When will I learn to just leave well enough alone?
“Following her to her car would be creepy.”
“So, you’d likely catch her on the front porch, right under the light so if there was anyone else around, your conversation could be seen.”
I glare at her, clenching my jaw to keep from yellingget out of my fucking head. I’ve done a lot of calculations and outcome analysis tonight regarding Sylvie. What Slick just expressed happened to be one of them.
“Why are you fighting it so hard?”
“Fighting what?” I ask, knowing that playing dumb isn’t going to help any conversation with this woman.
She chuckles but doesn’t say a word.
“Sylvie is Faith’s best friend,” I say in a low tone. Fuck if I’ll ever hear the end of it if one of the other guys hears me explain myself. “Hooking up with her would be messy.”
“Again, you mean. Hooking up with her again would be messy.”
I run my hand over my head after tossing my empty beer bottle in the nearby recycle bin. “I figured you’d be the last one to give me shit about not remembering that woman.”
Slick hasn’t been around when the guys give me shit. I don’t know if it’s because they see it as disrespecting her or if they don’t want their joking to be analyzed any more than I want my reaction to it to be.
A wave of guilt for treating her differently runs down my spine. Hell, we all treat her a little differently. Some of the guys have started to grow a little more comfortable around her, but I’m not one of them.
“Why do you think you blocked that night out?”
“Blocked?” I shake my head. “I didn’t block anything out.”
“But you can’t remember it.”
“I don’t need your evaluation, Dr. Brynn.”
“Dr. Sullivan,” she says. “If you’re going to be a smartass and not call me Slick, then you will call me Dr. Sullivan. Dr. Brynn would be appropriate if I were dealing with a child, and despite many of you guys acting like children most of the time, you are in fact a man. Correct?”
“Why are you busting my balls?” I ask, taking another step back.
“I thought we were just having a conversation.” She gives me a smile, and honestly, it makes me a little more scared of the woman.
I dart my eyes away. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you’re a man or you don’t know why you blocked the memory of her from your head?”
“Ouch,” I mutter with a soft chuckle.
“If it’s the latter, she could’ve said something that triggered you. It could be because of past childhood trauma.”
I snap my eyes in her direction, grinding my back molars. “I don’t have childhood trauma.”
Her face softens, and I think I hate it more than the wicked smile she gave me a moment ago. This one reeks of pity.
“Your father died in the line of duty, gunned down while responding to a call when you were thirteen. Your mother killed herself five years later while you were in bootcamp. That’s traumatic.”
“Stop,” I snap, shoving my hands into my pocket. Not because I’m afraid I’ll snap and hurt her, but because I’ll be damned if I let her see just how much her recollection of my life bothers me.
“We don’t have to talk about it now, but I do think you’d benefit from—”
Her words snap off the second I turn and walk away.
We all knew Slick was here in case we needed her, and in the meantime when she wasn’t fixing all the broken things in our heads, she’d be a regular Cerberus member. I can see her benefiting others. Harley lost his wife and was forced into single parenthood with a small baby. Legend’s woman was abducted on the way to work and held for nearly a full day by a psychotic woman.