Page 101 of Hypnotized By Love

It was none of my business. Mason was in the kitchen, humming to himself as he worked on dinner.

But resisting my desire to know things had never been a strength of mine.

Without thinking about it further, I reached for the keypad mouse and hesitated, my fingers hovering just above it. My curiosity was overwhelming, and I touched the mouse, moving the cursor and double-clicking on the folder.

There was a single Word document.

I opened it and started to read.

Hypnosis has been around for hundreds of years, and scam artists have been conning people into giving them money by promoting the belief that someone saying magical words will help them lose weight or sleep better or feel less anxious.

My stomach dropped down to my feet. My heart started to beat hard and fast, and there was a sour taste in my mouth.

Some of these quacks have the audacity to add the word “therapist” to their title as they fleece their clients, convincing them to sign up for years of hypnosis with a false promise that all of their worst problems will be solved.

Blood rushed through my ears, drowning out sound. That was a question he had specifically asked me—how long hypnosis would take, if it took years to complete. I remembered. I had told him that wasn’ttrue—that my goal was to help people as quickly as possible. The more I read, the more my heart failed me.

How could Mason have written these things? Did he really think so little of me?

I covered my face with my shaking hands, unable to keep reading. I tried to breathe, in and out, but I couldn’t get my lungs to work right. I felt like I was going to throw up.

Ever since I’d found out about Bridget, there had been this dull, throbbing ache that never seemed to go away.

But that ache that I’d been able to ignore was now turning into a gaping, sucking wound that made it so I couldn’t catch my breath.

How could he do this? How could he be this cold, this selfish?

I had kept warning myself that he was going to do something like this. That he would use me and break my heart just to further his own career.

Some part of me didn’t want to believe it—wanted me to allow him to explain—but it was quickly overruled. The evidence was right in front of me, with his cruel and spiteful words. All the things I worried about, the ways that I thought people might see and judge me—he had put them in an article for entertainment. My head spun; my stomach roiled.

This was why I hadn’t been able to tell him I loved him. It was like some part of me had known and kept the last bit of pride I still had safe.

Mason was writing a horrible exposé on me. Writing things that I had told him weren’t true. I’d been worried that he might use me for his job, and here was proof. In black and white.

He’d only told me he loved me to get dirt on my profession so that he could write a viral article, and I had been stupid enough to fall for it.

Jittery adrenaline coursed through me, and I was either going to pass out or throw up.

Mason came back into the room carrying two wineglasses. The smile slid off his face when he saw me.

“Sinclair? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” I repeated, standing up, not sure if my shaking legs would support my weight. “What’s wrong? I saw your article. What kind of hatchet job is that?”

He looked confused. “I haven’t written—”

“You wrote bald-faced lies. When that thing gets published, my reputation will be ruined. I told you—no, Iconfidedin you—how important my career is to me, and the fact that you would betray that trust just to get ahead, to make sure your next book sells, is so despicable.”

Understanding finally dawned on his face, and he set the wineglasses down. “You don’t understand, I wrote—”

The anger I used to routinely feel around him flared back to life, like a dragon roaring awake inside me.

My voice was shaking nearly as hard as my hands. This was why I had resisted. Despite all his smooth lies and supposed perfection, he had been playing me the whole time. “You told me that you loved me. You used my teenage crush against me so that I’d share secret things about my life for your clickbait article. You’d put my job in jeopardy just to advance your own career?”

“Look, you don’t understand, and if you’d just let me—”

He was being so calm and rational that it made me even more infuriated. “You promised me you wouldn’t lie to me, and you did. You used me. You’re the scorpion!”

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