16. Talia

Chapter 16

Talia

O n Wednesday, Kieran meets me at the warehouse. I take him to a different room, one aligned with creation rather than destruction.

“You have some options,” I tell him as he surveys the worktables. “You can make a mosaic, sand and prep furniture for repainting, or carve a piece of wood. If none of those appeal to you, I can teach you the basics of crochet or we can move to a room with canvases and paint.”

He gives me a disbelieving look. “I’m not an artist.”

“It’s about the process, not the end result. No one expects you to have a showing at LACMA next month.” I pause. “I think you should try carving something.”

“Why?”

“Just trust me.”

His gaze narrows. I hold eye contact, projecting calm when inside I’m a whirlwind. Finally, he nods. “Okay. As long as you do it with me.”

“Deal.”

We settle side by side on stools at the woodcarving station. After I go through the basics—what tools to use, how to carve with the grain, and different types of cuts—I give him a laminated sheet with easy instructions to make basic shapes out of a two-inch block.

“What are you going to make?” he asks, twirling a V-shaped chisel in his fingers.

I grab a block for myself. “No idea.”

He smirks. “Let me guess, the wood will speak to you and tell you what shape it wants to take?”

“Definitely not. I’m horrible at carving, actually.” I lift my hand to show him the small scar at the base of my palm. “Case in point.”

Before I can read his intent, warm fingers encircle my wrist and draw my hand toward his face. Heat radiates up my arm, sparkling energy that swirls to my nipples and chokes my airway. My mind blanks.

“I know,” he murmurs, eyes on the scar that hovers dangerously close to his mouth. “I’m breaking rules.”

His thumb drags over the scar, making me shiver. Blue eyes flash to mine, roaming my face and neck with intense focus. Then he drops my hand and picks up his chisel again.

“I know what I’m going to make.”

“Good,” I say weakly, grabbing my own tool .

He goes to work, each movement methodical and confident—too confident for someone unfamiliar with the tools.

“You’ve done this before,” I guess.

He smiles slightly. “Not since I was little. I went through hobbies as fast as I outgrew my clothes. There was a whittling phase, a spear-fishing phase, an astronomy phase. You name it, I probably tried it when I was a kid. There was even a snake phase, though that was shut down fast. Eventually, I started tinkering with all the electronics in the house. Mam threw a fit, so Dad started bringing home broken ones for me to fix. Toasters and coffee makers, mostly.” He chuckles. “When I found he was charging people for my services, I made him give me a cut.”

I smile at this insight into his relationship with his father. “I love that. Are you two close now?”

“Yes.”

The crisp reply tells me it’s a sore point at the moment, likely due to his mother’s illness. I don’t press him. Although the topic is integral to his therapy, I’m tackling a different one tonight.

Chipping aimlessly at my block, I surreptitiously watch him process the emotional discomfort. Eventually, his shoulders relax and the tightness around his mouth disappears.

Then I begin.

“What do you see your life looking like five years from now?”

His focus doesn’t leave the block, but his eyes crinkle. “Really? ”

“Humor me.”

He hums, chewing on his lip a moment, then frowns. “I honestly have no idea.”

There’s vulnerability in the answer—he didn’t like admitting that—so I gentle my voice. “Has envisioning the future been easy for you in the past?”

He nods shortly. “I’ve always had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted in life. Not the specifics, necessarily, but the end goals. The specifics came when I started making five- and ten-year plans in my teens. Kept using them for the bulk of my twenties.”

“Did you always achieve your goals?”

His carving pauses, then resumes. “Professionally, yes. And for a while, personally, too.”

I give his answer a moment to breathe, for the acknowledgment of his grief to be felt.

“Would it be correct to say you value strategy over spontaneity?”

He smirks. “I’m an engineer and a scientist, Stirling.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Changing tracks to a seemingly random tangent, I ask, “Do you have a history of alcoholism or drug addiction in your family?”

A smile curves over his face. “Because I’m Irish, I must be an alcoholic?”

“Come on,” I admonish.

His teasing eyes briefly meet mine. “The answer is no. But I did have a friend in college who was a recovering addict. Even went to some meetings with him. I know the warning signs.”

“Is your binge-drinking and drug use a strategy rather than unplanned impulse, then? Do you consider it normal?”

“What’s normal about my situation?” He scoffs, then sighs. “Yes, I’m aware I’ve overdone it a bit lately. But there are a few distinct differences between me and an addict.”

Something an addict would say, is my first thought. But I’ve learned that generalizations are dangerous where this man is concerned. And my instincts have been off before.

“And those differences are?”

He sits back and inspects his carving, which looks more or less like a lumpy blob with a smaller blob attached to one side. Exchanging tools, he begins shaving off long, thin curls from the bigger section.

“One, it doesn’t make me feel better or help me forget. Two, I don’t crave it when I stop or obsess over when I can have the next drink. Three, I don’t experience a marked change in thinking. Four, I don’t make excuses for it or manipulate, deceive, or blame others.”

I study his profile, fascinated by his answer.

“You’ve clearly given it some thought.”

He smiles slightly. “Scientist.”

“Then why do it?”

He shrugs. “Boredom tops the list. In case you missed it, I basically live in a cage. A nice one, but one that’s grown substantially smaller in the last few months. And sure, sometimes booze and a blunt can blunt the emotional edges.” He smirks at his play on words.

“By emotional edges, you’re referring to feelings of stress, grief, or profound powerlessness?”

“Tomato, tomahto,” he mutters, then glances at me from beneath his lashes. “Yes, Stirling.”

“Does casual sex achieve the same result for you? Relieve those feelings?”

“No,” he says, then hesitates. A moment later, his expression twists with irritation. “Shit. I hate it when you do that.”

I give up the thin pretense of carving, setting down my tools and swiveling to face him. “Can you admit that maybe you’ve fallen into the habit of using sex like you use drugs and alcohol? Perhaps even as your primary tool to escape boredom or overwhelm?”

His lips thin, but he doesn’t say anything.

“How long has it been this way?” I ask softly.

Brows drawn together, he mumbles, “Really gonna make me say it, are you?”

“Yes.”

He sighs. “Since Liz died.”

The treasure of his growing self-awareness floats into my hands. I’m so proud of him. Whether he realizes it or not, the work we’re doing is giving him back some of the power and control he’s lost.

The next part, I know, won’t be as easy.

“Have you attempted intimacy with a woman since the threatening phone call? ”

His fingers clench on the carving. “Besides you?”

“Kieran.”

He flicks an irritated look at me. “What are you getting at?”

“That like drugs and alcohol, casual sex isn’t a healthy long-term coping mechanism. Some part of you recognizes this, otherwise you’d still be using it. I’d like to understand your reasons for cutting yourself off from a new relationship.”

“Who says there’s a reason?”

“Your personality says there’s a reason.” I tick off on my fingers. “Scientist. Engineer. Strategist. Planner. Methodical to a fault?—”

“Fuck, I get it.”

“Well?”

The chisel slips, carving off more than he intended. His jaw clenches. “Pass,” he growls.

“This isn’t a trivia show.”

Another switch of tools, this time to a finer-tipped chisel. He resumes working, but there’s a calculating tilt to his head.

“I’ll answer if you answer a question first.”

My back straightens. “Okay.”

“Are you really seeing someone?”

My stomach flips. “No,” I admit. “I’m sorry I lied to you about that. It was the wrong way to set a boundary.”

He nods to himself, expression neutral. I stay tense in expectation of a follow-up question, but he surprises me .

“It wouldn’t be fair to ask a woman to deal with the restrictions in my life right now.”

I pause a beat, weighing the words. By this point, I know him well enough to decipher when he’s holding back. He’s not lying, exactly, but he’s also not being honest.

“Can you dig deeper? What’s the emotion behind that?”

His eyelashes flicker. “Fear.”

“Of what?”

“Death, obviously. I’d prefer that no one else dies at the hands of a deranged stalker.”

“More, Kieran. This is an established pattern that spans four years. Your fear is valid, but there’s another component to it.”

“Maybe I haven’t met a woman I’d like to chat with after fucking,” he grinds out.

“More.”

Air hisses through clenched teeth. Stormy eyes find mine. “I’m not the same man who married Liz. I don’t feel capable of it.”

“Capable of what?”

He throws his tool to the table, swiveling to face me. “You win, Stirling. Here’s the truth. It’s not that I haven’t tried dating anyone. It’s that when I have, I lost interest within days. I don’t know how to be normal anymore. I’m too angry, too… jagged. I’m so different, if Liz were still alive, I don’t even know if she’d have me. And worse, so much fucking worse, I don’t know if I’d want her .”

Anguish screams in his eyes, his face. I want to touch him so badly. Push my fingers into the tense muscles of his shoulders and neck. Brush the hair back from his face and tell him, It’s okay, you’re okay, you’ll be okay . A fine tremor moves down my spine, my fingers curling together in my lap as I resist the impulse.

“That’s grief,” I murmur. “The inescapable tragedy of time passing and carrying us away from the people we’ve lost. It doesn’t diminish the love. We can only accept that our hearts have different shapes now. You’re as capable of love as you were then. And just as deserving.”

Holding eye contact has never been harder. Even though he’s the one who exposed a core vulnerability, I feel flayed open by his steady gaze. I’m terrified he can sense that my words are more than helpful rhetoric. That I meant them not as his therapist, but as a woman in awe of him.

The tightrope slips under my feet.

Kieran’s rapt expression softens. With a small shake of his head, he turns back to the worktable and picks up his tool. I let him work in silence for a few minutes, both to let the heaviness pass and to give myself time to remember what the hell I’m doing.

Once I feel solid again, I clear my throat.

“Ding, ding, round two,” he murmurs, lips twitching.

My sigh is half relief, half laughter. “Okay, let’s circle back to coping mechanisms. Do you have any hobbies outside of work? Judo doesn’t count.”

He frowns, glancing at me. “Why not?”

I arch a brow. “You tell me. ”

He sighs. “Because it’s a strategy I employ for health and longevity and not strictly for enjoyment.”

I grin. “Exactly.”

He glances at my eyetooth; I close my mouth. Smiling to himself, he returns to his carving. Though the blob is more refined now, with striations and a tapered side opposite the narrow protrusion, I still can’t figure out what it is.

“Hate to disappoint you, Stirling, but I do have hobbies. I swim. Cook. Read. Those are for pleasure.”

“That’s good,” I say encouragingly. “How else do you manage stress?”

“I get the sense you’d love it if I said meditation or Tai Chi.”

I laugh. “Yeah, that’d be great. But self-care doesn’t have to be active. Bubble baths and massages work, too.”

He throws me a wicked smile. “Know any masseuses? I’m very picky these days. Has to be a woman with lion eyes, one crooked tooth, and a personality like a minefield.”

I suck in a startled breath. My balance, so recently recovered, suffers a fatal blow.

Kieran watches me for a long moment, his smile slowly fading as his gaze caresses my hot cheeks. Then he nods to himself and returns to his project.

I spend the next few minutes trying to crawl my way back to control, but it’s no use. My thoughts are clogged, my senses in charge. I’m hyperaware of every breath he takes, every movement of his hands. The way he bounces his knee when he’s planning his next approach to the carving. How he stills with focus before each careful shave of wood.

Conceding that we’ve accomplished all we can today, at least from a talk therapy standpoint, I slip off my stool and wander to the mosaic table. I could—and probably should—step outside while he finishes, but I can’t. My base self is still in control, compelling me to stay close to him. Share space with him as long as I can.

I can already hear Leo’s response when I call tomorrow. “Recenter and reassess.”

Desperate for equilibrium, I select a handful of small, irregularly shaped tiles and begin fitting them together like puzzle pieces. The similarity to my mental landscape doesn’t escape me, nor does the fact that my efforts in both dimensions are futile. Mosaics aren’t puzzles. Their components don’t often connect, and even if they do, seamlessness isn’t the goal. The point is to organize their chaos to create something new.

I wish organizing my thoughts were as easy as shifting tiles, but too many of my thoughts have impossible shapes. Still, I keep trying. Somewhere inside the chaos is reason. I only have to find it.

A dim tile shot through with orange veins reminds me of how his dress shirt looked as we sat knee-to-knee last week, fake candle flames flickering.

“How many more times do I have to get a hard-on looking at you for you to admit I want you? Under me, above me, sideways, upside-down…”

More memories come forward. All the overtures, subtle and not, he’s offered with increasing urgency since the night at the Philharmonic. The undeniable chemistry we have. How his touch lights me up with an intensity I’ve never felt before. How fascinating he is to me—not as a client, but as a man.

Part of me wants to stay with these thoughts, rub their edges and soak in the twinkling light they reflect. Lose myself in fantasy the same way I did when I was young. God knows I have—most nights, in fact, alone in bed with my vibrator.

But at the end of the day, I haven’t slipped that far. I’m not fourteen anymore. I don’t believe in fantasies. So even though it hurts to put them aside, I make myself recenter and reassess.

I go back further, to our session a few days before the Phil. Kieran started off combative, but something unlocked and he shared candidly about his work for most of the hour. It was the first time he opened up to me. Then just as abruptly, he shut down. The trigger was asking him what had happened five weeks prior—the threatening phone call.

Following the trigger, I find its two-pronged origin: the death of his wife and his mother’s diagnosis. The losses of the two women he’s loved most in his lifetime.

In my mind, Leo says, “There it is. You’re back on solid ground. ”

What Kieran’s feeling for me is transference. He’s unconsciously projecting the powerful emotions he has for his late wife and mother onto me. After four years without experiencing emotional intimacy with a woman, it makes perfect sense for him to confuse our professional relationship with a personal one. My personality and looks, so different from his wife’s, were unintended catalysts.

I shift a few more tiles around on the table, wishing—as I do every time I go through this exercise, which at this point is almost daily — that the conclusion brought me relief.

It never does.

“What are you thinking so hard about over here?” asks Kieran from behind me.

I turn quickly on my stool. “Just playing with tiles. Are you finished?”

He nods and holds out his hand. “Here. It’s for you.”

When I see what lies nestled in his palm, a wave of cold cascades down my body. The world tilts. My vision momentarily dims. There’s no tightrope at all anymore—only a free fall.

He made a hummingbird.

Memory tiles slip and slide from the past into the present, destroying the work I just completed. They clatter together in happy chaos—the same that permeated a long-ago conversation on a rainy night in Galway .

“You look like a wet hummingbird.”

“Someday the world will kneel to you.”

“I was wrong. You’re not a bird, after all.”

“You’re a lioness.”

“Birdie. Your name is Birdie.”

“Go on, take it.” Kieran nods to my neck. “I figured you liked them since I’ve never seen you without that necklace.”

“It’s beautiful. Thank you. But I can’t accept it.” The words are the right ones, but I sound all wrong. Flustered. Upset.

His gaze sharpens. “It’s a bird. You like birds. Accept the gift.”

I don’t like birds, actually. At least not any more or less than other animals. If I were strapped to a table and tortured, I’d still be hard-pressed to explain why I’ve been wearing a necklace with a hummingbird pendant for the last ten years and have only taken it off to clean it.

Is it because of him? No doubt. But it’s just as much true that it’s not about him at all. It’s about me. My metamorphosis. My growth. My pain and the claws I grew to protect myself from more.

It makes no sense.

It means everything to me .

Swallowing the absurd urge to laugh until I cry, I reach out. My fingertips graze his palm as they close around the small figurine. The wood is warm from his hands, the shape a little lumpy and rough.

It’s perfect.

“Thank you.” I make myself set it down on the worktable, then stand. “And thank you for your candor tonight. I feel really good about where we are with your therapy. How are you feeling?”

My voice still isn’t quite right, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I’m in free fall. I need him to be gone before I hit the surface.

Kieran’s gives me another thoughtful look—the one I’m beginning to fear more than any other. To my relief, he finally answers, “I feel good, too.”

I force a smile. “Great. I’ll walk you out.”