With Good Behavior by Jennifer Lane Page A

talk about herself. “You feel embarrassed to be in that one percent of female therapists?”
    She sighed. “Precisely. Why couldn’t I be like the other ninety-nine percent? I committed the cardinal sin of therapists. I exploited my power. I exploited my client.”
    “It sounds like he may have exploited you as well. Not many therapists spend time in prison as a result of falling in love with their client.”
    “Not many therapists fall in love with a Mafia kingpin,” she countered. They sat quietly before Hunter broke the silence.
    “Has he been bothering you since you got out of prison?”
    A disgusted look crossed her face. “Apparently he’s nowhere to be found. Logan conveniently disappeared right when I was arrested, and no one has heard from him since.”
    “Whoa. So, the man you loved betrayed you, and then left you alone to deal with the fallout?”
    “Yes.” She felt bile in her throat, a rage that crept up her body with advancing tendrils of hostility and helplessness.
    “You must feel so angry and bitter, and totally paralyzed when you try to move forward—like there’s no way to get closure with him disappearing like that.”
    “Exactly!” she replied. “I haven’t had the chance to say one word to Logan since this all went down. He just … he just …  left  me. He screwed me over and then left me hanging.”
    Watching her breathing quicken and her jaw clench, Hunter asked, “What would you like to tell him, if he was right here in this room with you?”
    Her face contorted with anger. “I’d say, ‘How could you do this to me? You said that you loved …’” Abruptly she stopped. “What is this, the empty chair technique?”
    “No techniques, Sophie. Just two people talking. Just two people trying to make sense of the past so that they can move on to the future.”
    She folded her arms across her chest defensively, and Hunter sighed.
    “I know how hard this is, for a shrink to talk to a shrink. Therapy felt stupid and artificial at first for me too. I tried to ‘out-therapize’ my psychologist—attempting to identify his theoretical orientation and the techniques he was using—but I didn’t get anything out of it until I let go and started to tell him my story without censoring myself every second. You were doing so well. Can you try to get out of your head a little bit?”
    Sophie exhaled with frustration.
    “You seem like a sharp, caring woman,” he continued. “How did all of this happen to you? When you’re ready, will you share it with me?”
    Taking a deep breath, Sophie uncrossed her arms and fidgeted with her hands in her lap. One of the blue devil fishes darted up to the surface of the saltwater tank, then dived down to the rocks, appearing agitated for some unknown reason. Sophie wondered if the fish had signed contracts promising to maintain confidentiality. They must have heard quite a few shocking tales in their day.
    Whenever she thought about Logan while wasting away in prison, it was always the same. In reverse chronology, she would feel the intense fury and sickening betrayal of that last phone conversation before the police barged into her office. Then her hot rage would morph into a fire of passion when the scorching stimulation of their initial sexual encounter flooded her body. But the pull of swirling emotions from their tentative first kiss was what stayed with her the most—the tenderness of his vulnerability revealed at last, the ache of empathy she felt for his wounds, the relief of turning to each other, comforting each other with their sensual touch.
    It was that last memory that Sophie decided to share first.
    “I’d been seeing Logan for about five months,” she began, looking down at her lap. Hunter settled into his chair and waited for her to continue. “We were making zero progress in therapy, and the judge was expecting an update from me soon. I told Logan I’d have to be honest in my letter to the court—he wasn’t attending