29. Julia #3
Tessa waits.
“He has tattoos.” I say.
The crease between her eyebrows deepens.
“One of the patterns on his forearm was the same one I had touched on Ghost.”
The change in her face happens gradually enough that I can see every stage of it. Confusion turns to disbelief, disbelief to horror, and then she shakes her head before I have even finished.
“No.” She literally breathes out the word.
My throat closes.
“Tess—”
“No fucking way.”
I look down.
“Julia.” Her voice has gone very quiet. “Please tell me Hot Doctor isn’t the fucking stalker.”
The stupid nickname hurts in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
I close my eyes. “He is.”
For a moment, there is absolute silence. Then Tessa launches herself off the couch so fast, the cushion rises behind her.
“What the actual fuck?”
I flinch even though I knew something like that was coming. She starts pacing between the coffee table and fireplace with one hand tangled in her hair, speaking more to the universe than to me now.
“No. No, because I need to understand this properly. Your psychiatrist, the actual licensed professional who has been sitting there listening to you talk about your trauma for months, is the same man who has been outside your house wearing a fucking ski mask?”
“Balaclava.”
She whips around. “If you correct the terminology one more time while I am having a breakdown on your behalf, Imma throw something at you.”
Despite everything, I snort.
Her eyes narrow. “This is not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“What’s funny is a raccoon falling into a trash can. This is Dateline with commercials.”
The laugh fades when I pull my knees toward my chest, and Tessa sees the movement immediately. The feral outrage drains out of her face and she sits back down beside me, closer this time.
“How sure are you?” Her voice comes out softer.
“Completely.”
“He admitted it?”
“Yes.” I nod.
I tell her about the tattoo first, then about everything else I started remembering once suspicion was there.
His eyes. The motorcycle. Kai telling me only the week before that he rides at night.
His build I had never really allowed myself to think about in therapy because it was completely irrelevant, except now I know exactly what was under every one of those suits.
Then I tell her about the sentence. “Ghost told me once that I didn’t need to be saved, that I needed to be seen. It stuck with me, and once I saw the tattoo, I needed something stronger than the tattoo because I kept thinking there had to be another explanation.”
“So you tested him.” She murmurs.
“I baited him.”
Tessa’s eyebrows lift slightly.
“I told him about Ghost without telling him I suspected anything. I started talking about myself the way I used to, saying maybe there was something wrong with me for wanting a man who watched me, maybe I was broken or incapable of knowing what was good for me.” I swallow past the tightness returning to my throat.
“I knew that would get to Kai because he has spent months trying to make me stop doing that to myself.”
A grim little spark of pride flashes through Tessa’s expression. “That’s actually pretty fucking clever.”
“It didn’t feel clever.”
“No. But it was.” She adds more wine in both of our glasses.
“I pushed until I told him maybe I needed somebody to save me from myself, and he lost his temper just enough to say it,” I continue quietly. “He said I didn’t need to be saved, that I needed to be seen.”
Her eyes close. “Jesus Christ.”
“He realized the second it came out.”
“And then?” The next sip she takes is a bigger one.
“I made him admit it. I told him to tell me who Ghost was, and eventually he just looked at me and said it.” My throat tightens hard enough that I have to pause.
Tessa’s hand closes around mine and for a while neither of us says anything.
Then she asks, more carefully, “Did you have any idea before you saw the tattoo? Even a tiny one?”
“No.” I shake my head and then laugh without any humor. “Which makes me feel so fucking stupid now.”
“Why?”
“Because there were clues everywhere once I knew to look. The bike alone should’ve made me think. Kai rides. Ghost rides. Kai has amber eyes, Ghost has amber eyes. They’re about the same height and build, and apparently I was looking at the same fucking hands for months without connecting them.”
Tessa turns toward me more fully. “Why would you connect them?”
“Because apparently I’m not nearly as perceptive as I think I am.”
“Oh, shut up.” Her tone is affectionate but firm.
“You saw Ghost mostly in the dark while he deliberately hid his face and changed his voice. You saw Kai under office lighting in glasses and three-piece suits while he rummaged through your trauma. Normal people don’t look at their psychiatrist and think, ‘hmm, I wonder if he’s secretly the man in a balaclava outside my bedroom window. '”
“When you say it like that…” I trail off.
“When I say it like what it actually is?”
I give her a tired look, she squeezes my fingers and then something in her expression changes.
“You liked Kai.” The statement catches me off guard enough that I straighten.
“He was my therapist.”
“That was not what I said.”
I stare at her.
Tessa lifts one eyebrow. “Every time you talked about him, you pretended it was completely clinical, and somehow I still knew when he almost laughed at something you said and how frustrated you got when you couldn’t actually make him laugh.”
“I never got frustrated over not being able to make him laugh.” The words come out of me meant to sound like a protest but fail miserably.
“You absolutely did. You said he makes you feel like you’re not funny.”
“I mean… I am funny.”
“Oh, you’re fucking hilarious, absolutely.”
Heat climbs into my cheeks despite everything. She sees it and gives me a look that would be smug under different circumstances.
“You noticed him.”
Of course I did. It feels almost embarrassing now because I spent so long carefully filing everything I noticed about Kai under “irrelevant”.
His mouth when he tried not to smile. The dry humor that started surfacing once our sessions stopped feeling like emotional triage.
The way he relaxed when he spoke about Mara or Connor.
The rare moments when the psychiatrist loosened enough that I got a glimpse of whoever existed once the office door closed behind me.
“I liked him,” I admit.
The words sound strange spoken aloud.
“Not like I was sitting there fantasizing about my psychiatrist while he took notes. I knew what the relationship was. But yes, I liked him as a person, especially lately.”
“What changed?”
“I started seeing more of him. Or I thought I did.” I tuck one strand of hair behind my ear while the conversation from the week before returns.
“I asked him what he did outside work because I realized he knew basically everything about me and I knew nothing about him. He told me he goes to the gym, rides at night, has mandatory Sunday dinners at Mara’s and apparently gets forced to watch superhero movies with her son. ”
Tessa studies my face while I’m speaking, then slowly points toward me. “That.”
“What?”
“That expression you just made.”
The way she wiggles her finger in front of my face makes me roll my eyes.
“I didn’t make an expression.” Another failed protest on my part.
“You absolutely did. You like that version of him.”
Something catches painfully beneath my ribs.
Because she is right. Not Dr. Blackwood sitting across from me professionally, and not Ghost standing behind me in a dark room, but the man who exists somewhere between them.
The one who rides when his head gets too loud, lets Mara boss him around, watches whatever Connor chooses on Sunday and occasionally says something sarcastic enough in therapy that I catch myself wondering what he is like when he doesn’t have to maintain that careful distance.
“I think that might be the worst part,” I say quietly.
Tessa’s humor disappears. “He didn’t need Ghost.”
It hurts more when it’s said aloud, but Tessa is right. As usual.
“He really fucking didn’t.” I look toward the dark television, seeing Kai’s face where Ghost’s mask used to be.
“That’s what makes the whole thing so pointless.
He created this entire other person because I guess he thought that was the only way he could have me?
But now that I can put the face behind the mask and all the pieces together, there wasn’t actually anything about Ghost that Kai didn’t already have. ”
“Except permission.”
I look at her.
Tessa’s voice stays soft. “You were allowed to want Ghost. You weren’t allowed to want your therapist.”
The weight behind her words lands perfectly but it still doesn’t make it right, what he had done. There were ways to go about it. The betrayal and the lack of choice, the abuse of my trust — all of that was completely unnecessary.