Bad Behavior by Jennifer Lane Page B

I apologize for raising my voice. It won’t happen again.” He glanced up at Grant and nodded to the sofa. “If you can get control of yourself, I’d like you to stay. Please have a seat.”
    Grant jammed his fists under his crossed arms and settled back onto the sofa. Biting his lip, he asked, “Are you going to report me to Officer Stone?”
    “Why would I do that?”
    “You said you thought I raped Sophie.”
    “No,” Hunter corrected, crossing his legs. “I asked Sophie if it was rape, but it seems it was consensual—consensually stupid and destructive.”
    Grant blushed, and he offered meekly, “And then I told you to fuck off, sir?”
    Hunter suppressed a smile. “You think you’re the first client to tell me to fuck off, Mc—” he glanced at Sophie for help “—McN-N-Navy boy?”
    Sophie couldn’t stop herself from chuckling. “It’s McSailor.”
    “Right. McSailor.” Hunter returned his gaze to Grant. “I won’t report you to your PO, but I do think you have some anger issues you need to work out or you will wind up back in prison.”
    Grant hung his head. It was pretty obvious he had a boatload of issues.
    “You seem sorry about what you did to Sophie.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Hunter leaned in. “And now you have a sixteen-year-old boy staying with you? A teenager who uses marijuana, disregards rules, and knows how to push your every button? What do you think is going to happen once he starts acting up?”
    “Are you saying I’m going to hit him?” Grant looked aghast. “I would never hit my nephew!”
    “It’s not outside the realm of possibility,” Hunter argued, “especially if you haven’t worked through your own past abuse. It’s all you know.”
    Grant sighed. “This again. It all comes back to my father, doesn’t it?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
    Hunter studied him. “You look tired.”
    “He hasn’t been sleeping well,” Sophie interjected. “Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, he’s still awake.”
    “Has it been tough to fall asleep?” Hunter asked him.
    Grant shrugged.
    “Are you trying to avoid sleep?”
    Grant looked startled, and when he tried to answer negatively, Hunter didn’t buy it.
    Ignoring Grant’s shaking head, Hunter asked, “So the nightmares have returned?”
    A forlorn expression crossed Grant’s face, and he looked down. “I just can’t have any more nightmares,” he admitted. “At least not while I’m in the same bed with Sophie.”
    Sophie remembered shaking him awake from his nightmare after the first time they’d had sex, dragging him away from some torturous scene in his mind. Once he’d come to and stopped thrashing about, he’d smoothed his hands across the bedding as if he were looking for something, feeling for something. He’d done the same thing in their therapy session last week, she realized—he’d run his hands over the sofa cushion as he came out of his agitated state.
    She’d hated having to tell him she knew about his past. It didn’t seem right that she was aware of the painful story before he’d had the opportunity to choose to share it with her. It didn’t seem right that she knew about him peeing his pants…
    Her sharp intake of breath turned both men’s heads toward her.
    “What is it?” Hunter asked.
    Sophie’s cheeks reddened. “I think I know why Grant’s trying so hard to avoid nightmares, especially when I’m there.”
    Grant turned to look at her with a hitch in his breath, and she slowly met his gaze. “You’re worried about what might happen if you have a nightmare about your childhood. You’re…” she gulped “…you’re worried that you’ll pee in your pants again.”
    His anguished expression and subsequent huddling up into a ball, gripping his head in his hands, told both Sophie and Hunter she was right on track.
    “But Grant,” she said in a soothing voice, leaning over to rub his back, “you were only four then. You’re an adult now, and that’s not