Read Online Make Me Say It by Beth Kery - Free Book Online Page A

only moments before, primal fear had swum in their depths. “I don’t remember.”
    How could the terror he’d witnessed have vanished so quickly? His stroking fingers paused. “Are you sure?”
    She nodded, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry I woke you. I probably should get up, anyway. It’ll be dawn soon, won’t it?” she asked, rolling her head on the pillow and squinting to see the time on a nearby clock. He used his hold on her jaw to tilt her face back in his direction.
    “You said something about a knife.”
    She stared at him blankly. “A
knife
?”
    He nodded, searching her expression.
    “That’s weird. I can’t remember what I was dreaming. But—”
    “What?” he asked, when she cut herself off.
    She shook her head. Her cheeks flushed a light pink.
    “I guess it makes sense. I used to have a fear. About knives.”
    “A fear?”
    “Yeah, a phobia actually,” she muttered, her discomfort clear now.
    “You mean you got anxious around knives?”
    “More than anxious,” she mumbled, avoiding eye contact with him. “I couldn’t be around them. I’d panic. It was one of many phobias I had when I was a teenager. I was a mess, if you want to know the truth.”
    “I do.”
    She blinked and looked at him, probably startled by his firm, quick reply.
    “No. You
don’t
, actually,” she assured thickly. She started to sit up, clutching the sheet over her breasts. He moved back reluctantly to give her room. “Don’t worry,” she said, leaning up on one bent elbow and finger-combing her long hair back behind her shoulders. “I don’t have any phobias anymore . . . or panic attacks.”
    “How come?”
    “My dad.”
    “He treated you?” Jacob asked slowly, recalling that her father was a psychiatrist.
    She nodded.
    “Isn’t that a little . . .”
unethical
, he thought. “Unusual? For a father to treat his daughter?” he asked, repulsed by the idea, for some reason. She stiffened.
    “My father was one of the most respected psychiatrists in the country, not to mention arguably
the
most renowned expert in the world in the field of hypnotism. He was the ideal candidate to address my issues.”
    “Hypnotism,” he repeated, stunned.
    “Yes,” she said, eyeing him warily. “You don’t have to look like that. It’s not witchcraft, you know. What’s more, he was completely successful.”
    “He cured you.”
    Her gaze skated away from his. “That’s right. Don’t worry, I’m not contagious, Jacob.”
    She flipped the comforter back in preparation to get up. He caught her forearm as she started to slide out of bed.
    “You’re glad?” he demanded. “That your father was the one to treat you?”
    “Of course I am! You have no idea how anxious I was, how shut off from my friends and a normal teenage existence. I was afraid constantly. I’m a different person today, because of my father’s help.”
    Her face was pale and tense. It came to him in a rush, how his abrupt, tactless questions must have struck her. Yet his curiosity still prodded at him. Did her father’s treatment have anything to do with why she never mentioned her kidnapping or their flight from Emmitt Tharp? Is that why she didn’t recognize him? No, that couldn’t be the only reason. She didn’t recognize him primarily because he didn’t remotely resemble that skinny, helpless thirteen-year-old kid. Jacob had made sure of that.
    Maybe Dr. McFadden had merely done what any father would have longed to do when presented with a traumatized daughter. Had his treatment psychologically distanced Harper from the frightening memory of her kidnapping and her assault at the hands of Emmitt Tharp? Or had he tried to totally erase that handful of days and nights entirely from Harper’s childhood? Speculation and questions flooded his brain.
    Until he focused on Harper’s anxious face again, anyway. He couldn’t badger her about it. Not now.
    Besides, if she had forgotten, she was safe from the memories.
    He
was safe