Page 2 of A Method to His Madness

“No. I’m not.”

“It’s not harmless to me,” she says, somewhat choppily.

“I can see that.” That is an understatement. She’s…haunted. There’s trauma here and I’ve haplessly unearthed it with one touch. “I’m sorry.”

Slowly, her brow knits together, this gorgeous woman who is trying to disguise her beauty to no avail, her gaze attempting to collect information about me. “You actually seem sorry.”

“And that’s hard for you to believe?”

“Yes.”

If I had my clipboard in front of me, I would have filled three full pages of notes by now and there would be no end in sight. “Why?”

She starts to respond, but checks herself, pressing her lush lips in a line as a woman trundles past with a baby tucked into the front of her shopping cart. “This isn’t really grocery store conversation.”

“No, it’s not.” I’m careful to keep an appropriate distance from her when I say the next part, because it could easily be interpreted as a come on. I tell myself it isn’t one, though my body’s reaction to her calls me a liar. “We could have it in my office, instead.”

Before I can stop myself, remind myself that I’m a strict professionalfor a reason, the moving image is there. Me fucking this fiercely beautiful woman face down over my desk, her hair loose and wrapped around my fist, her ass cheeks plumping, plumping, plumping against my stomach, her fingernails digging lines into wood, both of us moaning.

“Oh, could we?” she laughs, sarcastically, reaching for the jar once again.

“I’m a therapist.”

That gives her brief pause. Brief being the operative word. “Your profession doesn’t preclude you from being a creep.” Almost reluctantly, she drags her gaze along the breadth of my shoulders. “You don’t look like a therapist.”

It’s an even steeper struggle not to step closer to her after that. She’s noticed my body. Analyzed and considered it. “What does a therapist look like?”

“Pale. Bored. Like they sit in an office all day.”

I wrestle back a surge of amusement. “And what do I look like…?”

“Ashley,” she murmurs, seeming surprised at herself for revealing her name. A name I already know I will never forget. “I don’t know, um…” She seems to hate…and enjoy looking at me. In equal measure. Interesting. “A secret service agent, maybe.”

Clever girl. “In my past life, I was something similar.”

Ashley looks so deeply inside of me, I feel an alarming shift. A rock formation loosening, preparing to cause a landslide. “How many lives have you led?”

“Too many,” I mutter, breaking my rule. Allowing information about myself to enter the conversation. Technically, we’re not in the middle of a session, but she’s disarmed me enough to forget where my barriers lie. Ten feet high. Impenetrable. The patient is the focus, not me. Never me. There is too much to dissect there.

I left my job as a homicide detective and became a therapist out of an urgent need to understand what makes a person hurt others. Emotionallyandphysically. How someone capable of violence hides in plain sight, the way my partner on the force did. My affable, goofy partner who didn’t come to work on day, because he’d been arrested for killing his wife. The human brain became a fascinating and scary place to me that dark day, perhaps because behavioral science is easier to understand than grief. Rage.

A man appears to the right of Ashley…

…and grabs her wrist.Hard. Yanking her sideways, in his direction.

The way he pulls her sleeve renders the collar of her shirt askew…and I see it.

A bruise.

My vision is suddenly coated in such a thick, syrupy red, the man is almost obscured by the rageful color, but I see him out of necessity, because I’m about to choke him out with my bare hands. Trucker hat, unkempt beard. A starchy, short sleeved button-down shirt. A violent man like my partner, but far more obvious about the monster inside of him. I’m reaching for his throat when he says, “Thanks for finding my wife for me.” He gives Ashley a look of veiled anger. “Sooner or later, you’re going to learn to stay where I put you.”

CHAPTER 2

Ashley

Acid rises in my throat,helpless ire rattling my bones.

More than anything, I’m humiliated.

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