Page 65 of The Amendment

“Pete and Glennon have a”—I fought to suppress a grin—“complicated relationship.”

“I see.”

“I mean, they’re fine. It’s just a long, sordid history.”

She nodded, picking up the pen and blank notepad from the table in front of her. “Okay, so let’s go back a bit. Tell me about when you first met Pete. What attracted you to him?”

“We were in college…” I started in on the story, settling into the part of our past I was incredibly comfortable with.

The safe part.

The cozy part.

Before the fencing.

Before everything changed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

PETER

“Where do you think your problems with Annie come from, Pete?” she asked, watching me closely.

It was our second session alone, and I still hadn’t gotten over how much I liked having her eyes on me.

“I love her,” I said, like a good husband. “But I hate feeling like she’s always trying to control me. I mean, sometimes I don’t mind it. You know, my parents were all over the place when I was growing up. I have three older brothers, and my house was always loud and obnoxious. People were always screaming and fighting. When I met Annie, she was so…calm.” I thought for a moment, then corrected myself. “Calm isn’t the right word. She’s like a storm you can see from a distance. I always know something’s brewing with her, but she doesn’t ever get close enough to feel the rain. Does that make sense?”

She didn’t answer, just kept watching me. She’d been fidgeting with the pen a lot more today. I was making her nervous.

“To a certain extent, she makes me feel…” I searched for a manlier word thansafe.“Like everything’s under control. After a lifetime of feeling like nothing’s in control, Annie gives me peace. I can drop the ball and know that she’s always going to be there to pick it up. There are hardly any fights in our house. It’s safe. Quiet. Our kids are well-rounded. Loved. It’s the opposite of what I experienced growing up. She’s the opposite of my mother.”

“You have a bad relationship with your mother?”

“My father was wild—always running around, cheating on her, drinking, partying. My brothers were the same. So, most of the time, it was just me and Mom at home. She blamed it all on me. I was the youngest, so I was easy enough to pick on. I had rules no one else had to follow. I had to keep the house in order.” I cleared my throat. “We haven’t spoken in years.”

“Some of what you’ve told me about Annie, though, the way she treats you… Does she remind you of your mother at all? You said there was no control in your house, but it sounds like your mother tried to control everyone by controlling you. Is that accurate?”

I’d never thought about it that way, but maybe she was right. Maybe that’s why Ainsley had always been different for me.

Why I could never hurt her.

Why I could never hurt my mother. Even when I’d had the chance.

“It could be.”

Ainsley had told me once that she tried to control usbecause to her, that felt like love. Maybebeingcontrolled felt like love to me.

God, we certainly were a match, weren’t we?

After a moment, Joanna went on. “Do you ever think maybe that’s why you want to…to fence alone? Because it’s the one small thing that still belongs exclusively to you? The one thing no one else controls? Not Annie? Not your mother?”

It felt true, even if I’d never been able to put it into those words. “Maybe, yeah.”

“Do you find yourself turning to fencing when you’ve had a particularly bad day? Maybe when you’ve had a fight with Annie or something went wrong at work?”

I nodded.

Damn, she was good.

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