Page 50 of Hypnotized By Love

“That couple that was next to us earlier.”

“I hope so. Bad dates can really mess with your head. What’s the worst date you’ve been on?” he asked.

There were oh so many for me to choose from. “There was this guy I went out with who had to parallel park in front of the restaurant. He had me get out so that I could help guide him in. He tried to park four times, and then when he couldn’t manage it, he just drove off and left me standing on the curb.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, pretty bad. What about you?”

“I went out with a girl who tried to text her friend that I was so boring and she wished she hadn’t gone out with me, only she accidentally sent it to me instead. That was an awkward car ride.”

Who would say Mason was boring? He was the total opposite. “Her loss.”

He raised both eyebrows at me but didn’t comment on my response. Instead he said, “With my keen powers of observation, I’ve noticed that you are a bit less ... inhibited than normal. Should we talk about my article?”

“Go for it. I’m a free newsletter!”

“An open book?” he suggested.

“Yes, that sounds more right. What do you want to know?”

“First, how did you get into it? Why hypnosis?”

“I’m not sure I want to go down memory lane with you, because our memory lane is paved with broken glass and ... other bad, pointy sharp things, but I seem to remember that I told you I would, so here we go.”

He shot me an expectant look, but I had been distracted by his hair and the way the light hit it, and I wondered if it was soft or felt more textured. I’d never noticed when we were younger.

“Sinclair?”

I straightened. Right. I’d been saying something to him. How I got into hypnosis. “Do you remember junior year, when I got injured at that game against Nova?”

“I do. You killed your shoulder. You were out the rest of the season.”

“Yeah. And that pain never went away, but I managed it. I did everything I could to fix it: physical therapy, corticosteroid injections—you name it, I tried it. After I graduated from college, I started working as an English teacher.”

“Mom mentioned that you were a teacher. Just like our mothers.”

“Well, I figured out pretty quickly after graduation that I didn’t have the talent to be a bestselling author.” The five hundred rejection letters I still had in my closet were a testament to that. “What else could I do with an English degree but teach? It didn’t take long for me to see that it wasn’t a good fit, and the pain in my shoulder got worse, probably due to stress.”

Mason pushed his empty plate away and looked at mine, both of his eyebrows raised in a question. I moved my food over to him so he could eat it.

“Anyway, the pain got to the point where I literally couldn’t lift my shoulder any longer. I was desperate and willing to try anything, and a colleague of mine suggested hypnosis. That was when I met my mentor, Camila, and by the end of our sessions, the pain was completely gone, and it hasn’t bothered me since. I wanted to be able to help other people the way she had helped me, and so now here I am.”

“How many sessions did you have to go to?”

“Um ...” I tried to remember. “I think about six.”

“Is that typical?”

“Definitely. The point of hypnosis is to address the underlying issue and move on. Most clients see me for three months or less, depending on why they’ve come in.”

“Hmm.” He took another bite and after swallowing said, “That’s not what I would have expected.”

“Things aren’t always what you expect.”

He nodded, studying me. That consuming gaze of his was back, the one where he seemed to take me in, where it almost felt like he was touching me just by looking at me. It made my heartbeat pick up and caused a knot in my throat that I couldn’t swallow down.

“I am learning that things are nothing like what I expected,” he said in a low voice that made shivers dance along my skin. “I have so many things I want to ask you. Is it okay if I do?”

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