Finding YOU Finding ME (You & Me Trilogy Book 2) by Kailin Gow

passionately.
                “Derek,”
I pushed him away. “Stop. I can’t.”
                “Why?”
Derek asked. “You’re not going to Stanford anymore so I assume, you didn’t take
Collins McGregor’s scholarship money, which means you didn’t want anything to
do with him when he left you and went to Europe. You’re not seeing anyone right
now, and as far as that body chemistry between us, that camaraderie between us;
it’s ripe for picking right now, Sam. You’ve known how I’ve felt about you, and
we’ve been close since Collins left. He’s back, and it isn’t like you’re
suddenly spending all your time with him…”
                He
stopped mid-sentence when the truth dawned on him. “But you are…that’s why
you’ve missed so many days here since he’s gotten back.” His face went from
elation to crestfallen. He bunched his fists and looked like he wanted to punch
the wall. “Why him?” he asked. “I’ve been here all this time with you…why him?
I know he’s got something kinky going on with him. One of the models whom he
went to a charity ball with came out and said Collins McGregor was into rough
play, and other things. I can’t see you getting yourself into that, Sam. Not
especially since you recoil from any intimate touch. Please don’t tell me
you’re with Collins like that. You’ll only end up hurt and worse off than
before. Collins’ not good for you, and…”
                Derek
stopped pacing and talking, his body still tense with anger and hurt from my
rejection. He looked over to a spot behind me, and I turned around.
                Gail
was walking towards us looking very serious. “Hi Derek,” she said without a
smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be training one of the new counselors?”
                “Not
today,” Derek said. “Thomas called in sick.”
                “Oh,
well…I need to talk to Sam right now. Maybe you can take over her shift for
her. It may be for a while.”
                Derek
nodded. “Sure.”
                “Sam…come
with me,” Gail led me to her office, and shut the door.
                I
sat down in one of the chairs in front of her desk, a plain office chair that
you see everywhere…a far cry from the luxurious office Collins set her up in
when he visits her for his sessions. “What is it?” I asked, worried by the look
on her face.
                “I
just got off the phone with Collins,” Gail began, “who seemed very upset. He
didn’t sound like himself. He sounded like his alter ego, the voice he uses
when he’s regressed, the younger Collins, a part of Collins when he was
younger, more vulnerable.”
                “Daggers,”
I said.
                Gail
did a double take. “Daggers? That’s the name he used when he talked to you here,
right?”
                “Yes,
it is. I couldn’t tell it was Collins at all because Daggers seemed so
vulnerable, so different from Collins, who’s you know…very confident. Daggers
is his alter ego?”
                “When
he regresses and retreats into one of the more traumatic times in his life,
he’s Daggers. Daggers is Collins’ fourteen year old self when he began being
sexually abused. Practically sold into prostitution by his mother, and became a
kind a sex slave to some powerful woman he still has nightmares about. Collins
never got to the point during our sessions to actually name the woman.”
                My
heart broke just hearing about Collins’ childhood. “How could his mother be so
cruel?”
    “Drugs,”
Gail said. “She was high on it, and prostituted her son to feed her habit.”
    “Collins
said his mother died when he was really young, but you mentioned how she sold
him for drugs? Then he was only a child?”
    “She
overdosed when he was fifteen, but that one year of prostituting him like