CHAPTER 9 #3
Ciara shifted her position on the couch, leaning her shoulder against the leather backrest so she was facing me fully, her wine glass resting against her knee.
“Man, I feel like I’m sitting in one of your high-priced downtown office sessions right now,” she teased, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
“How much do you usually charge an hour for this kind of breakthrough, Dr. Willis?”
I let out a low chuckle, my eyes holding hers with a soft, steady warmth. “For you, Ciara? The rate is always entirely free. Consider it a neighborly courtesy with benefits.”
She laughed, a throaty, beautiful sound that filled the high-ceilinged room.
“Oh, neighborly courtesy with benefits? I like the sound of that.” She turned her head toward the television screen, where the logo for The Perfect Match was glowing in the dark room.
“Perfect match... how fitting for tonight. Tell me the truth, Joshua. Do you think we’re the perfect match? ”
I looked at her for a long, silent beat, taking in the full composition of her—the strength in her posture, the intelligence in her eyes, the beautiful, rich chocolate of her skin against the red lace peeking beneath her tank top.
“We could be,” I said, my voice dropping into a serious, unhurried cadence.
“The data certainly points in that direction.”
She smiled, a soft, genuine expression that lacked any performance.
She took another sip of her wine, her gaze dropping to the floor before rising back to my face.
“How did you end up here, Joshua? Why psychology?
A man built like a football player doesn't usually spend his life studying the inner workings of people's brains. What's your story?”
I leaned back against the cushions, a sudden wave of nostalgia washing over me as my mind flicked back to the gray, cold streets of Boston.
“I was always fascinated by behavior,” I said, my eyes fixing on a distant point on the wall as the memories settled in.
“Mainly because I didn't understand it. I grew up in a very old, insular community in New England.
We were remarkably poor, Ciara. My mother worked two jobs just to keep a roof over our heads after my father died—he passed away before I was even born, so I never knew him.
Because of my size and our lack of resources, I was an easy target for the upper-class boys in the neighborhood.
They saw me as less than. I spent most of my childhood being bullied, excluded, treated like a brute who didn't possess the capacity for refinement.”
I paused, a brief, cold image of Martin—the boy who had taken a piss on me while his other bully friends held me pinned to the dirty floor of the boys' restroom at our primary school when I was only ten years old—flashing through my mind before I cleanly filed it away.
“But I had a gift,” I continued, a small, confident smile returning to my chiseled jaw.
“A genius for structure and language. I used that intelligence to secure scholarships, navigating my way through elite institutions until I eventually landed at Harvard for my doctorate. People are easily moved by a specific type of charm, Ciara. Once I learned how to communicate, how to mirror their desires and analyze their flaws, the world opened up. I had job offers handed to me before I even finished my dissertation. I was even invited to speak at the White House for the current President’s inauguration ceremonies a few years ago. ”
“Damn, Joshua,” she whispered, her eyes wide with a genuine, deep respect. “The White House? Did you go?”
“I refused,” I said, shaking my head with a light chuckle.
“The political theater didn't interest me. I preferred working where the data mattered—with clinical research, with special needs children in the state facilities, and eventually, in my own private practice. I did it all for one specific purpose: to make my mother proud.”
A softness settled into my voice that I rarely allowed anyone to hear. “She passed away last year. Cardiac arrest. It was sudden, clean, but it left the house very quiet. She was the one who taught me how to control my focus, how to organize my world so the noise couldn't break me.”
I didn't tell her about the secondary curriculum my mother had provided.
I didn't mention Martin, or the boys from Boston who had vanished from the grid after they pushed me too far.
I didn't mention the silver stencil knife upstairs or the cold, dark earth on the mountain ridge three hours away.
I kept that architecture completely hidden behind the heavy iron curtains of my mind, showing her only the loving, sophisticated, and entirely charming man she so rightly deserved to see.
Ciara reached out, her warm, soft hand resting flat against the top of my thigh, the heat of her palm burning right through the fabric of my trousers. “I'm sorry about your momma, Joshua. She raised a real one. I can tell.”
I looked down at her hand, then back up into her beautiful, expectant face. The television continued to hum in the background, the night outside was still young, and as I reached over to refill our wine glasses, I knew the structure of the evening was precisely where it needed to be.