And wanted.
And craved.
His words from moments ago echoed in his mind. Fall apart for me. If he didn’t watch out, he’d be the one falling apart for her. In every way.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Perceptions
Shayla could barely meet her eyes. She kept snickering and looking away. She’d been like this for the whole session, and Michelle was getting frustrated. Normally, Shayla was a challenge only because she struggled to see her own role in her troubled marriage. But never because she was a laughing bean.
Michelle decided it was time to refocus her patient on the serious nature of the hurdles she was trying to overcome. In the last few sessions, Shayla had finally begun coming to terms with the possibility that she was going to leave her husband. She’d even started talking to an attorney quietly, being cautious to make sure her husband didn’t know she was making plans. While it wasn’t Michelle’s job to advise her on divorce proceedings, it was very much her role to help Shayla out of the marriage with her sanity and her soul intact.
“Are you still feeling that you’re on the right track with the potential separation?”
“I think so,” Shayla said, but then stared pointedly at her silver Tiffany bracelet and began fidgeting with it. She’d never been a fidgeter.
“Are you sure? Are you having second thoughts?” If she wasn’t ready to leave him, then Michelle didn’t want to push her.
Shayla shook her head, her curls bouncing with the movement. But she didn’t look up.
Enough.
Michelle cleared her throat. “Is there a reason you won’t look me in the eyes?”
Shayla snapped up her gaze. “Because all I can see is The Lola now,” she blurted out.
The Lola?
Then it hit her, and her head felt like it was swimming, and her vision went blurry. Please no. Please God no. She’d hoped there weren’t pictures of him using that on her. They’d been on top of the Met Life Tower. Alone. Had his friend at the hotel tipped someone off? But that was weeks ago. There was no way someone had seen or caught that on camera, right?
“What do you mean?” she asked carefully.
Shayla shook her head and took a deep breath, then words spilled out in a wild rush. “I’m so sorry, but you’ve taught me to be direct, you’ve taught me to speak my mind, and I can’t hold back anymore. I know this is personal, but all I can think about now is how he must use all these toys on you. The One, The Dream, The Lola. I have them all. I’m in a loveless marriage; I need my BOBs. And now you’re dating him. It’s all I can see when I look at you now, and if I don’t acknowledge it, it’s all I will ever see. So I just have to get it out there,” Shayla said, her eyes wide with her confessional, her hands slicing the air.
Michelle felt as if she’d been walloped. Smacked with a pillowcase full of bricks. She nodded curtly, accepting all that Shayla had dropped in her lap. Lines were being crossed left and right, up and down, as her personal and professional life collided in an unexpected zigzag. She’d counseled patients through emotional crises, through breakdowns, through divorce, death and love unreturned. But knowing what to say next and how to handle Shayla’s TMI about her was one of the toughest challenges she’d ever faced.
She latched onto Carla’s words about refocusing the patient. She flashed back to all her coursework on how to manage over-interest in the therapist. But this was such a messy stew.
Even so, she had to wade through it. Step by step. First, address the issue professionally.
“I take it you’re referring to the Page Six item over the weekend about the man that I’m dating?” she asked, deliberately not using his name. A patient didn’t need to refer to her lover by his name, after all.
“Well. Yeah. And that picture of you guys dancing at Lincoln Center that showed up this morning on Page Six.”
That was news to her.
Michelle dug her fingers into her palms, and told herself it was all going to be fine. She’d been in sessions all day and prepping for Paris. She hadn’t been online, and hadn’t checked her work or her personal email either. And while she felt a small ounce of relief that the photo that had appeared was one of them dancing outside, rather than of them inside on the balcony, she was still bothered that the gossip rags were following them at all. Weren’t there far more interesting people to photograph than her and Jack, even if he’d been deemed New York’s most eligible bachelor?
“And does it bother you to see my photo online?” Michelle managed to ask, concentrating on her client, not on her own reaction to being in the tabloids.
“It’s weird,” Shayla said loudly. “It’s completely bizarre. Honestly, I’ve always thought of you as a blank slate. Someone who existed in the little framework of this office.” She gestured to the four walls.