Page 174 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 10
No one should have the upper hand.His words rolled around in my head. No matter what I did, I’d always have the upper hand. I was Penny’s professor for fuck’s sake. And I liked having the upper hand apparently. Because I got hard whenever she called me Professor Hunter.
Dr. Clark didn’t understand my concerns. He wasn’t getting it at all. It wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t seen me at my lowest. He didn’t realize how I could twist goodness. But now he was just bringing up new concerns, which wasn’t helping anyone.
I pushed my hair off my forehead. My problems didn’t just go away as time passed. Dr. Clark knew that better than anyone.So why was he pretending like I could be different? I shook my head.
“Are you happy when you’re with her?” he asked.
Finally an easy question. “I had more fun last night than I’ve had in years. I can’t remember the last time I felt so carefree. She has this way of making everything and everyone around us disappear.” Which was terrifying. Because I had a whole class to teach, and it was hard to focus on anyone but her. And I kept kissing her in public even though we could be easily caught. If I wasn’t more careful, I’d be the one to ruin this.
“When was the last time you were in love, James?”
“I dated this girl, Rachel, in high school. I was young and stupid, but it felt real at the time. It was probably the closest I ever got.”
“There was someone else in high school right? You mentioned her when you first moved here…” he started flipping through his notebook. “Your classmate who passed away? The one that transferred to your school from Delaware?”
My throat started to feel tight. She was the last thing I needed to talk about. And I never should have spoken about her to Dr. Clark. He would never understand. I was somehow an even bigger mess in high school than I was now. “That wasn’t love.” It couldn’t have been. Because that betrayal was too hard to live with. “She was just a friend.”
“Just a friend?”
Friendship was a strange thing. Because of how quickly it could change. I thought about my best friends growing up, Mason and Matt. We broke in high school. Everything broke in high school.
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, we were just friends.”
“Okay. Just Rachel then. So like ten years ago? What about Isabella?”
I shook my head. “I never loved her.” I tried. I wanted to. But it was hard to love someone with as tortured of a soul as yours. Someone who lied more than they told the truth. Someone with a heart full of greed. Someone hateful and cold and cruel. It was like looking in the mirror. It felt like we deserved each other.
Dr. Clark picked his notebook back up. “So remind me what happened with Rachel?”
“I don’t know. We were fine one minute and then she was gone. She just picked up and left without even saying goodbye. Turns out she didn’t feel the same way about me in the end.”
“That must have been hard.”
I shrugged. “That was pretty much the start of all my issues. Well…not the start. But it was when I completely stopped fighting my demons. I just gave in to them. I put a lot of my hopes and dreams on her. She used to encourage me. At first.” That didn’t last long though. We were more toxic than anything. But I needed an escape. Turns out she wasn’t it. I didn’t know why we were talking about this. It was so long ago. It meant nothing.
“Do you ever think that maybe you should find her? Get some closure?”
“I got all the closure I needed when she left.”
Dr. Clark pressed his lips together. “That’s not closure. If you’re over it, that’s great. But it’s just a patch on a wound until you know why. Maybe you’re having a harder time opening up to this new woman in your life because you’re still stuck in the past.”
“I’m not having a hard time opening up to her. I’m choosing not to so she’ll stay.”
“But doesn’t that go back to Rachel? She left, so you’re scared anyone new will leave too?”
“That’s not it.” Maybe it was. The only people that could tolerate me recently were hired staff. And they certainly wouldn’t if I didn’t pay them. I had a way of messing up everything. Pushing people away. Every single good thing in my life eventually left. Or died. I swallowed hard. I’d buried everything that happened in high school in the past. And that was where it was going to stay. That’s where it had to stay. “I have no idea why Rachel left. But I know why someone would fucking leave me now. No one in their right mind should be with me.”
Dr. Clark flinched when I dropped the f-bomb.
“Sorry,” I added.
“Do you love this new woman?”
“I…yeah…I mean no. It’s too soon.” Sometimes Dr. Clark’s lack of segues left me scrambling. But it was a no. I couldn’t love Penny. It was too soon.Right?“It doesn’t matter how I feel anyway. She doesn’t even know me.”
“And whose fault is that? James, how do you expect to love someone else if you don’t even love yourself?”
I realized my knuckles were turning white again as I gripped the leather armrests. Love had a different meaning to me than it did to anyone else. My demons followed me everywhere. They’d never just go away. But Penny? She was as light as air. It’s why it was so easy to breathe around her. She was the light to my darkness. And when you lived a life in the dark, it was really fucking easy to fall in love with the light.
