She still couldn’t get him to appreciate that she didn’t want a big wedding at a place like this or to explain why he was so insistent on pressing ahead with an event like that. Maybe it was the talk of the couple’s counselor or of mental states, but she was tempted to bring the issue up now. She knew that if she didn’t, it would eat at her, making sleep impossible.
She decided to broach it lightly, and not make mention of any issue other than this one. Her simmering discontent about how fellow HSS Detective Susannah Valentine flirted with him was a discussion for another time, especially considering that wasn’t his fault.
“Maybe we should pay Cleaver a visit ourselves when this is all over,” she said quietly, shocking herself for suggesting the very thing she’d been worried Ryan might mention just hours earlier, “or someone else like him.”
“Why?” he asked, clearly as stunned at hearing the words as she was at saying them. “Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong,” she said quickly. “But I think our communication could be clearer sometimes.”
“About what?” he asked apprehensively.
She couldn’t stall any longer. This was the moment of truth.
“I’ve said this before, but I don’t think you’ve really taken it to heart,” she said in a tender voice. “I don’t want a big wedding, Ryan. I think you suspect I’m just saying that to take pressure off you or something. But I genuinely, actively do not want that. Yet you keep pushing for it. It’s like you can’t hear me or you just dismiss it as if I’m saying it so I don’t seem grasping or spoiled. I feel like you think that I’m one of those people who says they don’t like surprise parties but secretly, desperately hopes she’ll get one. But I’m not. You should get that by now. And if you don’t, we’ve got a bigger problem than between a band or DJ.”
He stared at her with his eyes wide. She could tell that he was hurt but she didn’t know what to do about that. She’d been as tactful as she could while still making her point plain. He needed to hear it. She waited for him to say something but he seemed at a loss for words. Finally, he stood up, adjusted his robe, and slid his feet into his slippers.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said and left the bedroom.
A few moments later, she heard the front door open and then, without another word being spoken, it closed.
*
Ryan walked slowly.
After a couple of minutes, he had to remove the slippers, which kept sliding off his feet on the path, and walked barefoot.
He tried to keep his head clear, but it was a jumble of conflicting thoughts. Part of him hoped that this was just the pressure of planning everything getting to her. But her comment about potentially having bigger problems was ominous.
She sounded like she meant it. And Ryan didn’t doubt that in that moment, she did. But he worried that the second he agreed to a smaller wedding, it would change her perception of him. She’d no longer view him as an enthusiastic partner in making preparations for their future, but something less. He feared she’d view him as not trying hard enough, being willing to settle, maybe even being relieved that he didn’t have to shell out so much money while on a cop’s salary. Just because she was independently wealthy and could probably pay for a lavish affair all by herself wouldn’t matter. She’d see him as diminished in some way.
It wasn’t an idle concern. In fact, though he’d never told Jessie, that was exactly what had happened in his first marriage. Shelly had repeatedly insisted they go small. He fought it up until the moment that he didn’t and he saw the look of disappointment in her eyes when he seemed willing to foreclose on her childhood dream.
That was far from the cause of their marriage’s demise but it didn’t help. And Jessie was nothing like Shelly. But he couldn’t help but worry that in this one way, they might not be so different. He feared that she was just protecting his feelings, that she didn’t want him to feel like a kept man. He worried that despite her protestations to the contrary right now, she would regret going small later and look back sadly, wishing they’d done something more memorable.
He listened to her compare this to someone claiming not to want a surprise party but really hoping for one. She said that wasn’t her. But sometimes it was. After her debacle of a marriage to Kyle, she’d expressed distaste for the idea of ever getting re-married. But then they got engaged and she was happy about that. She’d talked about how the trauma of her own childhood made her wary of being a parent. But she’d embraced the role with Hannah, even if that wasn’t going so great right now. What if this was like those times? What if she changed her mind? He wanted to accede to her wishes but he didn’t want her to resent him once he did.
He glanced at his watch and was startled to realize that he’d been walking around for almost forty-five minutes, repeatedly turning over the same concerns in his head. He had to set that aside for now. There was a case to solve and he needed some sleep if he was going to do it. He and Jessie could deal with their personal issues once all of this was over. Right now they had a job to do.
When he returned to the casita, Jessie was asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Hannah didn’t love this doctor.
Even before she met him, she resented that he was making her come to an 8 a.m. therapy session. It only got worse once she entered his office. Dr. Ken Tam, a short, plump man in his thirties with wispy brown hair and a droopy mustache, had an attitude.
Unlike Dr. Janice Lemmon, the therapist she shared with Jessie, who had convinced her to voluntarily check in to this facility, this guy was brusque and condescending. As tough and frank as Dr. Lemmon was, Hannah always felt that the woman respected her and truly heard what she was saying. Dr. Tam, on the other hand, seemed more interested in his own voice than hers.
She tried not to judge him too harshly. After all, he was the substitute’s substitute. Dr. Lemmon couldn’t make it out to Malibu today, for reasons no one would explain to her. And her preferred fill-in, Dr. Rose Perry, was currently dealing with an “unexpected patient issue” over in the secure Assistance Wing. Hannah had heard through the grapevine that someone had a psychotic break and Perry, as the on-call psychiatrist, was dealing with it.
It didn’t help that Hannah couldn’t tell Dr. Tam the real reason she was here. Dr. Lemmon had expressly warned her that if she had therapy sessions with doctors other than her, she shouldn’t mention her semi-regular, intense desire to see the light die in someone’s eyes as a result of something she did or the thrill she felt the one time it happened. Once that got out, there could be consequences outside her control.
Instead she was to stick to issues that were legitimate but more generic. She could discuss her anger management issues, specifically her inclination to want to respond aggressively when wronged. She could also talk about her need to put herself in risky situations as a way to cut through the emotional numbness that she felt most of the time. Those topics were fine, just no mention of wanting to kill someone for the high.
So she talked around her issues—that is, when Dr. Tam let her talk. She used safe psychological euphemisms. She played the game.