He didn’t normally react so badly to people. At least he didn’t before LA.
‘She reminded me of someone,’ he finally mumbled.
‘Who?’
‘Lisa.’
Martin’s expression had a touch of the hallelujahs to it. ‘Lisa your ex-assistant. How does Kitty remind you of her?’
He hadn’t thought of Lisa in weeks. Not that there had ever been much to think about. Their relationship had been casual at best, one born of proximity and necessity rather than desire and passion. She’d been his assistant when he’d travelled to Colombia, and had seen nearly everything that went down. Everything except the worst part.
‘She’s pretty,’ he said, trying to work out where the similarities lay. ‘And she has this friendly image she projects, as though she isn’t really waiting for you to turn around and stab you in the back.’
‘Are we talking about Lisa or Kitty?’
‘Both.’
‘Interesting. What makes you think Kitty’s going to stab you in the back? Does she even know you?’ Martin laid his pen down, too absorbed to write.
‘Isn’t that what all women do eventually?’ If you let them, that is. ‘And men, too. Let’s not leave them out.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ Martin asked. ‘Do you really think everybody’s out to get you?’
Adam laughed – a short, humourless one. ‘Are you asking me if I’m paranoid?’
Martin’s smile was more authentic. ‘That’s a question only a paranoid person would ask.’ He shrugged. ‘Seriously, though. This girl, you’ve met her, what, twice? Unless she’s some cunning spy sent in by your brother, maybe you should take her at face value.’
Adam stared at his therapist for a moment, considering his words. One good thing about Martin – he allowed the silences to work for as long as they needed to. Sometimes they were more important than the talking, he said. Adam ran his thumb along his jaw, feeling the stiff bristles beneath his touch, thinking about Kitty and his response to her.
From the first moment he saw her, alone on that wintry road, it had felt like a punch in the gut. He remembered the tears welling in her eyes just before he shot the deer, and the stoic way she’d held herself as he drove her home to Mountain’s Reach. She was sensitive, but she wasn’t afraid to give as good as she got. He half smiled, remembering the way she’d called him out on not being a gentleman when he dropped her off on the driveway. A sentiment she’d repeated when he called her out yesterday, and she asked him who pissed in his cornflakes.
As his mind wandered over their two encounters – not to mention the one where he did everything to avoid her when he was running in the snow – he came to a realisation. She hadn’t done a single thing wrong, apart from be human. It was him who’d behaved like an asshole.
Damn it.
‘I owe her an apology,’ he said softly, more for himself than Martin.
‘Kitty?’ Martin clarified.
‘Yeah.’ Adam nodded. He’d let his anger for his brother, and maybe Lisa too, seep into his interactions with Jonas’s nanny. Just seeing her with her pretty blonde hair and perfect body reminded him of everything he hated about LA. The perfection, the easy smiles, the pretending to be your friend when really they were trying to get one over you. The lies that pulled on fancy outfits and masqueraded as truth.
‘I might be an asshole,’ Adam continued, ‘but I’m not afraid to say when I’m wrong. And this time I’m definitely wrong.’ He felt sick as he remembered her hurt expression, and the way she kept glancing at him when he stomped back to the cabin. Even worse, he’d let Jonas witness them arguing.
‘So what are you going to do about it?’ Martin asked him.
There was only one thing to do, when you’d made a mistake. Something Adam wished his brother knew something about. You held your hands up, admitted to it, tried to make things better. ‘I’m going to apologise to her,’ he told Martin.
Martin’s lips held the ghost of a smile. ‘That sounds like a good place to end today’s session.’
‘He said he’d lost his keys, but the weird thing is I found them the next day in the tray next to the door,’ Lucy said. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s always been a bit forgetful, but I swear he’s getting worse.’
Kitty crossed her legs into lotus pose, moving the laptop on her mattress so she could see them all on the screen. Cesca and Lucy, Juliet and Poppy; her three sisters and her niece. They carried on talking as she watched them, taking each of them in. After the past few days she was missing them more than ever, a longing that tugged deep at her heart.
‘Maybe we should take him to the doctor,’ Cesca suggested.
‘He’ll never go.’ That was Juliet.
‘Sometimes you have to put your foot down,’ Cesca said.