“He was going to hurt you, Angel.”
Trying to breathe through my clogged throat, I whisper a broken, “I know.”
Eli rears back. “Do you regret—” he swallows thickly “—do you regret sleeping with me?”
Surprisingly, no.
The panic eases just enough for me to speak clearly. “No. I just don’t know how to go about my day like normal knowing that my patient is dead.”
Eli’s expression softens with understanding. “Why not take the day off?”
“I can’t. I have patients booked in.”
He nods solemnly. “Then think about them. You want to help them. That’s how you get through the day.”
For a man who is clinically insane, he makes a surprising amount of sense.
His words are enough to push me to get up and get ready.
By the time I’m ready to leave, so is he. And that’s how I end up with my arms wrapped around his waist as we careen toward the practice on the back of his bike—less than twelve hours after I let him inside me.
And not just physically.
He’s in my head. And maybe, just a little, in my heart too.
By the time I get home I’m exhausted from keeping up the facade of normalcy, but it’s Tuesday, which means I have my session with Izzy.
At seven, I open my laptop while Eli potters around in the background making dinner.
Izzy’s face fills my screen moments later.
“Hi!” she chirps, her energy catching me off guard.
“You’re happy today,” I note, glad to see her doing better.
Izzy sighs. “I’m doing a lot better. There’s still sadness, and it comes and goes, but I’ve been learning a lot about Enzo’soperations and that distraction has been good.”
“That’s really encouraging. How’s the anger?”
Izzy’s brow furrows, her lips twisting. She wobbles her head. “It’s there. I don’t know if it’ll ever go away. But it’s more of an anger that it happened—not really directed at anyone anymore. I mean, they’re all dead so…”
“Okay. We can work on coping with some of that anger, but you’re right—it might never fully leave. It’s how you handle it that matters.”
We chat for a while about her recovery and everything she’s been through when suddenly—
“So, I hear you have a stalker,” she says, raising a brow.
I grimace. “Well… actually, I had two. But we’re not here to talk about me.”
Izzy rolls her eyes.“Tesoro!”she yells, craning her head back. “Come tell Doctor Morgan she has to tell me all about her stalker because it’s imperative to my healing.”
“That’s just evil.” I glare at her through the screen.
Izzy just grins.
Obviously, if she were a normal patient, I wouldn’t share anything. But her husband is one of Carina’s best friends, and Tess’s brother. Our lives are… tangled. It’s why I do these off-the-books sessions.
Just as I open my mouth, Eli appears behind me, waving at Izzy. “Hi, I’m stalker number one.”