Void (32 page)

“I see. Although you may not have noticed it at the time, or even now, Nicola, but I think that by the way you were treated as a child, you shut off the emotions within so that you couldn’t allow anyone else inside. The people who were supposed to love and nourish you gave you nothing. They were just as void of emotion as you yourself felt. That has a huge impact on a child.”

“The doctors said it was from infancy. I never cried or fussed.”

“So your parents claimed. Even as infants, we have instincts. You probably cried, yet it didn’t help you, so eventually you stopped crying because you knew it led to nowhere.”

Years of therapy. Years and years of vacant talks and half-hearted discussions with doctors about why I was the way I was and Dr. Chambers was the first person to ever insinuate that my parents could have been responsible for the vacancy inside me. Throughout my life, I always thought I was the fucked up one. I thought that I was genetically made to be void, yet all it took was this one meeting with Dr. Chambers to flip the parameters into the completely opposite direction.

“I take it this is something you are considering. Dr. Gunn was the first one to recognize you for you, Nicola, not you Jericho. He was the hand that flipped on the switch that turned your emotions on.”

As I felt tears begin to sting the back of my eyes, something that felt completely normal, yet still entirely foreign to me, I tried to think back to the first time I met Andris. That is when I realized that Dr. Chambers was wrong.

“No. It wasn’t Andris. I mean, he ultimately is responsible, but when I first met him, I didn’t know his name was Andris, nor the fact that he was a psychiatrist.

“You met him as Sinclaire.”

My head snapped up.

“What?” I asked, feeling slightly panicked that he knew about Andris’s alternate life outside of the clinic. To my knowledge, no one knew of the arrangement except for Andris and Link, and Cardinelli after he had Andris followed. Now to hear that one of his employees and colleagues knew about it too concerned me. He must have noticed the fright behind my eyes.

“It’s okay, Nicola. Dr. Gunn knows that I know. I’m assuming you have met Link?”

Fucking hell. How many times was he going to surprise me in one session? When I hesitated, he reassured me once again that is was okay and that he knew.

“Yes and no. I’ve been in the presence of Link and…and I’ve been contracted with him for a few weeks now to offer my
services
, but I have never seen his face. The only thing I have seen is the back of him in silhouette. Our sessions require for me to wear headphones and a blindfold.”

“Yes, of course. That is the general arrangement that Link makes with his conquests. So was it Link that you felt helped ignite your emotions, or Andris?”

“I—I’m not sure. Technically, I met Andris first and felt something from the very second I found him at my door, but the first
real
feelings or emotions I felt were when I was with Link for the first time.”

“I see,” he replied as he wrote down notes in my file.

“You have feelings for both men. That must be difficult.”

“It is. I feel awful for wanting Link to feel something for me other than sexual, especially since Andris has expressed that he doesn’t want to share me with Link anymore. But I don’t know if I could give up either one of them.

“Even if it meant you never got to see Link’s face?” He asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

“I—yeah, I guess so. I just got the ability to feel all these things that were once completely foreign to me, I’m scared of
not
having them anymore.”

“That’s understandable Nicola. It is natural to attach yourself to something or someone who gives you what you were deprived of as a child.”

“What’s that?”

“Love.”

Was I just attaching myself to Link and Andris because they were the first two people on earth to actually make me feel, or was I truly in love with them?

“Go easy on him, Nicola. When, and if, you do meet Link, go easy on Andris. You are the first woman I have ever seen him step out of his comfort zone with. You must be one very special lady.”

Yeah. One that will destroy everything.

I’VE PACED MY OFFICE for hours. Talked with Bradley for another hour, and even went to the bathroom thinking I was going to throw up a few times. It’s a good fucking thing I kept extra clothes at my office because I had completely sweated through my other dress shirt. One would think I was an addict going through withdraws. In a way, I guess I was. I had relied on Link as my substance for so long, that no longer having him in my system—no longer having him by my side to shield me from my own self-consciousness—is hard to take.

All the patients were gone for the day. Laura Lee left the office a long time ago yet, here I still was, only delaying the inevitable. I had never once wanted to introduce anyone to Link. Never thought that I would ever have to.

But I fucking
love
her. Everything, from her perfections to her imperfections. I took pride in being the man to make her feel. It gave me something that I had lacked all of my life due to my shitty father.

It gave me confidence. It gave me the ability to think that, for once, I truly was good enough for someone else. Nicola made me look past my insecurities. She made me want to be a better man by just being in the same room. She made my dick swell in ways no other woman had. I have become completely insatiable in regards to her.

That is why I am so fucking terrified that after tonight, she will not want to be with me anymore. She will take one look at Link and run in the opposite direction. If she does, I don’t know what I will do.

Then there is Cardinelli, breathing down my back. Taunting me over Nicola. Telling me that he will have her and that she would rather be with a man who could not only take care of her monetary wise, but sexually. He was like my father in many ways—knowing how to play on my own insecurities to the point that I was left doubting myself all over again.

Well, I’m not letting that happen. I love Nicola enough to tell her the truth. To show her not only the real Link, but the real Andris as well.

I walked into the bathroom in my office and turned the tap on cold, cupping my hands to catch the icy water before splashing it on my face. After drying off the water, I took one last look in the mirror and conjured up as much determination as I could.

It was now or never.

“THIS IS ALL YOU GOT?” Antonio Cardinelli asked me as I handed him the notepad I found in Andris’s office drawer.

“There has got to be less than twenty sheets on this pad. He writes more prescriptions than that in two days.

“It was all I could get. Another one of the doctors walked in, so I didn’t have time to find more.

And I didn’t want to.

“Well, then you will just have to get more.”

“No fucking way, Cardinelli. You agreed. I supply the prescription pads so you can get your drugs easier, and in exchange, you leave Andris, Link, and me alone.”

Anger radiated off of me to the point I felt like I was vibrating like a nervous Chihuahua. Somehow, deep in the back of my mind, I knew it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy Cardinelli, and certainly not enough for him to leave us alone for good. He was right, Andris wrote quite a few prescriptions daily. The thing I was most afraid of was that the medications that Cardinelli was seeking, were monitored drugs. Meaning once he started forging Andris’s signature, I knew it would set off a red flag in the system.

“Well, then the only form of payment I will accept in return, is with you,” he said, wagging his bushy, caterpillar eyebrows at me.

“You are out of your ever-loving fucking mind if you think I am going to sleep with you. You disgust me. You take advantage of people. Your wife hates you, so she seeks the pleasure of other men. How does that help you sleep at night?”

He gripped my chin painfully in his grasp, his fingernails digging into my skin.

“Listen, you fucking bitch. I don’t take shit from anyone, especially some fucking whore. You forget that I could end you and your boyfriend. You will get me more tablets.”

He shoved me away and I stumbled backwards, nearly falling on my ass. I watched Cardinelli get into his car with his two fucking idiots that followed him around everywhere as he left me standing in the cold. I wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods and could feel the stares of all the people in the area. No doubt the majority of them were on his payroll, or worse, under his thumb when it came to the drugs they wanted.

I climbed into a cab and got out of there as quickly as I could. I hated the fact that I had to steal from Andris again.

But first, I had to get home and change. I always prided myself on having nerves of steel, but right now my stomach fluttered with what felt like a million butterflies alternating with cramping knots.

It wasn’t every day that a woman met the second man in her life that she loved.