“Cassidy, you’re my everything,” I told her because I meant it.
She nodded with a sniffle. “You say I’m you’re everything and then treat me like I’m nothing. Actions speak louder than words. And if that saying is true, I also have to believe that your job is more important than your family.”
Well, damn. “That’s not true.” When she just looked at me, I became more determined, taking her face in my hands and making her look at me. “It isn’t. You and Abe…I can’t. I can’t lose you. You’re all I have, all I ever want.”
“Things haven’t been right between us for quite some time now, Shaw. You know I’m right.”
She was. No matter how hard I tried to remain in denial about it, to go about my day as if everything was hunky-dory, it wasn’t. We’d become distant, in large part, thanks to my determination to not fail my family. But all couples went through that, didn’t they? That was why there was such a thing as a honeymoon phase in the first place.
“Then tell me how to make it right, sweetness.” I brushed her cheek, but she wouldn’t look at me.
Instead, she pulled back, putting distance between us. Too much distance. “I shouldn’t have to tell you how to make it right, Shaw. That’s something that comes naturally, instinct or something.”
“Naturally? For someone like me?” I wanted to touch her again, but I knew she didn’t want me to, so I raked my anxious fingers through my hair instead and walked toward the window.
The glass pane was cool when I put my forearm against it and rested my forehead on it. Looking down at all the passersby from the window of our apartment on the twentieth floor, I thought about how easy it would be to wish I could trade places with any one of them in that moment. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t because none of them had my Cassidy or my Abe in their life. And despite the shit we were wading through right now, I’d rather be with them than with anyone else. It was entirely possible that all of this was my fault. Likely, even. Not that I knew how to fix it.
“You have to remember that I’d never been in a relationship before you,” I told her. “I don’t know how this shit is supposed to work. Hell, I didn’t even have decent parents to give me something to go by. It’s a wonder I’m functional at all. And that’s not me making excuses again. That’s a cold, hard fact of my life. Maybe I just don’t know how to love you.”
“You either love me or you don’t. It’s that simple.”
I chuckled, though not because I was amused. “No, it isn’t. I do love you. But I don’t know how to fix this. I’m man enough to admit that much. So help me. Tell me what I need to do. Give me another chance, Cassidy. Please. For Abe. For us.”
“Look at me.” She was all business, so I did as she ordered. When I turned to face her, she tilted her head to the side and regarded me with steadfast determination. “Tell me,” she said.
I crossed the room to where she stood, no longer okay with the distance between us, literally and figuratively. Taking her hand in both of mine, I placed it flat against my chest, right over my heart. And then I looked her in the eye, seeing there the mother of my child, my greatest rival, and my fated love…all wrapped up in one amazing and incredible woman. She was all I’d ever want. “I love you,” I told her, never more sure of the words I’d spoken.
It felt like a lifetime passed before she answered, though I knew it was only seconds. With a nod, she caved. “Okay. We’ll give this one more chance.”
“Oh, thank God,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief and stepping in closer.
Cassidy pushed back against my chest, stopping me before I could seal the deal with a hug. “On one condition,” she warned.
I didn’t care what the condition was; she’d have whatever she wanted. “Anything.”
“Counseling, Shaw.”
Fuck me.
“We don’t need counseling, sweetness. We can do this on our own. Just you and me working together…we’re the Dynamic Duo, baby.” I gave her a smile I knew would charm the pants off her, as it had done on many occasions before.
She shook her head, dead set on her path and as unrelenting in this as a pit bull with a meaty bone. “The truth of the matter is that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing either, Shaw. We need help—a neutral party who can coach us into becoming better partners to each other and better parents for Abe. You have to agree to the counseling or I’m leaving.”
An ultimatum. Jesus, I hated ultimatums. There was something about them that made me want to do the opposite, if for no other reason than just for the sake of maintaining control. But I loved Cassidy, and if this was what she needed…Like I’d said, she’d have whatever she wanted.
“Okay,” I conceded.
“Okay?” she asked. Apparently, she hadn’t expected an easy victory on the matter.
“Okay,” I repeated.
She closed her eyes and sighed in relief as her shoulders dropped with the tension that evacuated her muscles. Damn. I’d done that to her.
Cupping her face, I kissed her lips softly and then pressed my forehead to hers as I released a relieved sigh of my own. “Thank you, sweetness.”
I’d almost lost everything.
CHAPTER 4
Shaw
Jesus! I was late. Again. And no doubt, about to be crucified for it.
Though I’d agreed to the counseling, it didn’t mean I had to like it. I was still convinced it would do more harm than good and was nothing short of a big, fat waste of time. The only reason I’d made a halfway-decent attempt was because I’d promised Cassidy I would. Ultimatums had a way of forcing one’s hand, after all.
Still, I wasn’t made up of the stuff that would allow me to roll over and play dead while some quack put me down and told me all the ways I didn’t deserve Cassidy and Abe. I’d play nice, but not too nice.
Once I’d parked in the garage, I took the elevator to the floor the directory listed for Cassidy’s chosen cohort. I knew I had the right place when I got to the office at the end of a long hallway, a trek that felt like walking death row, I might add. Dr. Jeremy Sparling, PhD, LMFT was stamped in sparkly gold lettering on the tinted glass door. Sparkly, just like his personality, I’d bet. Eager to get this over with, I pulled the heavy door open and walked in.
A girl in her early twenties sat behind the receptionist desk, beaming up at me with a bright smile when she saw me. “Hi! How can I help you?”
“I have an appointment,” I told her. “I’m late.”
“Oh! You must be Mr. Matthews?”
“In the flesh,” I said, not hiding my annoyance. Not that this young lady had ever done anything to deserve my bucket-of-shit fest. Guilt by association, I supposed, was my subconscious reasoning for my rude behavior.
“Dr. Sparling and Ms. Whalen are waiting for you,” Ashley—per her nameplate—told me, bubbly smile still in place and undeterred by my attitude. Though I could tell it was fake. I assumed she’d had a lot of practice with her perma-grin while working with the public. I’d mastered the same smile, but years of practice had rendered mine flawless. “Just through there,” Ashley said, pointing to another door around the corner.
I nodded a thanks and then forced myself to drag heavy feet to the final destination. This door wasn’t glass, likely, to keep busybodies from seeing the sessions inside. Right in line with the whole doctor/patient confidentiality agreement, I supposed.
Jesus…Was I really going to go through with this?
“Don’t be shy,” Ashley called after me. “You can walk on in.”
Big breath in and then out, I turned the knob and pushed the door open.
A thin man stood on my arrival, wearing the same sort of smile as Ashley’s, more polished and genuine and all “Let’s be friends!” As he walked over with his hand outstretched to greet me, I surmised he couldn’t have been any more than five feet six inches tall. “And finally, we meet. Yaayyy!” he said, laughing at himself. He apparently thought he was funny. I didn’t. “I’m Dr. Sparling, but I absolutely ins
ist that you call me Jeremy.”
Of course he would.
“Shaw Matthews.” I took his hand, instantly wanting to draw it back when I felt how warm it was. Too warm. Creepy, like maybe he’d just had it shoved down his pants.
I wasn’t sure what I expected of our shrink, but Dr. Jeremy Sparling was not the least bit intimidating in the physical sense. His hair was dark and cropped short, heavily applied hair product forcing an unnatural part for a greaser style. His skin was pale, though rosy at the cheeks, like a ripe jolly old elf’s. Black-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his long nose. A dense pornstache nearly covered the top lip of his full mouth, and he wore a “fun” sweater vest over a button-down shirt with khaki pants. Dude had to be hot in that getup. And then it occurred to me…I was looking at the doppelgänger of Ghostbusters’s Louis Tully. It gave me the heebie-jeebies, and I mentally swore that if he invited us to some hip party at his pad, I was going to call in an exorcist.
Though he looked harmless enough, the dark brown eyes that sat behind those thick lenses made me throw up all kinds of security walls. The scrutiny there unnerved me to the core. I’d lay odds there wasn’t much he ever missed.
“Hey,” Cassidy said, drawing my attention. She smiled up at me. “You made it.”
Why did she seem so surprised? She was the one who’d issued the ultimatum, giving me no other choice. Did she really think I’d risk losing her and Abe over some stupid counseling sessions? Not a chance.
Dr. Sparling took his seat in the only chair, waving for me to get comfortable as well. Cassidy was sitting on the couch across from him, so I took a seat on the other end with a huff, ready to get this whole thing over with already.
“Okay, let’s get started,” he said. Turning to me, he crossed his legs. “What brings you here?”
He was asking me? “Who,” I corrected him. “And the answer is Cassidy. She thinks we need this.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“I already have. I’d like to know why you think you’re here.”
“Why does any couple come to see you? Because they have issues, right?”
“Yes, but you’ve avoided addressing those issues, missing every other appointment. Why are you here now?”
I was becoming increasingly frustrated by the shame game my new pal, Jeremy, was playing. “Because Cassidy said she’d leave me if I didn’t agree to this.”
“I see. And why were you refusing to show for all the other appointments we’ve scheduled?”
“Obviously, it’s because I didn’t want to see you. Not you, personally, but any shrink.”
“Relationship coach,” he corrected me, with a polite smile. “You don’t think the two of you can benefit from outside help?”
“Not entirely,” I admitted. “Mostly, my reluctance is because I’m a little uncomfortable about dishing all of my personal business to a total stranger.”
“Ah. Rest assured, you aren’t the first and likely won’t be the last client to have that concern.” He sat back in his Chesterfield armchair—the brown leather groaning with his movement—and then uncrossed and re-crossed his legs. Propping a little white notepad on his knee to begin writing something down, he continued, “How might I set you at ease with this new adventure we’re about to embark upon?”
“I don’t know. How about you start with your qualifications?”
“Shaw—” Cassidy started, but was cut off by our relationship coach.
“It’s quite all right, Ms. Whalen—”
“Just Cassidy. Please,” she insisted with as genuine a smile as I’d seen from her in a long time. Except when it came to Abe, that is.
Dr. Sparling looked up, returning the smile. “Cassidy, then. Do you mind if I use your first name, Mr. Matthews?”
“Sure. Knock yourself out,” I told him with a roll of my eyes and a subdued huff of annoyance.
“Great!” Redirecting to Cassidy, he said, “If your partner needs reassurances as to my qualifications, I’m more than happy to list them.”
My “partner” turned to me with a narrowing of her eyes only I would’ve perceived. A silent warning for me to behave, or else. I wasn’t afraid of her “or else,” so I did nothing to stop our coach from continuing with his list of credentials.
“I have been a registered and licensed marriage and family therapist for over fifteen years. As for my educational background, as it applies to our current situation, I hold a doctorate in psychology with a specialization in marriage and family therapy. I also earned a master’s in marriage and family therapy. You’re free to do some fact-checking on me if you’d like, though I would’ve thought you’d have done that before you called my office to schedule an appointment.”
“I didn’t call. She did,” I said with a nod in Cassidy’s direction.
“And I did the research, Shaw. You know I don’t do anything halfway.”
“No, you don’t, do you? I’m sure you probably even conducted phone interviews with a dozen or more therapists and psychiatrists before you chose this one.”
“Does it bother you that she’s so thorough, Shaw?”
Was that an air of condescension I detected?
“I’m sorry, have we already begun the judgmental thing without my realizing it?”
“I’m not here to judge you. I do not own a black robe or a gavel. But to answer your question, your session began the moment you walked through the door. The clock for the bill, however, began at the time you were scheduled to walk through the door.” He said all this without looking at me and while scribbling more notes on his pad. It irked me.
“Is that what you’re writing, that I was late?”
He stopped and peered up at me over the rim of his glasses. “Would that bother you?”
“It bothers me that you answer every question with a question asking me if it bothers me.”
“I see,” he said, again returning to the notepad. Just when I thought I might launch across the space between the “therapy couch” and his comfy chair, he stopped, crossing his forearms over the pad as he leaned toward us. “How about this? Since you seem to be distracted so much by what I may or may not be writing, and I do need to keep notes, would you be more comfortable if I record our sessions to play back later so that I can note your file accordingly?”
I suddenly saw this guy’s appeal to Cassidy. He was as meticulous as she was about keeping an accurate account of everything there was to know about a subject of interest. It was his job, I got it, and it would make me feel less scrutinized if I didn’t have to watch him write down every body gesture or interesting choice of word I’d used.
“That would be preferable, yes.” Though I wasn’t completely onboard with this whole thing, I relaxed a little at his willingness to compromise. I even sat back and draped my arm over the back of the couch as the doc moved to his desk to pull out a small black recorder. He did some shit to make sure it was good to go, and then sat it on the table between us with a little red light seeming to point the blame finger right at me like a laser centering on the kill shot.
“Does that bother you?” he asked, chuckling at his own attempt to be funny. “I’m sorry. Just a little therapist humor.”
Even Cassidy’s laugh was forced. I shot her a sideways glance with a humorless chuckle of my own. I couldn’t believe she was torturing me like this.
Before returning to his cushy chair, Dr. Sparling grabbed a file folder off his desk. I thought he wasn’t going to be taking notes?
“So,” he continued, “as Cassidy is aware, I’m a little unconventional in my coaching methods. I prefer to keep things fun, shake it up a bit, and make it less like therapy and more like talking to an old friend who happens to be a pretty good referee, if you will.
“As I said before, I am not a judge and promise not to be judgmental, but I need you to trust that I know what I’m talking about and will do my utter best to help the two of you through any issues you mig
ht have in your relationship, obvious or buried. I can’t simply fix the problem areas for you. I can only act as a neutral party, a guide to help you resolve them together.
“Now, let’s jump right in, shall we?” Dr. Sparling opened the file on his lap, perusing the contents as he spoke. “When Cassidy and I first planned to meet, I’d emailed a questionnaire that each of you completed for me to get a snapshot of you individually and as a couple. The questionnaire, as you may recall—or not, since it was so long ago,” he said, giving me a pointed glance—I supposed to shame me for all the appointments that had had to be rescheduled on my account—“was to help me determine what the two of you feel, separately, are the issues in your relationship so that we might find a common focus point.
“Unfortunately, only one of you took it seriously,” he concluded. He was about to rat me out.
“What do you mean?” Cassidy asked, shocked. Not sure why.
Sometimes I believed she asked questions she already knew the answers to just to prove an already obvious point. No, I hadn’t taken the questionnaire seriously. Mostly because I’d had no intention of showing up to these sessions in the first place and saw no sense in divulging personal information to a stranger I’d never meet anyway.
“Well, here’s one example….For the question asking what his childhood was like, Shaw wrote that he was the illegitimate son of Santa Claus, who’d had an illicit affair with his mother, the Tooth Fairy, and that she’d abandoned him to be raised by a pack of chupacabras until he was eventually abducted by aliens at the age of six and sold off to a succubus that had…” Dr. Sparling pulled at the collar of his shirt, uncomfortable with his next reveal, “sucked him off so much, his cock was permanently swollen to the size of a baby’s arm.”
I did my best to stifle my laughter, but no way could I hide my amused grin from Cassidy.