Dark Sins and Desert Sands Read Free

eyes, like I couldn’t bear to look. It was just too…” He struggled to find the word.
    “Beautiful,” Layla breathed, finishing for him.
    At last, Carson met her eyes. “Yeah. Exactly. Too beautiful. Can things really be too beautiful?”
    Layla was sure of it. Things could be too beautiful. Too delicious. Too pleasurable. Desires were dangerous. Passion unlocked things in a person that might otherwise be best left undisturbed and unexamined.
    Layla cursed herself. She shouldn’t have let her mind go there. Without any real memories of herown, she seldom brought her own issues into therapy. It was one of the reasons she was very good at this, she told herself. One of the reasons she justified keeping her memory loss a secret. This way, it could be all about her clients. She could help people. Heal people. “Carson, you may be suffering from an unusual case of Stendhal Syndrome.”
    “I looked that up on Google,” Carson said, meandering around her office as if he couldn’t make himself sit still. He stopped by her bookshelves, running his fingers over the spines of her neatly organized books. “It’s where tourists faint or freak out after seeing great works of art, right? But I told you, it doesn’t just happen in a studio, and even if it did, I’m an artist. I can’t avoid art. I’ve got an exhibit this week. There’s got to be a cure.”
    Some therapists would recommend a psychiatrist who would almost assuredly prescribe antidepressants, Layla thought. But that would treat his symptoms, not the underlying cause. Besides, she worried about deadening his emotions. She didn’t want to turn Carson into someone like her. Someone numb to everything but the fear. Someone who couldn’t even remember herself and didn’t want to.
    “Carson, I think we’re going to try something called trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is a fancy way of saying that we’re going to slowly expose you to the trauma until you have a more balanced perception.”
    “I don’t know what any of that means,” Carson said. “But I guess you know what you’re talking about. I mean, you must get some real crazies who come in here.”
    Layla glanced up to see that he’d plucked a piece of paper off of her shelf. Carson handed it to her. “I like to think I’d never really hurt anybody, but if I ever get like the guy who wrote this, I hope you have me locked up.”
    Layla didn’t recognize the note or the handwriting, which spelled out the words in bold strokes upon a slip of paper that was crisp and textured like papyrus. But she recognized a threat when she saw one: I’m always watching you, Layla, and when I come for you, there will be a reckoning.
    As she crumpled the note in her hand, her heart hammered so loudly in her chest that she worried her patient would hear it. All this time, she’d been half-convinced that her nighttime rituals of checking her locks were simply what any sensible woman who lived alone would do. But now she knew her dread wasn’t imagined. It was all real, scrawled in bold black ink.
    He’d been here. He’d slipped past her vigilant assistant and her locked doors. Whoever he was, he’d been in this very office. And he was coming for her.
     
    It took Layla several long minutes to regain her composure. If she let her mask slip, her patient might see how terrified she was, and it might ruin all the progress they’d made together. “You’ll never become like that, Carson, and no one is going to lock you up.”
    Fortunately, they were interrupted by Layla’s efficient—and officious—assistant Isabel who tapped lightly on the door to let them know that the session was over. While Layla tried to hide her shaking hands, Isabel marshaled Carson out of the office, then returnedwith a cup of tea and the newspaper, folded over to the crossword puzzle.
    It was a nice gesture, but Isabel wasn’t normally the kind of assistant who catered to her, which meant that Layla must not be