Page 45 of Don't Bet On It
“I don’t see why I have to be here,” Olivia complained as she sat next to Zach. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Join the club,” Ronan muttered under his breath.
“I didn’t really have a choice in the matter,” Zach replied.
“You’re the boss,” Olivia argued. “As the boss, you should be able to excuse your wife from ridiculous therapy sessions.”
“And her best friend,” I added.
Zach sent me a scolding look. “Um, you’re sitting through the entire thing. This is on you.”
“It is,” Ronan agreed. His gaze was pointed forward, as if there was something fascinating on the wall garnering his attention.
“I’m the one who decided that mandated therapy for employee issues was better than immediate dismissal,” Zach offered. “I can’t very well excuse my wife from it simply because it’s inconvenient.”
“How about because your wife—yourpregnant wife—didn’t do anything to warrant punishment?” Olivia argued.
Zach openly cringed. “Baby?—”
“Don’t you ‘baby’ me.” Olivia shrank away from his stroking hands. “I’m mad at you.”
“Are you mad at me?” I asked, honestly curious.
“I am, if you’re interested,” Ronan replied.
I ignored him and kept my gaze on Olivia.
“Of course not,” Olivia replied automatically. “It was an accident.”
Ronan and Zach made twin faces of disbelief. Before either of them could comment—not that I wanted to hear what they had to say—Kyla joined the party.
“Oh, well, isn’t this just … lovely?” she muttered as she stomped into the room. Seriously, she acted as if her feet were made of cement and it was some huge ordeal to move them across the floor. She sat in the chair one over from Ronan, meaning it looked like it was going to be a four-on-one fight to the death.
“Hello, Kyla,” Zach said in his most amiable voice. “Sorry this is necessary. It’s company policy, though.”
Kyla didn’t respond. She crossed her arms over her chest.
Zach pursed his lips and sent Olivia an amused look. She refused to meet his gaze, however, so he turned to the only other male in the room for solidarity. Ronan was too busy staring at the wall to look at our boss.
“It’s going to be a long day,” Zach lamented as he slumped in his chair.
On that one point, we could all agree.
OUR THERAPIST’S NAME WAS CANDY CARLINGTON.She told us not to think of her as a therapist but as an emotional engineer. Personally, that sounded like a load of crap to me. I’d been through therapy numerous times—that wasn’t an exaggeration—and I recognized exactly how this was going to play out.
Given my mother’s proclivities—she liked to take off for weeks at a time and leave me to fend for myself without money for food or bills—I’d been shuffled between therapists when I was younger. Social Services had removed me from my home no fewer than five times before I hit the age of fifteen. After that, nobody seemed to care that I was left on my own whenever Sharon decided to take a vacation from her job … and being a mother.
The therapists all agreed that I had anger issues. Who wouldn’t? They tried to instill in me coping techniques, and I did utilize some of them. What I became really good at was faking it, however. I would pretend everything was okay until things built to the point where my control began to crumble. Once I lost it—my temper, I mean—there was no getting it back.
That was what had happened with Kyla. I’d been battling my anger and resentment toward her. Then she was mean to my best friend—the one person who had always been there for me—and I lost my cool. I recognized the point where I stepped over the line. I couldn’t fix that about myself, though. I was too broken.
“So, if I’m understanding things correctly, there has been static from the very first day?” Candy prodded, her eyes on Kyla. “Would you say I’m correct on that matter?”
Kyla gave Candy a “you poor, deluded idiot” look. “That is not the word I would use,” she replied icily. We were only twenty minutes into the conversation, and Kyla hadn’t thawed a single bit.
“What word would you use?” Candy asked reasonably.
Kyla responded without any hesitation. “I was friendly, and she was obnoxious.”
