The purple shadows beneath Frederick’s eyes suggest lack of sleep, and the textbooks and file folders towered on his desk suggest the source.
“Stop analyzing me, Connor. I’m not the patient. I’m your therapist.” He sips his coffee.
On the leather cushion next to me, Jane plays with a children’s book, textures and audio buttons keeping her fixated.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t present yourself like you’ve had two hours of sleep, Rick,” I advise. I distinguish the book titles from here, most about PTSD and depression. “Her case is that difficult for you?”
“It’s complicated—” He catches himself, stopping short. “We’re not discussing Daisy.”
He hasn’t cracked yet, but his exhaustion gives me an advantage this afternoon.
“What’s new with you?” he asks, resting his ankle on his thigh and leans back.
I usually tell Frederick everything. He’s ethically obligated to keep my secrets, but saying Scott’s name aloud creates permanence that’s hard to consume without a grimace. He’s across the street from my wife and daughter and four other people that belong in the epicenter of my world.
Frederick fills the brief silence. “Jonathan Hale called me again today. He still wants a list of who’ve you been intimate with, and he wants my notes and professional opinion on what you are.”
I tilt my head with a fragment of irritation. “What I am?” My lips rise. “The greatest mind the universe will never understand, smarter than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the world’s population, unabashedly arrogant and grossly tired of Jonathan’s punitive measures to undermine me.” I nod to Frederick. “That’s what I am.”
“You may not think your sexuality is important,” Frederick tells me, gathering that fact from all that I’ve said, “but he does, people do, and it’s something you have to accept.”
“I accept it,” I say calmly, tugging down Jane’s dress that bunches at her waist.
“Bullshit,” he calls me out. “You don’t talk like you just did without feeling passionate about something, Connor.”
“What should I do then in your professional opinion? Should I go to Jonathan and have a one-on-one conversation, slitting my heart open to a man that I find manipulative in his own right? You think he’ll revere me, Rick? You think he’ll understand me?”
“You’ve already made up your mind,” he says, listening to the tone of my voice. “And I wouldn’t suggest going to Jonathan for anything. Of what you’ve told me, it sounds like he’d use the information against you. I just don’t understand why he’s so hell-bent on exposing your past relationships.”
I do. “He’s afraid that I have emotional control over his son, something that he used to have. He’s just threatened by my friendship with Loren, and now that his son is running his company, he’s worried I’ll have more sway with Hale Co. than he will.” And Jonathan wants more evidence to blackmail me with, so I’ll stop being a force in Loren’s life.
Even if I’m a positive force.
But I hold more cards than Jonathan, so whatever blackmail he wants to throw my way, it’s a useless ploy. Jonathan Hale may have money but he is beneath me, a human invertebrate. He doesn’t even control Hale Co. anymore, which makes him further and further out of my league.
I’m too connected to the people he cares about—Loren Hale and Greg Calloway—for him to make a move against me. It’s suicide. And Jonathan Hale is all about self-preservation.
Frederick takes another sip of coffee. “So you were quiet when I asked you before, so I’m going to ask you again. What’s new? And it has to be easier to talk about than this.”
I roll up the sleeves of my white button-down, heat blowing through a vent above my head. I still try to construct that five-letter name aloud.
Frederick sits up, resting his forearms on his thighs as he cups his mug. He watches Jane attempt to flip a page in her book, but the thick page slips from her weak clutch. She turns her head and looks to me for help. I lean forward and flip the page for her. She mumbles.
“You’re welcome,” I say with a growing smile.
She lets out a high-pitched giggle and returns to her book.
“She’s advanced for her age,” Frederick notes.
“Marginally. She’s probably a month ahead, but Lo’s son tries to keep up with her. I think he may walk first.” I’ve been observing their milestones—speech, dexterity, cognizance, mobility—and when Jane first rolled onto her stomach, along the living room rug, Moffy watched and followed suit. I’ve seen him attempt to stand, as she does. He has more power in his movements, and he’s one month younger.
I’m proud of that baby, and he’s not even mine.
“Did something happen with the press?” Frederick asks. When he begins blindly guessing, he shows his cards. He’s nervous for me, drawing conclusions around the worst possibilities since I won’t talk.
“Scott Van Wright moved in across the street.” I detach myself from these words and present him the facts, GBA’s involvement and pressure to renew the reality show.
When I finish, Frederick sits back like I’ve slammed him hard. He’s quiet for a full minute, processing everything.
“And?” I ask, needing his guidance. He’s nearly as smart as me, and I wouldn’t come here weekly if I didn’t need reminders of things sitting at the back of my brain, the emotions that I stuff in drawers and the facts I set aside.
“I think you know what you feel,” he says.
I’m incredibly numb. “I feel nothing right now.”
“You’re a narcissist,” Frederick reminds me. “It’s hard for you to believe you failed, in any way, and so you make yourself believe you succeeded.”
“I did succeed,” I say. “My company—”
“How is Rose?” Frederick asks.
I shut down again, my body unbending. I thought Rose could handle the sex tapes if we benefited from them, but throughout the years, I’ve seen how the mere mention of them weakens her resolve. I forgot that she’s not like me. “What I want doesn’t go without consequence. I couldn’t dissolve the sex tapes so I profited off of them in another way.”
“And so did Scott,” Frederick says. “He’s the only person that has ever duped you in your entire life, Connor, and now he’s back.”
“I’m rethinking these meetings, Rick. I don’t pay you to tell me things I already know.”
“You pay me to remind you that you’re not inhuman and that you have feelings.”
I rub my lips and look at Jane for a moment, and she presses a button beside a picture of a cow. Mooo! She lifts the book to her ear at the noise and it falls from her clutch, thudding to the cushion. Still, she smiles.
I want her innocence intact as long as it should be. The thought of Scott even nearing her boils my blood, and the thought of anyone threatening her wellbeing—it’s inconceivable.
“I can’t shout. I can’t scream,” I tell Frederick. “I can’t beat at my chest and expect Scott to vanish.”
Rose nearly lost her voice after yelling at Scott that night. She also spent an hour scrubbing the soles of her feet in the bathroom—from walking barefoot on the road. She only stopped when I drew a bath for her and poured her a glass of wine.
I have to play this smart.
I run my finger over a scratch on the leather armrest. “I love nearly every game I play, even the recent ones with Rose.” The Celebrity Crush articles have their allure, especially when we can control the setting and the place and time. “But Scott is like swatting at a mosquito. He’s an annoyance, brainless but unyielding, and I receive no satisfaction from this game—I hate every fucking part of it.”
“You could pay him more than GBA is willing to give him—”
“No,” I cut him off. “That’s not even an option. Whatever I do, there will be no benefit for Scott. When I win, I’m not letting him win too.”
I imagine Jane, five-years-old and meeting Scott Van Wright as he swings back around, collecting mo
re money, blackmailing us for more and more.
“I have to detach him from my family.”
“Just take it slowly,” Frederick advises, scrutinizing my features the way I did to him earlier. “You’re a new father, the head of a giant corporation, not to mention dealing with Jonathan Hale, now Scott, and you’re already in bed with the media.”
“First-world problems,” I quip.
He hops over that. “How is your relationship with the media going for Jane’s sake, by the way?”
“It’s still too early to tell.” I think back at how no one asked me about Jane when I entered this building. “But when there are other relevant stories, the cameras usually stay on me. When we do nothing during the week, they fixate on the children, grappling for something.”
“It’s risky,” Frederick says.
My lips rise. “Everything is a risk.”
“So you’re going to poke the beast?” His voice is even-tempered which lets me believe that he thinks it’s a decent idea, otherwise he’d be chastising me like, are you sure about this, Connor?
Irritation still grips my voice. “It’s better to poke the beast and let it eat me than wait for it to eat my child.”
Off my annoyance, he switches topics. “Are you sleeping well?”
I glance at the textbooks on his desk again. “Five hours a night, the usual.” I can run off that easily. “How many hours does Daisy sleep?”
“About the same.” His face hardens when he realizes his slip. “No.” He points a finger at me and rises from his seat, heading to the desk.