help us if we need it.” She inclined her head back toward them. “Go on.”
Chad paused for a moment, his lips pressed together so tightly, they almost disappeared in his face. After a weighted silence, he turned and walked back down the hall, his shoulders held stiffly. She saw him stop and whisper something to one of the guards, and then she turned back to Simon as his footsteps faded away behind her.
“You said us,” he murmured, his head falling to the wall behind him. “But there’s no us, there’s just me. There’s always been just me, and I’m so alone. I’ll always be alone.”
Liza licked her lips, thinking about what Simon had said the last time they’d been alone together in a session. You don’t see, you don’t see, he’d asserted. But she did see. Liza knew the feelings he was expressing because she’d felt them too. The otherness, the deep loneliness, the aching hopelessness, and she suspected, the shame.
Liza would bet the whole farm that Simon’s mother had been less than motherly to him. But like she’d told Reed about her own situation, knowing the basic outline of a story, and learning the details was a much different thing. Much different.
She sighed, scooting so close to him that her knees touched the toes of his feet. And for the first time in Liza’s career, new though it still was, she didn’t bring to mind a textbook, or someone else’s theory, or some professor’s talking points. She looked at the man in front of her, really looked, really saw, and she recalled what Reed had said to her: Don’t deny your past, Liza. It’s not your shame to carry. Grieve it, and then use it to strengthen others.
She had credibility, she realized suddenly. By virtue of what she’d experienced, she understood pain like only those who had been broken by it and learned to stand. She reached out and took Simon’s hand not holding the gun. “I do see, Simon. I do. I know what it’s like to feel pain so deep, you shut out reality, and create one of your own. I think your mother was unkind to you. My father was the one who hurt me. Can I tell you what it was like for me?”
“What it was like for . . . you?” he repeated.
Liza nodded. His eyes latched on to hers and she began to tell him her story.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Liza’s lips curved into a smile as she got out of her car, staring at the apartment building where Reed lived. The building she’d been in that night, the one that now seemed like a lifetime ago. The one she’d run from, scared and confused about her feelings for the man who’d looked in her eyes and seen her though she’d done everything in her power to hide from him.
A shiver of nerves raced down her spine and she was tempted to jump back in her car and drive away, but she steeled herself and walked to the front entrance. She still wasn’t sure this was the best idea, but she was determined not to overthink it. She was determined not to let fear rule her. Not today when she’d experienced such a victory, not just for herself, but for one of her patients too.
She saw it again in her mind, the moment Simon had put down the gun and allowed her to help him up and lead him back to his room. There’d been something in his eyes and she dared to believe it was hope. Hope that she’d put there. Hope that he was wrong about what his life could and could not be based solely on where he’d come from and the things others had done.
Reed had given Liza a renewed sense of hope too, and she wanted to share what had happened with him. She hadn’t even gone home. She’d left work and driven straight there before she lost her nerve, thankful she’d taken note of Reed’s address when she’d Ubered it home all those weeks ago.
She rode the elevator to Reed’s floor and then walked down the hall to the door she knew to be his, raising her hand and knocking, her heart beating swiftly in her chest.
She heard footsteps and the door opened and as Liza looked up, her heart dropped and her smile faded. In front of her stood a gorgeous woman wearing nothing but a towel. Liza took a small step backward, a buzz picking up in her