a bit on me. It wasn’t really enough for them to take it as far as a court case, but it was enough for them to pull me and dig around in my background. I guess when it all came out and I started talking to the cops, they made me see that those women . . . ” I shudder. “That it was all wrong.”
“You realised it was wrong, but it was not your fault. You were doing what you had to do to survive,” she soothes.
“I felt dirty,” I mutter.
“Tell me, Elijah, how do you feel around this woman you like?”
The thought of Eva brings a smile to my face. “She’s light. A beautiful light in this shitty world. She’s happy all the time and it’s annoying as hell,” I say affectionately. “I feel good when she’s around.”
“And when you think about her with you, standing next to you, what do you think other people see?”
“That she’s too good for me. That I’m all kinds
