Chapter 28 - Lily Takes the Bait
I heard the footsteps before I saw her.
A girl leaving my dad’s room hurried down the stairs and out the front door. I didn’t engage, and I never kept a tally. My father was an unapologetic man whore.
I had fallen asleep in the den watching The Sopranos with Sean.
We’d been reviewing wedding plans, plans neither of us had much say in, which suited us both just fine.
Lately, he had been almost too attentive.
The kind of attention that felt more like surveillance than care.
I was starting to see the cracks beneath his good-guy act, the darker pieces he hid from the world.
He’d started tracking the small things. Asking who I texted, why I needed certain errands, why I didn’t answer right away. This wasn’t caring or curiosity. It was control.
It made me wonder if I should tighten up my exit strategy.
The clock on the cable box glowed 4:00 a.m. It was the perfect hour to make bad decisions. Sean was in a deep sleep, which made it a safe time to check on Matt Taylor’s socials. It’s how I found out that the bastard had moved to Charleston without his fucking wife. No phone call, no text, nothing.
I quietly eased off the couch and made my way up the stairs to my room, careful not to wake anyone. The house was still as I sat on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, pretending this was casual.
It was his Instagram that delivered the punch to my heart.
Some woman had tagged him in a series of photos from a party.
They both looked sexy as hell. She was beautiful in that polished, practiced way that photographed well.
The caption read: WOW, I didn’t realize we were fodder for the paps.
A winking emoji followed, which somehow made it worse.
My eyes welled up with tears that spilled down my cheeks. My stomach felt like a rock had been dropped into it.
Why do I still care about this man? Why do I feel so betrayed? Why can’t I just move on?
The sobs came hard, the kind that stole your breath. The real questions followed, the ones that cut the deepest.
What does she have that I don’t?
Why not me?
Why. Not. Me.
To further torture myself, I zoomed in on the image. Matt in a tux. The woman in a midnight-blue dress that could have stopped traffic. Their smiles were too natural to be staged. She leaned in like she’d been there for a while.
My first thought was that he looked good. Healthier. Lighter. My second thought was that I hated her.
Then, I thought of Dr. Colleen and how she would react when I told her about this moment. I was going to tell her.
The comments for the picture were piling up: hearts, compliments, and a few tagging friends to speculate who she was. My pulse slowed to something cold.
I didn’t like how easily she fit next to him. I didn’t like that he looked happy.
I didn’t dare like or comment. I just shut off my phone, curled up in my bed, and cried myself to sleep.
I heard a knock on my door. It felt like my head had just hit the pillow.
When I looked at my phone, the time was 8:15 AM.
I was running late for my appointment with Dr. Colleen.
There was no way in hell I was missing her today.
This was my third session with her, and I was learning about myself, about my choices, but most importantly, about my self-loathing.
I opened my bedroom door and found Sean standing in the doorway, showered, dressed, and way ahead of me. His cologne curled around me and somehow made me feel better.
His look shifted from pensive to worried. “You’re not up? Is something wrong?”
I shook my head. “Nothing’s wrong, I just slept late. I’ll be ready in fifteen.”
I turned to close the door, but he pushed through and sat on the bed. Enter Sean, the controller.
“We have to be there by nine,” he said edged with irritation.
I ignored him, went into my closet, and closed the door to get ready. When I walked back into my room in a hoodie and jeans, his eyes scanned me with a slow, disapproving glare. I grabbed my purse and phone and walked out without another word.
When we finally made it to the office complex, I swore I saw Sarah Taylor talking to someone I couldn’t see. It was her perfect, glowing hair that gave her away. Sure enough, when she turned, she was laughing and animated, talking to Dr. Colleen.
What the hell? What in the hell was Saint Sarah doing talking to my Dr. Colleen?
Once we parked, I bolted from the car, leaving Sean behind. When I opened the office door at 9:01 a.m., Dr. Colleen was standing at the reception desk chatting with the staff. All eyes turned to me.
“Good morning, Lily,” Dr. Colleen said warmly as she opened her office door. “Come in. I was just finishing a conversation.”
I scanned the waiting room as she stepped aside. No Sarah. I could still feel her presence, though, like perfume that lingers long after the person is gone.
Once we were both seated, I folded my hands in my lap. “Were you just talking to Sarah Taylor?”
Dr. Colleen smiled politely. “I speak to many people throughout the day.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Her expression cooled. “Lily, it’s none of your business who I speak to throughout the day.”
I leaned back in the chair, trying to keep my tone even. “It’s just strange, seeing her here. Of all people.”
Before she could respond, there was a knock at the door. Sean’s voice came through. “Just making sure you made it in. I’ll be here in the waiting room.”
He closed the door behind him, and I let out a long breath.
Dr. Colleen folded her hands loosely in her lap. “You seemed frustrated when Sean came to the door. What happened there?”
I tried to shrug it off. “Nothing. He just likes to make sure I’m on time for things.”
“That sounds considerate.”
“Sure,” I said, forcing a smile. “Considerate.”
Her eyes didn’t leave mine. “But it bothered you.”
I hesitated. “It’s not that. He just… gets to me sometimes.”
“How?”
“He worries too much about how I come across. What I wear, what I say, when I show up.”
Dr. Colleen tilted her head slightly. “He sounds very invested in your choices.”
I let out a breath. “You could say that.”
Her tone stayed even. “Tell me more about your relationship with Sean.”
That word relationship caught me off guard. “It’s… complicated.”
“In what way?”
I picked at the hem of my sleeve, regretting every word that had led me here. “It isn’t exactly a relationship I chose. My father made that decision for me.”
Her brow lifted slightly, but she didn’t speak.
“It’s arranged,” I said finally. “An agreement. Two families. One future.”
Dr. Colleen nodded once, slow and deliberate. “That sounds like a lot to carry.”
I laughed softly. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Did you agree to it?”
“I didn’t really get asked.”
“So it wasn’t a choice.”
“No.” I rubbed my thumb against the seam of my jeans. “It was presented like one, though. A very polite kind of trap.”
“Who benefits from this arrangement?”
“My father. Sean. Both of them.”
“And you?”
“I stay out of jail.”
Her eyes flickered, just once, before she steadied them again. “Tell me what you mean by that.”
“My father made a deal,” I said quietly. “He used his influence to get me released, and in return, I agreed to the marriage. I’m not free. I’m traded property with an expunged record.”
Dr. Colleen’s voice softened. “That must feel like a very high price.”
“It feels like interest on a debt I didn’t choose to owe.”
“And Sean agreed to this?”
“He calls it redemption. Says he’s saving me. It sounds noble when he says it, until you realize I’m just being used.”
Dr. Colleen nodded slowly. “That sounds like control, not love.”
I gave a small, bitter smile. “Tell that to my father.”
She let the silence hang, the kind that presses you to fill it. “Lily, do you ever think about what freedom would look like for you?”
“I used to,” I said. “Now I just think about what happens if I take one wrong step.”
She sat back, studying me. “What do you want, Lily?”
“I want to want something. Anything. Right now, I just feel stuck.”
We sat quietly for a moment before I said, “I saw something last night that didn’t help.”
“What did you see?”
“Matt. On Instagram. With some woman. They looked happy. Like I never existed.”
Dr. Colleen nodded slowly. “And what did that make you feel?”
“Angry. Sad. Maybe jealous. I don’t even know anymore.”
Dr. Colleen leaned forward slightly. “Why were you even looking at his social media, Lily?”
I swallowed hard. “Curiosity, I guess.”
“Curiosity about what?”
“How he’s doing. Who he’s with. Whether he’s miserable.”
“And if he isn’t?”
I forced a laugh that sounded nothing like humor. “Then I guess I’ll have to live with that.”
Her voice stayed steady. “It sounds like you still have a lot tied up in him. Not love, maybe, but attachment. Why do you think that is?”
I looked away. “Because he was the first person who made me believe I could be good. And the last one who proved I wasn’t.”
Dr. Colleen nodded slowly. “That’s an incredibly honest thing to say, Lily. Most people spend years in therapy trying to admit something like that.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Great. I’m ahead of schedule.”
Her expression didn’t change. “You’re self-aware, but awareness isn’t the same as progress. You still haven’t told me why you’re spending so much energy on Matt and Sarah. What are you getting from it?”
“Closure, maybe.”
She raised a brow. “Or distraction?”
I said nothing.
She leaned back slightly, still watching me. “It looks to me like you have an entirely new set of problems in front of you, and yet you keep circling this one man as if he’s the center of your universe. He’s not. He’s just the orbit you refuse to leave.”
“That’s harsh,” I muttered.
“It’s fair,” she said quietly. “You can’t heal while you’re still trying to monitor someone else’s life. Every minute you spend checking his social media, comparing yourself to Sarah, replaying that story, you’re handing your power back to them.”
I stared at my hands. “So what do you want me to do? Pretend it doesn’t bother me?”
“I want you to stop feeding it. Block him. Mute her. Let the noise die out. You have to stop making them the proof of your failure and pain.”
“That sounds impossible.”
“Then start small,” she said. “One night without checking his profile. One morning without thinking about her name. You have bigger things to face than ghosts.”
I didn’t answer. I just nodded, though I knew I’d probably fail before I even tried.