If he told her how he felt about her now, and they broke up in six months because they weren’t really compatible at all, he would feel like a fool. He would be in the same place he’d been in when he’d entered the seminary. If he didn’t have Sasha, he didn’t want anyone else. But he would have to ask to be laicized to figure it out.
“What do you want from me, Sasha?” He breathed out the words. She kept staring at him, but her mouth flattened. So many emotions crossed her face. She was not nearly as hard to read to him now. He wanted to coax her into giving him the answer that he wanted—“Leave with me. Choose me”—but she didn’t.
She looked away and stepped as close as she could to his body without raising eyebrows. And, when they finished the dance, she moved away and didn’t look at him for the rest of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
SITTING IN PAM’S OFFICE the next day, Sasha was no less confused than she had been over two months ago when she’d admitted her impure thoughts about Patrick to her therapist. Because of the fundraisers for St. Bart’s and other work responsibilities, she hadn’t been back since. She felt emotionally constipated, and the ensuing events hadn’t clarified anything for her.
Even though Pam had been trained in Jungian analysis, she wasn’t a therapist who sat and waited for the analysand to talk. Pam participated. Usually. Except for today. It was as though she’d smelled the turmoil on Sasha and wanted to smoke it out with silence.
Finally, after staring at one of Pam’s very eclectic paintings for five minutes, Sasha asked, “How do you know if you’re in love with someone?”
Pam sat back, raising her eyebrows as though she’d received a particularly juicy piece of gossip. “Is this about the priest?”
Sasha nodded. Even though she’d talked about this with Hannah and Bridget, and they hadn’t judged her, she was still afraid to talk about it with Pam. Her therapist would see how she was judging herself for it all.
“My sister was here for a month.”
“And how was that for you?”
Sasha shrugged. “It was—fine. She left her husband.” Pam knew how much Sasha loathed her sisters’ husbands. One of the reasons she’d started going to therapy was that she’d needed tools not to snipe at them at family holidays.
Another reason she’d started coming to therapy was so that she could be less messy. She’d thought that, if she knew herself better, she would have more control over her behavior. But sitting here in this room, exposing all of her dark thoughts, hadn’t helped her tidy the inner workings of her mind. The deeper she went, the more complicated things were.
She sort of hated Pam for that right now.
“I think Madison and I are closer, though she still thinks it’s kind of pathetic that I’m over thirty and alone.”
Pam leaned forward, her brow furrowing in concern. The furrow reminded Sasha that she needed to make an appointment to re-up her Botox. She’d been furrowing a lot lately, and she wasn’t going to allow her feelings for Patrick to condemn her both to hell and deep “elevens” lines.
“Do you think it’s pathetic that you’re thirty and alone? I want to hear more about that.”
“No, I don’t.” And that was the truth. Sasha was grateful for the things she had—good health, a business, friends, a home that she would someday call her own. She was lucky. But she still wanted to know when she would stop longing for more. She wanted to stop longing for the kind of love that Hannah and Jack and Bridget and Matt had. Not everyone got that.
“I think maybe that I only want Father Patrick because I’ll never have him.” Sasha sighed. “Because I’ll never have him, it’s easy to pour all of my emotions and all of my longing into him.”
Because she could never wake up with him, she would never have to smell his morning breath. She’d never have to negotiate bathroom time with him or argue about who needed to do the dishes. If he lived only in her fantasies, she would never have to figure out how to raise children with him. He would always be part man, part figment of her imagination.
“That could be. Tell me more about how you feel about him.”
To do that, she had to tell Pam about everything that happened. By the time she’d poured it all out, their time was over. The whole time, her therapist was silent.
“Wow.”
“That’s it?”
Pam glanced at the clock but didn’t chuck her out. “You have to tell him how you feel.”
“Do I, though?” Why did she have to give Patrick something that he couldn’t seem to give her?
“Yes. He has a whole lot more to lose than you do. I don’t think that your feelings for him are like your other crushes on unavailable guys. I think what you feel for him is real. And it might not last. But it might be the thing that you’ve been looking for.”
“He makes me feel chaotic inside.” She was both drawn to him and hated how he made her feel.
“I think you just answered your own question.”
“What question?”
“How does it feel to be in love?”
Fuck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WALKING ALONG THE LAKEFRONT should feel romantic. The twinkling lights of the Chicago skyline, the Ferris wheel towering over the pier. The teenagers out past their curfew. The couples walking hand in hand, with eyes only for each other.
But all Sasha could feel was the stone in her gut. She felt incredibly guilty about stringing Nathan along. It hadn’t felt wrong at the time, but she hadn’t given this nice man the empathy that he deserved. Since her last session with Pam almost a week ago, Sasha had done nothing about Patrick. She hadn’t called him or gone over to the church. She had no legitimate reason to, and she still wasn’t sure what she would say to him.
When Nathan had called after his long road trip with the team, she’d jumped at the chance to go out with him. She’d wanted to see for herself whether her lack of feelings for him were more about her feelings for Patrick or whether they just didn’t have any chemistry.
But it hadn’t taken her even until the appetizers to realize that Nathan just wasn’t the guy for her. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d never met Patrick Dooley. The idea that she was going to have to tell that to a very nice man who had been exceedingly patient with her and taken her out on nice dates, even though she’d never even let him feel her up, had ruined her meal.
It weighed her down more than cement shoes, and she doubted that she would feel more doom if Nathan was some mobster sent to execute a hit on her.
“Dinner was good.” Nathan was trying, and that made it even worse. Dinner was great, but Sasha hadn’t felt like herself. Before everything that had happened with Patrick, she would have been able to affix her charming personality and power through what might have been awkward emotional moments.