Though, she shouldn’t have missed a thing about Dayton Merino, the man she had ventured through the Nine Circles of Hell for in the name of figuring him out and emerged only to discover …
No, it had not been a dream, and her journey had been far less insightful than Dante’s.
Ironically, through all of Kenna’s amateur sleuthing and putting her heart on the line, she felt like she didn’t understand a single thing about him.
That was impetus enough to keep to herself as she feigned usefulness behind the check-in desk. There she sat, day after day, his pretty little doll on display. The one he used to play with and fuss over. How long would Dayton allow her to remain in the safe confines of her box?
Part of her longed for that day while another part prayed it never came. She’d scarcely put her shattered heart back together after the first brush with his love.
To tempt the same fate twice would forever leave that piece of her unrecognizable.
“Kenna?” Dr. Merino peeked out of the psychotherapy room. His brows were drawn tight, mouth in an expressionless line.
How many times had he called her name?
“Sir?” She despised the formality but defaulted to it when they were in the company of patients.
He shot her a restrained look of amusement.
Clearing his throat, he said, “I asked if you’d like to observe. The patient consented.”
Kenna overcame her state of petrification and moments later found herself sitting with Dayton and a woman in her late 30s, in the oppressive 8x8 session space. The discrepancy in scent hit her immediately.
No peppermint oil like his campus office.
Citrus. Overbright and invasive.
She occupied a rolling chair, notebook stationed in her lap, ready to record observations. The contraption on wheels squeaked at the minutest movement, and Kenna felt silly being relegated to the chair while everyone else sat upon proper furniture. A blowtorch grazed her cheeks at the chorus of creaks that arose from it every so often. She was supposed to be a fly on the wall, silent and watchful, not drawing attention to herself. Throughout the hour, her eyes drifted to Dayton as if she were the South Pole and he the North.
An unbreakable attraction bound by an invisible force.
There were wild differences in his posture in the non-academic, clinical setting: legs crossed, an elbow on the armrest as he jotted a string of notes, gunmetal bracelet jostling. Free hand shielding his mouth. His work, no matter the environment, befitted him with a veil of stern concentration.
The next patient wasn’t comfortable being observed but the final one of the day consented. Kenna noticed that Dayton’s dialogue with the man, Rooks, was oddly minimal. Stranger still, he didn’t write a single word on his legal pad. He listened to Rooks and maintained a pensive expression; meanwhile, she had no trouble filling her page with possible symptoms and behaviors of interest. She blanked on a possible diagnosis, but she had plenty of information to sift through and would race to retrieve her DSM-5 once the session let out.
She was poring over her notes when he joined her in the lobby. His coat was left unzipped and his satchel-style briefcase was strapped crossbody.
“Psychosexual?”
“What?”
One hand threaded through her hair while the other gestured in annoyance at her notebook. “Rooks.”
They’d been with the man no less than five minutes ago and he seemed to have already blocked it out.
“That much was obvious, yes.” Dayton rifled through his bag and pulled out a sheet of paper, laying it beside the notebook. “I meant to have you sign this earlier, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, ask you to do so with a patient waiting in the other room.”
Conscience. Since when had he acquired one of those?
The pen hovered over the empty signature line. “And what is this, exactly?”
“It’s just a waiver, kid. Nothing dangerous. By signing it, you acknowledge that you won’t disseminate information overheard or collected from patients to anyone other than myself, et cetera, et cetera. Get the picture?”
She signed and handed it to him, their fingertips brushing in its transference. The touch was brief, inconsequential, and yet the full force of everything she once felt for Dayton resurrected with a jarring urgency. Ghosts of a desire long deceased flickered across his black irises.
Kenna worried they were a reflection of her own.
Kenna’s distrustful tone upon being asked to sign the waiver had stung, but it was nothing a series of vodka limes couldn’t solve. Over the summer, he had drastically cut back on his alcohol intake—at the fervent insistence of his cardiologist.