A doctor? There was no way I could date a man who was that smart. I couldn’t even read the dinner menu. My hands would sweat, and my vision would blur from panic. No, I couldn’t. But Jimmy looked so hopeful. I hated this. I hated not being able to say yes. Not being able to meet new people and trust that if they found out, they wouldn’t judge me or ridicule me.
“You need to do this, and I would be right there beside you. I don’t want to know anything you don’t want to share with me, but I know something in your past is bad shit. I can see it in the way you live. I’ve been close enough and watched you enough. Every damn straight man in this apartment building has tried to get your attention. You flee like the bats of hell are on your heels. So you aren’t hiding it from me. I see you. And I think whatever is in your past that’s screwing up the present needs to be laid to rest. I’m your friend, Reese. Let’s do this together.”
This was too much. Two people in one day wanting to help me. And both of them men. A species I thought I’d never trust.
“OK,” I said, realizing I had to figure this out somehow. Mase had made me brave today. He might not know his words had been a salve to my wounded soul, but they had been. “But I need to know where we’re going to eat before we go.” I wasn’t going to explain why. I couldn’t do that right now. Not yet.
Jimmy beamed at me and nodded. “I can do that. Hell, you can even pick the place. Just so you’ll go.”
I could look up the restaurant’s website and print a copy of the menu. Then I could figure out something on it to order. If I was in the privacy of my apartment and alone, I could focus. Maybe.
Mase
One phone call to Kiro, and I had an appointment the next day with a psychologist with a PhD in learning disabilities only an hour and a half from Rosemary Beach. The man stood up to shake my hand from behind his wide, cluttered desk after pushing his glasses back up his nose from where they had slipped. He did n’t seem very thrilled about our meeting. An annoyed furrow sat between his white eyebrows, giving him a pinched look.
“You must know people in high places, Mr. Manning. I, as you can imagine, am a busy man, and my courses are coming to the end of the semester.”
As I had guessed, he wasn’t happy about this. Knowing Kiro, he’d called the president of the university where this guy taught and had him order Dr. Henry Hornbrecker to meet with me today. “I’m sorry that I’ve come during a bad time for you. I leave town tomorrow, and there’s some business I need handled before I go back to Texas.”
The man’s time was obviously important, so I wasn’t going to waste it. I pulled the piece of paper Reese had left crumpled up on the floorboard of Harlow’s Mercedes when she scrambled out in a panic. Every time I looked at it, I remembered her struggle, and it made something inside me ache.
I handed him the paper. “I had asked the person who wrote this to write down Three-three-three Berkley Road. If that person is an adult around the age of twenty-two and struggled to write this much, what do you think that means? Why would she write that? And why would it be so difficult and send her into a panic?”
The doctor frowned down at the paper. “Twenty-two, you say?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“Are you asking me for you or for her? Surely a twenty-two-year-old who suffers this severely has already been diagnosed in school or as a child and knows what her problem is.”
He knew what the problem was. My heart sped up. “No, she doesn’t know. She couldn’t finish high school. She can’t pass tests. She’s been told she’s . . . stupid. But she’s not. Not at all.”
The doctor muttered a curse and sat back down in his chair, looking at the paper I’d given him. “I thought that by this day and age, our public school systems were more adept at labeling and dealing with learning disabilities. Especially one as common as dyslexia. Tell me, does she read?”
Dyslexia. Fuck me.
I’d known someone with dyslexia in school. He had special classes and a tutor who helped him every day. He ended up graduating with honors. No one had helped Reese, and it had been this simple. A lump formed in my throat, and I pressed my fist into my thighs. Anger, relief, and frustration all coursed through me at once.
“No, she can’t read,” I replied. “She tries, but she struggles. I need to get her help. Someone who can help her read and write. She struggles daily with things that are so simple to everyone else, and she thinks it’s because her brain isn’t all there. I will pay whatever price.” Fuck, I wanted to roar in protest. It was pure injustice. And neglect.