The Institute, Daddy Issues(38)

“Of course not,” he said softly. “I want for you to be someone I can com­fort…someone to hold in my arms and cher­ish as I did last night, my little mishka.”

I stared at him, un­able to take in what he was say­ing. Salt had never ex­pressed any feel­ings like this to­wards me be­fore. One of the things I val­ued about my part­ner was that, des­pite my di­min­ut­ive size, he had never tried to pick me up or treat me like a doll as other big guys I had known some­times had.

There’s a cer­tain kind of man who finds a pocket-sized girl like me ir­res­ist­ible but I had al­ways strenu­ously avoided them. It’s hard enough to be re­spec­ted when you’re no big­ger than a large child, as Salt had put it the night be­fore. If you start act­ing like a child or let­ting people treat you like a child, you’re go­ing to get nowhere pro­fes­sion­ally.

And now here was my part­ner, ad­mit­ting that he wanted to treat me like that. That he wanted to pick me up and hold me, just as he had the night be­fore when I cried my eyes out against his broad chest.

Was that really so bad though? whispered a little voice in my head. It was kind of nice to be held in his arms and com­for­ted, don’t you think?

I pushed the idea away. That way lay weak­ness…vul­ner­ab­il­ity…and even­tu­ally aban­don­ment and pain. I knew that—knew it to my bones. Which meant I had to steer clear of this kind of feel­ing…the feel­ing that made me want to climb in Salt’s lap and cuddle up against him, trust­ing him to keep me safe and se­cure in­stead of stand­ing on my own two feet and act­ing like an adult.

“Andi? Mishka?” Salt looked at me with a hint of plead­ing in his pale blue eyes. “Please, do not mis­un­der­stand me. I am not try­ing to make you weak, you are one of the strongest people I know. I just—”

“Save it.” I put up a hand to stop him. “I don’t care why you said what you said—I can’t go there with you. I can’t even think about—”

“Well, well—it seems the ther­apy ses­sion has already star­ted out here without me.”

The new voice brought me up short. Salt and I had been lean­ing to­wards each other, talk­ing in­tently. Now we both jumped and looked up to see a blonde wo­man in an ex­pens­ive look­ing gray twill busi­ness suit. Her hair was pulled into a loose but pretty chignon at the back of her neck and her heels were sens­ibly low, though still styl­ish. She was hold­ing a tab­let in one hand.

“Hello,” she said, smil­ing at my part­ner and me. “I’m Doc­tor Lucy Ne­w­house but you can just call me Doc­tor Lucy. Please, come in.”

She stepped to one side and held out a hand, in­dic­at­ing that we should go into her of­fice. I have to con­fess that I dragged my feet—I really wasn’t look­ing for­ward to this at all.

Dr. Lucy seemed to sense that I wasn’t happy to be there. She shut her of­fice door and fol­lowed us into a room that held a love­seat, two arm chairs, and one straight backed wooden chair with a plump red cush­ion on it. Dr. Lucy took this last chair for her­self and then mo­tioned to us.

“Please, have a seat.”

Salt settled him­self on the love­seat and I took one of the arm­chairs. Then we looked at the doc­tor and waited.

“Hmm…” She was look­ing at some­thing on her tab­let—ap­par­ently read­ing through some notes. Fi­nally, she looked up at me. “So, niska, is it?”

“Mishka,” Salt cor­rec­ted her at once. “Is pet nick­name which means ‘little mouse.’”

“I see.” She made a note on her tab­let with a jeweled stylus. “All right then, mishka. So it seems you had a prob­lem when you wit­nessed a plug in­ser­tion yes­ter­day when you first came here.”

Plug in­ser­tion—ugh! I shivered in­vol­un­tar­ily.

“If by ‘had a prob­lem’ you mean was hor­ri­fied and trau­mat­ized, then yes, I had a prob­lem,” I said blandly.

“Trau­mat­ized,” she mused. “Now there’s an in­ter­est­ing word choice. Tell me, mishka, what was it about what you wit­nessed that made you feel like that?”

“Well he…she…” I groped for words for a minute. There was so much, where did I even be­gin? “She was let­ting him—her mas­ter—”