She pulled into the parking lot of the Ridgeway Art Museum a few minutes later and unbuckled her seatbelt. I followed suit.
“How’s your hand?” she asked.
I flexed my fingers. Shrugged. I wasn’t interested in talking more today. My heart was pounding extra hard against my ribs. Sounded like a damn drum in my ears.
She grasped my hand, her slender fingers cool. I flicked my eyes to her face. To her blond hair, which looked as if it’d absorbed the sun, to her fair brows pinched over her nose. Then to the bow of her lips, pursed in thought.
I had a full-blown crush on my therapist.
“Today I’m going to do as you asked last night. We’re going to work on fixing you,” she announced cheerfully.
Fixing me.
Her soothing tone, the sympathy in her eyes, and my own creeping anxiety sent me out of the car like it had caught fire. A shake rattled my arms as I imagined her asking me to try to speak and my failing miserably. Suddenly I didn’t want to be here.
I didn’t want to try, and fail, at doing whatever “therapy” she had in mind. I liked it better when we were having pizza. When there was music in the background. When she wasn’t looking at me like a project. Or a science experiment.
I had no idea I’d slammed the car door until she shouted something about would I mind not “breaking” her car. I spun around, intending to show her I was calm, but I came face-to-face with her blue-eyed fury.
“You are the one who came over uninvited and asked for my help!” she shouted, poking me in the chest. “You’re acting like a child.”
“You’re t-treating me l-like one!” I pulled my hands through my hair in frustration and dropped my arms, stalking off to who knew where. Not like I hung out at the art museum often. I debated going inside, but since I felt like punching something, walls covered in priceless paintings might not be the best backdrop for my rage.
“Cade,” Tasha repeated for the fourth or fourteenth time as she chased after me across the lawn. I came to a stop in front of the fountain, a huge merman, his stone beard frozen in midbillow.
I heard her approach, the scuff of her steps on the cobblestones.
“It’s not going to happen overnight.” Her tone was gentle.
I didn’t respond.
“Well. This place is as good as any,” she said. She left me standing there. Me and the merman. I mentally asked him if he’d mind helping me out of this predicament, but his face remained stone. I was on my own.
I blew out a breath and followed, meeting Tasha at her car as she emerged with a bag and a blanket. She thrust the blanket into my arms.
What were we doing? Having a picnic?
“Sun or tree?” she asked.
When I didn’t answer, she pointed at a wide oak tree to her left, my right, then to the ground where we stood. “Pick one.”
I shook out the blanket and dropped it on the ground without moving an inch, choosing the sun by default. She straightened the corners and tugged to remove the wrinkles.
We were really doing this.
She plopped down and began unpacking books and papers. After watching her for a solid thirty seconds, I determined that beyond stealing her car and stranding her, I was out of options. So I sat. Knees up, arms linked around them, I watched her with deep suspicion.
I felt another rattle in my arms, but this one, I couldn’t identify. Like fear, but different. Hope.
I’d been afraid to hope for a while.
“Mouth exercises,” she said. “Think of it as working out.”
Not this again.
She shuffled the papers. “We’ll start with warming up your palate.” Her full lips rounded, fair eyebrows lifting over comically wide blue eyes.
“Ooo,”she sounded out.