I hung up and stood in the kitchen, stunned into a state of inertia as I thought about what Maureen McIntyre had said. Broke the rules. It was a good way to describe what I’d done, too.

And I wasn’t done yet.

TWENTY-SEVEN

People are simpler than we give them credit for. We imagine our species is composed of complex beings with extensive wants and needs, but we really only yearn for two things: to feel safe and to feel loved. It sounds elementary—but there’s a problem. If we’re deprived of these things long enough, it gets to the point where we can’t take it. We’re desperate, and desperation activates our survival instinct. Makes us do inconceivable things.

When I remembered Carson on that first day, wearing his kitten socks and smelling of fresh sage, I had to fight with myself to stay angry. I’d found safety and love with him at a time when I thought I’d never have either again. In return, he tried to turn me against Tim; hell, he’d called my boss mid-case to convince her I was hanging on by a thread. By no means was I back to my old self, but I needed to believe I could get there. Until McIntyre took me in, my career was DOA, and I’d always blamed Bram. But Carson was equally guilty of killing it.

I understood why he did it, didn’t doubt his motivation for a second. It was just like McIntyre said. He was always distant and dismissive when I brought up work. Even the texts we’d exchanged hours earlier were rife with admonitions. My fiancé had embarked on a full-fledged crusade to remove me from the force, and there was a whole lot more to it than fearing for my mental health.

I was back out in the world now. No more sitting at home waiting for him to psychoanalyze me. I’d dared to stray outside the neat parameters of his life. Carson needed to dominate me, and whether because I didn’t trust my own judgment enough to question his behavior, or because I needed to relinquish control of the life I’d let spin off its axis, I’d let him. Tapping my deepest fears and summoning my demons was his pet pursuit.

I’d been a fascinating hobby for him at first. He quickly recognized that damaged, docile Shana would make an obedient wife. He’d doled out his diagnosis then, used my condition to keep me right where he wanted me. I felt like an idiot for not spotting Carson’s trickery sooner. Caught up in my own thoughts and actions, I didn’t think to monitor his.

What really got me, though, was how Carson looked straight at my face and lied. Dozens of times I’d heard him say it’s a bad idea for people who have suffered psychological trauma to put themselves in high-stress situations. He made his professional feelings about that known whenever he read about a cop who’d done something insane, like gun down a kid in the street or sexually assault a witness. Carson always chalked it up to the officer’s mental state. In the same breath, he’d tell me I was different. The second he saw how determined I was to go back to my job despite the horrors of a homicide detective’s daily life, he swore to me I could, and would, prevail. He’d figured out what I needed to hear and was clever enough to oblige. I clung to his insistence that one day I’d be a good detective again. Banked on his pledge to help. But from denigrating my condition to proposing Thai food for dinner, it was all just a strategy designed to strip down my self-reliance and make me question whether I’d survive.