The Institute, Daddy Issues(52)

“Is pos­sible.” Salt closed his eyes and pressed his thumb and in­dex fin­ger over his eye­lids as though he was try­ing to ban­ish the bad memor­ies. “For­give me,” he said thickly. “I have not thought of this for a long time. Is not some­thing I like to re­mem­ber.”

“Of course not.” Earlier, when we’d been in Dr. Lucy’s of­fice, I’d had the im­pulse to hug him but I had stopped my­self. This time I couldn’t. I sat up on my knees and reached for him, wrap­ping my arms around his neck.

For a mo­ment Salt just sat there, then he hugged me back, crush­ing me to him and press­ing his face into my neck.

“It’s all right,” I whispered, rub­bing my cheek against his. “It’s all right now.”

He didn’t ac­tu­ally cry but his eyes did leak a little. It was the most emo­tion I’d ever seen from him and it tore at my heart to know he was in so much pain.

How was it that we had worked to­gether for three years and I had never had any idea of this be­fore? Maybe be­cause I didn’t much like to talk about my own past, my part­ner had been re­luct­ant to dis­cuss his as well. Or maybe it had taken a place like the In­sti­tute where you were forced to dive back into the deep, dark well of child­hood memor­ies to bring this ugly, hurt­ful truth out into the light.

We clung to­gether for a long mo­ment and then Salt slowly re­leased me.

“For­give me,” he said gruffly, swip­ing at his eyes. “This is…un­manly dis­play.”

“Maybe in Rus­sia it is,” I said. “But you’re not there any­more. You’re here—with me.”

“Yes.” He gave me one of his rare side­ways smiles—the barest lift­ing of one corner of his mouth. “We are here to­gether. For this I am glad.”

“Me too,” I said. “God, we’re both really screwed up, aren’t we? Stevens was right about the is­sues and this place isn’t help­ing them any.”

“He was right,” Salt ac­know­ledged softly. “Still, I am not sorry that we came here.”

For a mo­ment I looked into his eyes and it oc­curred to me that we were close—close enough to kiss as we had in Dr. Lucy’s of­fice. It also oc­curred to me that I wanted to kiss him—which scared me to death.

“Andi…Mishka,” Salt whispered and brushed his knuckles gently over my cheek.

“Salt,” I mur­mured. I wanted badly to lean to­wards him—to let it hap­pen. But that would ruin everything. We were get­ting in too deep again—for­get­ting the real reason we were here and let­ting emo­tion cloud our judg­ment.

I sat back a little, though I kept my hand on his arm.

“I think we need a plan of ac­tion,” I said, try­ing to make my voice sound nor­mal.

Salt frowned. “I thought we had plan. You will mis­be­have and I will spank you.”

“And…you’re okay with that? Be­cause I thought you weren’t be­fore.”

“I was re­luct­ant, as I told you,” he mur­mured. “But as you say, we are just play act­ing. Everything we have to do here is only for show.”

I felt a rush of re­lief. “Right! Of course.” I nod­ded. “So no mat­ter what hap­pens to­night, we need to re­mem­ber that. It’s only for show.”

“Ex­actly,” Salt rumbled.

“Good,” I said. “Then we’ve got our plan. We just have to stick to it and do…do what has to be done.”

But some­how I couldn’t meet his eyes as I said it. Just for show—everything here was just for show, I told my­self.

Then why did I have such a hard time mak­ing my­self be­lieve it?





Chapter Eight

“I hope you had a pro­duct­ive ses­sion with Dr. Ne­w­house today?” Dir­ector Berkley raised his salt and pep­per eye­brows at us in­quir­ingly.

“Yes. Most pro­duct­ive.” Salt nod­ded firmly. We were seated across the table from Berkley and Mandy again—Salt was in a nor­mal chair and I was perched on the stu­pid booster seat.

Mandy, who was dir­ectly op­pos­ite me, was be­hav­ing her­self for once. She was barely pick­ing at her din­ner but she had thirstily drained her glass of pink fruit punch and asked for more.

My­self, I still couldn’t stand the stuff. I had taken a few sips to be po­lite but I was mostly drink­ing Salt’s wa­ter while he had wine. The din­ner was some kind of pork chop with wild mush­room sauce and peas but I was barely pay­ing any at­ten­tion to eat­ing. I was too anxious and nervous about what I was about to do to have much ap­pet­ite. I knew I had to cause a huge scene—but how, ex­actly? What should I do to make Salt pre­tend to spank me?