Mated To My Mate's Worst Enemy (ARIA) novel Chapter 571

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Chapter 571

KAEL

Then what happened," she said. She was already sitting up straighter, the pen coming out of her mouth, the clinical assessment running. "You have the expression."

"What expression," I said.

"The one you have when you need to say something and you don't know how to start," she said. "I've been seeing that expression for twelve years. Sit down."

I sat down.

The chair across the desk from her. The one patients sat in. I'd sat in it before — during the curse years, in the early period when I was still trying to hold things together enough to be present for the briefings Ivory ran from the clinic, when sitting down had been easier than standing because standing required more of me than I had available.

She looked at me and waited.

This was the thing about Ivory. She waited. Most people filled silences — offered starting points, asked follow-up questions, made the beginning easier. Ivory waited, because she understood that the beginning wasn't where the difficulty was. The difficulty was in knowing that once you started, the thing was real.

"How are you," I said.

"You came at eleven at night to ask how I am," she said.

"I came to talk," I said.

"About," she said.

"Us," I said.

She was quiet.

Not surprised — Ivory was rarely surprised, she was too good at reading what was coming. But the quiet had a different quality from the one she used when she was waiting for me to start. This quiet was the one she used when something had arrived that she'd been expecting and wasn't entirely sure she was ready for.

"Yeah," she said, finally. "I guess."

I looked at the structural maps on the desk.

"You've been in here every night," I said. "For three weeks."

"The root architecture is complex," she said.

"I know," I said. "You've explained the complexity. What I'm asking is whether the complexity is actually what's keeping you in here every night."

She held my gaze.

"What else would it be," she said.

"Ivory," I said.

She looked at the maps.

"I'm working on the removal," she said. "The full removal mechanism. It requires—"

"You gave me up," I said.

The words arrived the way words arrived when you'd been carrying them long enough that they'd worn a groove — they came out smoothly, without the roughness of something being said for the first time. I'd been carrying this one for nine months and the groove was very established.