MaryAnn smiled, a quick gleam of humor. “Actually, Destiny, it sounds very normal when we’re talking about you. Or Nicolae. Isn’t he the same as you?”
“Don’t take his side. He’s acting ridiculous. I’m trying to save the situation here, and the two of you and Velda and Inez have some idiotic idea of romance. Can you really picture me in the middle of a romance?” Destiny waved her hands around in a kind of fury. “It’s absolutely silly. I don’t do that sort of thing.”
“I suppose it’s true if you say so. You’ve never done that sort of thing, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. There’s no reason not to try new experiences.” Mary Ann leaned her chin into her palm and tapped her pen on the desk. “I think of you as very adventurous, Destiny. Maybe you should view Nicolae as a new page in your life.”
Destiny stopped pacing, kept her back to MaryAnn. “Well, he isn’t a new page in my life. He’s been in my life nearly as long as I can remember.” She pushed a hand through her thick mass of hair, lifted the weight of it from her neck.
MaryAnn noticed the slight trembling and sat up straight. “How did you meet Nicolae?” Because that was what this was about. Something in the past was causing perfectly controlled Destiny to pace like a caged animal. Causing her hands to tremble and her soul to reject a wonderful partner.
Destiny’s shoulders hunched slightly. A small signal, but MaryAnn noted it. She watched the younger woman examine a painting on the wall. The silence stretched between them until MaryAnn was certain Destiny wouldn’t respond.
“He came to me when I was a child.” The voice, usually so beautiful, was strangled, a choked whisper of sound. “I might have been six. It’s hard to remember. Time isn’t the same for me anymore. It’s endless and stretches out forever.”
“Is it difficult to remember because it was a painful time?”
Destiny touched the painting, traced the outline of the child. “I prefer not to remember it. I closed the door on that part of my life.”
MaryAnn nodded. She laced her fingers and regarded Destiny over her hands. “That’s a self-preservation technique that abused and traumatized children often have to employ to survive. They have compartments in their minds to safely put things away in so they can move on.” Her voice was without judgment. “Do you associate Nicolae with that time in your life?”
“Nicolae is…” Destiny hesitated, searching for the right word. “Magic. Not real. A dream that can’t possibly be true. He’s like a white knight. The hero in an action film, larger than life and only a figment of the imagination.”
“Destiny.” MaryAnn waited until the other woman turned to look at her. “What would happen if Nicolae was real and not a dream at all?”
Destiny lifted her hand to eye level, held it out for MaryAnn to see. They both watched it tremble uncontrollably. “He could take everything away from me. Everything I am, everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve, to become. He could rip me apart, and I would turn to ashes in the sun.”
“You’re saying you’re very vulnerable to him, and that frightens you. He is capable of hurting you if you let him in.”
“I’m saying he could destroy me. I’ve been destroyed once and I rebuilt my life into something.” Destiny ducked her head. Nicolae had given her back her life, had made her into what she was. And now he was asking her to change all over again.
“I think it is natural for anyone entering into a relationship, a partnership, to be frightened of being hurt, don’t you, Destiny? When we allow ourselves to love, we’re always vulnerable. Everyone is, Destiny. It wasn’t that long ago that you were leery of having a simple friendship,” MaryAnn pointed out.
“Because it would bring you into a dangerous world. It did bring you into that world.” Destiny sighed and took another turn around the office. “I could destroy him.”
There it was. Out in the open. The words had slipped out before she could stop them. Maybe she’d wanted to tell MaryAnn all along. Maybe that was why she had been drawn to this place of peace. To tell the truth to someone who mattered to her.