Chapter 5

DYLAN

My ass is still sore…said with that impish little saucy grin.

I shake my head at her audacity for what feels like the hundredth time.

“I told Hannah never to let her back to my office if she comes again.” I stride back and forth on the well-worn path in Dr. Laghari’s office.

“I don’t need this shit. I’ve been doing so well in my recovery and then to fuck it up so bad like I did last night.” I shake my head again. “Fucking maddening.”

Dr. Laghari doesn’t say anything for a long moment so I look over at him.

“What, you think last night wasn’t fucking up my sexual sobriety?”

He inclines his head. “I’ve never used that term. You came up with it yourself. But it’s interesting that you see having sex for the first time in four years in terms of an addict going back to a drug.”

“Isn’t it?” I throw my hands up. Fuck, I know I’m being dramatic, but I could use with the good doctor being a little more… well, a little more. I expected him to look, I don’t know, disappointed when I came in today and told him about last night. But the last half hour all he’s done is ask me how I felt about what happened.

I feel like I want to crawl out of my own fucking skin, that’s how I feel. I never wanted to be in that position ever again, standing over a weeping girl after putting my hands on her.

But there I was, having come fucking twice. And even then, at the end when I was horrified looking down at her so broken, still there was a part of me that loved it. That loved seeing her there like that, that loved knowing it was me who’d done it to her. That wanted to grab her by her silky brunette hair, shove her face down and immediately do it to her all over again.

“We talked about you eventually dating again and what it might be like to sleep with a woman after your years of self-imposed celibacy. Wasn’t this what all our time together has been working toward?”

“Me dating was always a hypothetical,” I say. “And Jesus, no, all this therapy has been to try to keep these fucked up desires from ever coming out again. It’s been about learning discipline to keep myself in fucking check. So I don’t hurt people. Hurt women.”

“Like your father did.”

“Yes, like my father did.”

“Do you think what you did last night and what your father did to your mother all those years are the same?”

“Yes!” I explode. I stomp back toward the window and drop my hands to the small ledge, staring out at the city. “No. I don’t fucking know.”

I squeeze my eyes shut and image after image flashes through my head. There was the time Dad shoved Mom against the kitchen counter and bent her over until her face was buried in the burned casserole until she couldn’t breathe, arms flailing.

Or when he grabbed her by the neck and forced her upstairs. When she tripped near the top, he got so mad, he threw her back down them. She rolled and screamed as she fell down half the staircase before catching hold of the banister. He yelled at her for being a dumb, clumsy slut. Not checking to see if she was okay, he just yanked up her skirt right there on the staircase and…

I open my eyes and look out the window like the sky can banish the memories that form the fundamental core of who I am.

I kept my little brother Darren from seeing the worst of it. He’s a kinky bastard but he never pushes it near the line. We’ve shared women a time or two in the past and he doesn’t have the same sick urges I do. He’s the fun one, always the life of the party.

Darren, yes, Darren, I protected from Dad.

But Chloe, just a year younger than Dare? Jesus Christ, little Chloe…

I swallow and my eyes fall shut again.

“Even if it’s not the exact same as what my dad did to my mom, it’s still too fucked up. To get off on that… when I know what it— what it can do…” I shake my head and swipe my forearm roughly against the tears stinging at my eyes.

“It sounds like last night brought up a lot of the things you’ve been trying to push down and ignore for a long time,” says Dr. Laghari. “And that’s okay if that’s how you needed to deal with what happened. But at least consider that this might be an opportunity to reconsider how you approach dealing with the trauma you went through.”

“Trauma I went through—?” I turn back to the doctor. He’s got to be kidding.

“Have you thought any more about trying to contact your sister?”

Jesus, doc, way to kick a guy when he’s down. “She wouldn’t want to hear from me.”

“How do you know if you don’t try?”

I scoff and shake my head. “I’m pretty fucking sure. I let her down her entire life. Besides, if she wanted to talk to me, she has my number.”

Dr. Laghari just shrugs. “Maybe she thinks the same about you. If he wanted to talk to me, he has my number.”

Jesus Christ, why do I even come here? I rake my hands through my hair. Okay, so after all the shit hit the fan, Dr. Laghari helped me through the worst of it. There was awhile there when I didn’t think I deserved to live. It was only doc and knowing my brother needed me that kept me from swallowing the bottle of pills on my nightstand.

Darren had lost everyone, and he didn’t even know why. I couldn’t just cut out on him, too.

But how the fuck was I supposed to live with the knowledge that my father was the worst kind of monster and I was just like him?

I thought discipline was the answer. I’d just never give in to those desires. Ever again.

But now doc is saying that, what? That that kind of discipline is impossible? That he always knew I’d fail and be back here, fighting this shit?

“I swore I’d never be like him.” My voice is so low and guttural I barely recognize it. “I’ll die before ever becoming anything like that fucking bastard.”

“Dylan.” Dr. Laghari calls my name but I don’t look at him. “Dylan.”

A few seconds later, he moves into my field of vision. Damn, I actually made him get up off that chair he always sits in. This really must be a crisis.

“Dylan,” he says again, his lined face gentle with compassion. “You grew up in a violent household. You witnessed horrific things, not just once, but over and over again. The women you loved, your mother and sister, were hurt by a man you loved, your father.”

I want to deny it. I want to say that he’s wrong and that I hated my father. But I didn’t, at least not growing up. I think I do now. I think the hate has choked out all the love. Because how could I love a man who did the things he did…?

“It’s not wrong for you to have grown up being confused about sex. The way your sexual education developed may have been unhealthy, or fucked up, as you say. The things that happened in that house were seriously fucked up.”

Hearing the words fucked up come out of Dr. Laghari’s clipped and slightly accented voice sounds wrong and oddly hilarious.

But I don’t laugh, if only because in all the years I’ve been coming to him, the doc has never gotten up and spoken to me so frankly. It feels like it goes against some shrink code and I go still.

“But none of that means you’re doomed to be just like your father. The kinks you like as far as your sexual appetite don’t mean you want to hurt or control women the way he did. We’ve talked extensively about how abuse is about control much more than sexual gratification. From everything you’ve told me, that sort of control and abuse is abhorrent to you. Inflicting pain without consent is one of your greatest fears. It’s all but a primal fear for you, you hate it so much.”

“But what if…” I trail off. Dr. Laghari is being so frank with me, fuck, it breaks something down and I finally ask the question that truly terrifies me. “But what if I secretly want it?” And after that all the other questions come pouring out. “What if I want to hurt them without their consent? What if I give in to it and find I like it too much? And I become a monster just like him?”

I expect Dr. Laghari to pull back. At the very least, I expect his features to became wary at this admission of my deepest fears. Because he’ll finally see me for what I am:

A monster lurking in a man’s skin.

But instead he laughs and shakes his head, clapping me on the back.

Fucking laughs.

“What the fuck, doc?” I jerk back from him.

But he’s still just shaking his head, a fond smile on his face. “Oh Dylan, Dylan. Shh, I will tell you something, but it’ll just be between us, all right?”

I nod, feeling bewildered.

He leans in and raises his hand to his mouth like he’s really going to tell me a secret. “You are not a sociopath. I’m old and I’ve met a few in my time. You aren’t one. You have the capacity to empathize with others. You worry about whether you’re hurting the people around you. By definition, that means you aren’t a sociopath.”

“You’ll be just fine.” He claps me on the back again. “See you next week, my friend. See you next week.”

I stumble out of his office, half confused, half more relieved than I’ve ever felt in my life. Is it really that easy? I just needed someone, a professional who knows what he’s talking about, to tell me I’m not a sociopath? And pow, I’m cured?

I’m still frowning as I walk toward my car but I have to admit, I do feel a fuck of a lot lighter than when I walked in.

Is it possible that I’m just… me? That I’m not my father’s creation, doomed from my very DNA? But if I thought that, then I’d have to believe the same of Darren, wouldn’t I? And he came out okay. Better than okay.

Jesus, I don’t know a more carefree person than my little brother. I love that damn kid. He’s not a kid anymore but to me, he’ll always be my little brother. I kept him from the worst of it, and that last, terrible revelation— I shudder. He’ll never know, not if I can keep it from him.

Both Dad and Mom are gone. Maybe the past really can finally be buried.

Easy for you to say. What about Chloe?

I pull out my phone and click ‘Contacts’. There’s Chloe’s number, just where it’s been all these years. Transferred from phone to phone as I upgraded over the years. Never dialed.

My thumb hovers over the call button.

When suddenly the phone buzzes with an incoming text message.

Saved by the text. I breathe out and switch over to look at the text.

It’s from Miranda.

There are three addresses with a short note under each.

The first says: Any night this week after 8pm except Fri. Key under the doormat.

The second reads: Tomorrow, 6-8. My car will be ‘stalled’ on the side of the road.

And the third: Friday. 11pm. Back alley behind Club Chandelier.

Followed by: My safe word is red.

My blood immediately fires red hot. My cock goes stiff and I’m completely fucking pissed. Is this what she would do with those fucking guys off the internet? Give them locations to ‘attack’ her? Did she let them know where the fucking key to her house is?

Jesus fucking Christ.

Somebody needs to teach this woman a fucking lesson on safety. I hiss out a long breath at the possibilities that immediately begin flashing through my mind. Followed by the revulsion that’s a knee jerk reaction.

You are not a sociopath.

Before I fully admit what I’m doing, I’m in my car, punching her address into my GPS.