Billionaire Undaunted(22)

He activated the metal door to the garage hallway by using the fingerprint scanner again, and then pushed the doorway open, a hidden door that wasn’t really detectable from inside the house unless one was really looking.

He strode down the hallway, but stopped short when he heard Ellie’s voice. He could see her at the kitchen table with her laptop, her eyes glued to the screen as she spoke.

It took him a moment to realize what she was doing. She’d been having a video chat.

The counseling sessions!

He’d known Ellie was going to use her new laptop for sessions with a psychologist in England, but he hadn’t known they were starting today. Of course, he and Ellie hadn’t really had a chance to have a civil conversation this morning before he’d retreated to his lab.

He leaned against the wall and froze, not wanting to interrupt her, and shamelessly listening in on her conversation.

Unfortunately for him, they seemed to be wrapping things up.

Ellie sighed as she appeared to reply to the therapist. “Thank you, Natalie. It helped a lot to talk about how I feel. I know it’s very late there for you, but I’m glad you agreed to help me.”

Zane watched as Ellie said good-bye and confirmed another appointment in a few days. She closed the laptop with a pensive look on her face.

She needs to talk; she needs support.

He clenched his fists as he cursed himself for not knowing how to really talk to her. He wanted to be there, wanted to be her sounding board. He just wasn’t sure exactly how to be what she needed right now.

He knew a very big part of Ellie wanted to just forget what had happened to her, just like he wished he could do. But it wasn’t healthy for her to keep denying that she’d been traumatized by her seven-month ordeal. She’d never really heal if she stuffed it away inside her and never pulled it out and dealt with her emotions.

He moved into the kitchen and sat down across from her. “Do you want to talk about it? How did it go?” He hoped like hell she’d gotten over her anger from earlier that morning. He didn’t want her to shut him out, even though he didn’t have a fucking clue what to say.

She shook her head, but started to talk anyway. “Natalie thinks I have post-traumatic stress.”

Zane raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?” He didn’t know much about mental health, but he was personally willing to bet that most people who had endured what Ellie had been through were bound to suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

“I suppose I probably do. I can’t hear a noise that reminds me of my time as James’s prisoner without getting nervous and scared. Sometimes I get flashbacks. That’s why I’d rather not acknowledge it at all. But it haunts me. My life is a mess because of what happened. I feel like I’ve lost my independence, my entire life because of what happened. And I’m still afraid of what’s going to happen to me.”

“Not a fucking thing is going to happen to you, Ellie. You’re home with people who care about you in this town. You’re not dependent just because you need some help from friends right now. You’ve been through too much to deal with this alone,” he told her reasonably. “Take the help I’m offering you. Your life will slowly return to normal. You just need time.”

Zane could literally feel her desperation and sorrow, and it nailed him in the chest like a knife. He wanted to make everything all better for Ellie, but he felt so damn powerless. He couldn’t take away her memories or the damage that fucking James had inflicted on her emotionally.

She trained her sapphire eyes on him as she answered, “That’s just it. I’ve never not been able to take care of myself. Things aren’t as bad as I thought they would be. Somebody has been taking care of my bills, and I have an enormous amount of money in the bank. It has to be Chloe, and I’m going to need to talk to her about it.”

“It wasn’t Chloe,” he confessed. “It was me. I paid your bills, and I put money into your checking to cover any bills that might be on auto-pay.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Why?”

Zane clenched his fists on the table. “Because I was never going to admit that you weren’t coming back, and I wanted your life to be as close to normal as possible when we found you. Since you weren’t here to deal with things, I did it for you. That’s what friends do, right?”

He wasn’t about to tell her that he’d needed to take care of her personal life, that he’d needed to do those things to convince himself that she would be back. In a way, it had been therapeutic for him, a way of convincing himself that Ellie wasn’t dead. Chloe had been dealing with enough troubles of her own, and he hadn’t wanted his sister to take care of Ellie’s personal responsibilities. He’d wanted to do it himself.