Page 56 of Deadly Attraction
Chapter Twelve
Face the past.
Deal with it.
Move on.
The goal of any good therapist was to help clients own their problems, deal with them, and then let them go.
In her years working with criminals, Emma had found few who were truly open to changing their lives. Sometimes they verbalized a desire to change, but more often than not, the hopelessness of life in prison and their past family conditioning won out.
Normal people living normal lives had trouble confronting and overcoming issues from their pasts. Those in the criminal justice system, where there was little support or hope for personal change, were usually doomed to fail from the start. Facing their past, mistakes and all, and then dealing with that past was only half the battle.
Letting it go…that was the true test.
The same held true for her, she knew, as she rocked gently in the saddle, Twinkie following Igor and Mitch ahead of them. Salt and Pepper ran back and forth, their noses to the ground, wagging their tails and occasionally barking at each other. She’d revisited her issues inside and out many times in an attempt to heal. Most days she felt strong and ready to move forward with her life. Others, she wanted to stay in bed and cry.
Grief was like that. It could hit you out of nowhere. Leave you bereft, even after all this time.
The sun was bright as it burned through a soft layer of smoke hanging high in the atmosphere. The day was warm for Christmas Eve, but then every day during this dry spell was in the low 80s if not warmer.
Adjusting her hat, she wiped sweat from her brow and calculated how far they’d come. They’d passed her makeshift gun range, Mitch promising her another lesson on their way back. She looked forward to his hands on her, helping her steady the gun. His voice close to her ear, murmuring instructions.
The memory of him guiding her the previous day made her shiver even though she was sweating. The kiss on her office floor had rocked her to her core. She hadn’t been with a man since Roland. Being touched in that way, being kissed—it was a good thing they’d been sitting down. Mitch’s kiss would have knocked her on her ass anyway.
As if he sensed her attention on his back, he shot a look over his shoulder. “Everything alright?”
Surprisingly, it was. As long as she didn’t think too hard about him and his issues and the way his psychosis mirrored her own.
While she hadn’t done a thorough, professional analysis of his personality or delved into all the things he hadn’t told her about the day his twin had died, she didn’t need to. She knew the MO of people like Mitch. Knew it like the back of her hand.
It was hers as well.
The people who wore their dysfunction like a badge of honor. People who identified so strongly with being a warrior, a martyr, a victim, that they couldn’t let that identity go. To step out of that role and move on with a successful, productive, healthy life would be like cutting out the biggest part of their personality and kicking it to the curb. Who would they be then?
In her own life, she’d run away from the world she’d created with Roland. While she hated admitting that she’d been a victim, shehadbeen one, and although she’d survived and dealt with ways to protect herself and give herself a sense of security again, she’d been victimized all over again by Roland’s rejection. By the loss of their child.
Knowing something cognitively did not always translate to understanding it emotionally. That’s what she’d learned through her ordeal. She understood it wasn’t her fault she’d lost the baby. She understood Roland’s difficulty in staying with her. Her mind accepted these things, but her heart didn’t.
Mitch was in a similar situation. He’d faced his demons time and time again, but had yet to effectively put them to rest. Until he did that, he couldn’t let the past go and move on. By day, he functioned well enough to be successful at his job, and that was probably the one thing keeping him afloat. Most of his emotions were closed off. Smothered. His defense mechanisms—anger and hostility—had become his armor, keeping him from getting involved in loving human relationships.
Figures he’d be attracted to me. While she sported a normal facade in order to make her clients and others comfortable enough around her to let down their guards, she was as angry and hurt over Roland’s betrayal as she was at herself for putting her child at risk.
But if she could find a way to help Mitch through his damaged, dark state of being, she might be able to find her own way through the forest of demons she kept at bay every day.
They entered a clearing where the stream that bordered her property paralleled the trail. Because of the drought, the usually wide swath of water had been reduced to a slender, meandering trickle. Exposed river rock shone in the harsh sunlight. Cracks appeared in the ground in several places where the banks had dried out.
Mitch slowed his horse. “Let’s give the horses a drink.”
There were pink wildflowers here, their tiny heads blowing in the gentle breeze, oblivious to the fires that had ravaged the land only a few miles away. Emma dismounted and led Twinkie to the skinny stream, bending down and touching the flowers as the horse took his time sniffing the exposed river rocks.
“Nature’s a bitch, but she knows how to give birth to beauty,” Mitch said, looking down at the patch of flowers Emma knelt in.
Emma ran her fingers lightly over the pink heads. “The fires are a horrible thing. I can only imagine the losses to wildlife as well as those to people in the surrounding areas. It won’t take long for Mother Nature to send up new grasses, flowers, and trees inside the park. Come spring, it will be a wonderful sign of hope and rebirth. I hope the locals can rebuild too.”
“Destruction does wipe the slate clean.” Mitch looked off toward the valleys south of them, but Emma had the feeling he was seeing something else. Something from his past. War, perhaps, or his brother’s death. “But sometimes, not even Mother Nature can recover from it.”
Did he really believe that? She stood, removed her hat, and used a hanky to wipe her face. Both horses stood together drinking. “Something new always rises from the ashes,” she countered. “Something we can learn from, draw hope from.”
