Page 44 of Don't Let Your Mind Go There

There wasn’t much time for me to question this. In fact, the time to question any of this had already passed. Even before we had gotten naked.

Still, my brain felt numb, almost as if I had been dreaming all of this.

As if someone was reading the most twisted story to me, and I was in such shock that I couldn’t do anything other than sit and listen, even with the story becoming darker, sentence after sentence.

This was our life now.

The four of us, being intimate with each other without showing a single bit of regret or shame.

But after all, we were a family, and we’d do anything for this bond to only grow stronger and never weaker.

PART 2

16

REID

The psychologist had been reading Tate’s diary to us every day for the past two weeks.

It was Tate’s wish to have us know what she wrote in there, and while all the things she wrote were fucked up, we sat and listened, trying to understand her mind better.

Dr. Dalton kept trying not to grimace while she read Tate’s diary word for word out loud. I was certain that she never had a patient like Tate before. And while Dr. Dalton was a professional psychologist, she wasn’t dealing with Tate’s diary the way I hoped she would.

I had a feeling that she was making fun of Tate, yet she was afraid that everything Tate wrote was true.

We all sat on chairs in a circle, in an almost empty office where there was only a couch and a desk. Tate had spent months in this room, and now I understood why she hated coming here.

The room was cold and dull, and nothing in here made any patient feel comfortable. But who was I to judge? I let my daughter come here. Twice a week, every week, for the past couple of months.

I had my arms crossed over my chest, and I watched Tate closely while Dr. Dalton continued to read the diary. What Tate wrote hadn’t fazed me so far, but when Dalton got to the part where Ainsley and Ronan got sexually involved with us, I was all ears and intrigued.

Ainsley, on the other hand, looked disgusted. She had her hand covering her mouth, and her eyes were full of terror. She couldn’t look at Tate. In fact, she hadn’t looked at our daughter in weeks.

She didn’t talk to her either.

Dr. Dalton stopped reading, and I looked at her, raising a brow. “Go on,” I encouraged. “There’s not many pages left.”

She gave me a tortured look before dropping her gaze to the diary and flipping through the last pages of it. She shook her head. “No, there aren’t many left. I just…” She sighed heavily and looked over at Ainsley. “I don’t think we should finish this today. It’s been…heavy. I don’t think you can handle any more of this right now.”

I raised a brow. “You’ve already read the part where I apparently fucked my daughter in the shower of that cabin and pissed in her mouth. I don’t think it gets heavier than that.”

“Reid.” Ainsley shot me a warning glare. “We don’t need a reminder of the disgusting things she wrote about us.”

“Get over it, Ainsley. She made all that shit up for a reason. It’s a cry for help. Don’t you see?” I shook my head and let out a hard laugh. “Of course, you don’t. You won’t even look at your daughter.”

Her body tensed, and she clenched her jaw tightly. “How could I ever look at her again after all the things she wrote? You’re acting like this is okay, Reid. Is it? Because if it is, I don’t know who you are anymore!”

Dr. Dalton cleared her throat and placed the diary on her lap as she closed it, with her finger still between the pages she stopped reading on. “I think it’s best if we do this next time. This will give me some time to talk to Tate again. It might be better this way.”

Ainsley got up from her chair and muttered something under her breath as she put on her coat. When she turned back around, she pointed her finger at me, with her expression telling me everything she wouldn’t say directly to my face in front of our daughter. “This is all your fault.”

“Wow.” I raised my brows and chuckled. “Really, Ainsley? It’s my fault alone that our daughter needs therapy?”

“Yes, Reid, it is entirely your fault! She has always had a sick obsession with you, and even when things got weird, you wouldn’t tell her off. You allowed her to become like this, and because of her, I lost you. It’s. Your. Fault!”

“Mrs. Peters, please—"

“I’m not Mrs. Peters anymore. Haven’t been in a long time,” Ainsley muttered, turning away from us as she headed toward the door. “I can’t wait to have this divorce finalized.”

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