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“This is nice,” he said, his hands stroking firmly up and down my back.

Calm. I needed this. I needed to calm the hell down and just function. Not get wound up and flustered. And then I would plummet into despair, and things would go straight to hell.

I also needed to think positively. My therapist had said that was one of the things I had to remember—not to see the worst in everything.

“Gun Larsen told me that I had to stop being a pathetic waste of space earlier today,” I continued my excellent conversation with.

“Dylan.” He sighed quietly.

“I agreed with her. I have been wasting time, mostly being pathetic. And I should never have represented myself in court. I want to hate Gun Larsen, but at the same time…”

“She’s an absolute devil when she wants to be. But also extremely pleasant when called for,” he said. “I’m glad she’s taken you on.”

“She doesn’t trust me. And she knows about my…incident.”

“Of course she does. It’s all over those court papers.”

“So you already knew?” I pushed back from him in surprise.

“Yes. You made me sort through the copies. I can read, Dylan. And it all made sense.”

“Oh.” Yet he was calm, and he wasn’t pushing me away. Gosh, how I needed this.

“She also found the medical reports that weren’t brought up in court,” I added quietly.

“Okay.” He let me go but only so he could sit me at the table and give me a glass of something sparkling, like it was a real date. I took the glass, my hands shaking.

“What was in those medical reports?” he asked, raising his glass. “Sparkling elderflower, by the way. Pleasant and dry. Cheers. To us. And our little project.”

“Project?” I smiled.

“Medical reports?” he reminded me.

“I… Sometimes in the past, when I’ve felt like I was pushed in a corner, I needed something to release the frustration. Another thing from my university days, when studying would take its toll on me and the expectations were just overwhelming. Those corners were always there, intimidating and frightening, where failure wasn’t an option. Not for me, anyway.”

“And?”

Gosh, he was frustrating, but pushing me to talk was probably the only way forward. I knew that.

“I have scars,” I said, allowing myself to look straight at him.

“We all do.”

“No, Stewart. Real scars. Ones I inflicted on myself. Razor blades. Knives. Sharp cuts that somehow made me… I know how crazy this sounds, but you need to know. I don’t want you to come across them and get scared. I’m not…you know.”

“You mean if we get intimate?”

Stewart Schiller was a piece of work. Straightforward and…well, I should have been embarrassed. Intimidated. Weirded out? Instead I was smiling, talking about the lines of scarred skin that decorated the insides of my upper arms. Veronica had always been ashamed of them, made me wear long sleeves at all times.

“I have no idea what I would do with you,” I admitted as he shook his head.

“Neither have I. But we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. That’s how I see it, anyway.”

“I used to play tennis.” I took a sip of my drink. Nice. Refreshing. “I was part of a group of lawyers who met up every weekend. Had a drink. Played a few games. Talked shop.”

“Do you still play?”

“No. I took lessons for a while too, but it’s funny. When you get divorced, your friends just…drift away. Nobody wants to take sides or be seen as part of the drama. I was never asked to join them again. Nobody rang to see how I was, apart from the tennis instructor. Nice guy, very handsome. I thought it was so nice of him to get in touch because nobody else had. It turned out I hadn’t paid for the last term of lessons, and he wanted his money.”