Page 14 of One Night with the Doctor

‘Callie?’ he whispered, stroking her back again. ‘Talk to me.’

His silky tone was so inviting. So soft. So understanding. If she didn’t say something, say what was on her mind, she was going to burst. And in some strange way Callie couldn’t understand, she trusted him. It was bizarre. She barely knew him but she knew she could tell him this.

The stroke of Sebastian’s palm both soothed and encouraged and he – and Geri – were right, somehow it was easier to spill her emotional baggage to a stranger in the dark.

‘It was… my brother. Not a client. My brother committed suicide from that bridge eight years ago yesterday. I was there, talking to him, trying to talk him down, but…’

His hand stilled and Callie opened her eyes. She could only imagine the red flags her admission had raised. Could he separate out Sebastian the psychologist from Seb the lover? The mattress gave then and suddenly he was behind her, opening his legs wide and snuggling her into the V between his thighs, his powerful quads bracketing hers.

Wrapping both arms around her waist, he pulled her in, his front to her back. ‘I’m sorry.’

Callie sagged against him as if she’d just had a ten-tonne block of concrete lifted from her shoulders. ‘It was a long time ago.’

He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘What was his name?’

‘An…’ Callie faltered, a thickness rising in her throat.

Nobody involved in the case back then had ever been particularly interested in his name. He had just been a system failure. A chart number. Another lost cause. And people who knew she’d been Zack’s aunt and guardian had been too embarrassed or polite to ask. She was curiously touched by the way he’d just humanised her brother.

‘Andrew.’

He rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘Did Andrew have problems or…?’

‘He was a schizophrenic.’

‘Ah.’

Callie drew in a ragged breath. It still hurt to talk about him. But it was nice to acknowledge his existence after years of avoiding the topic.

‘He’d been in and out of psych wards from the age of sixteen. He was non-compliant with his meds and… transient… homeless for the last few years…’

She wondered if the ugly scene at the restaurant was now making more sense for Sebastian.

‘I’m sorry. That must have been difficult.’

Callie remembered those years of trying to help, trying to save him, trying to get him to see reason. Trying to be sister, mother and health professional, and failing at all of them. Learning the hard way that you just couldn’t help someone who wasn’t yet open to accepting it.

She’d known that, of course – theoretically. And, practically, through her job. But she’d lived in hope, had been so convinced that Andrew wouldn’t be like others, that he’d turn a corner and she’d be there with her arms stretched wide.

‘The voices just got too much for him.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again his voice thick with empathy.

They were quiet for a while, sitting in what felt a strange kind of solidarity. After a while he shuffled back and she followed him, lying down with him again, turning into his side and draping an arm over his chest.

‘Is that why you became a psych nurse?’ he asked into the silence that stretched between them. One that already felt scarily natural.

Callie flipped over so she was lying on her stomach, her chin propped on one of his very fine pectoral muscles the combined aroma of their sex infusing her senses. ‘My mother was bipolar and Andy was diagnosed at sixteen. I didn’t seem to be able to help either of them but I wanted to be able to do something. To try and help others. To… I don’t know, understand, maybe.’

She didn’t know why she was telling him this. Any of it.

It just felt right. As right as Sebastian’s forefinger felt pushing back a lock of her hair.

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Why’d you decide to become a psychologist?’

He searched her face like he, too, had demons and he didn’t know where to start. ‘My father was a Vietnam vet. He was a prisoner of war for a brief time. He suffered severe PTSD. My mother was clinically depressed most of her life. Because of Dad mostly. Their marriage was certainly no bed of roses. So…’ he shrugged ‘I guess for the same reasons as you. To help. To understand.’

Callie nodded, liking the openness of his pale green eyes and the fact that he was some kind of kindred spirit. She shot him a slow smile. ‘So what on earth are you doing in this neck of the woods? Community mental health is a little lowbrow for such a hotshot, surely?’ she teased.