Free Fractured by Kate Watterson

day. I’d like to think I’m more reasonable than that, and more realistic. This is your vision of your life and you should follow it.”
    He didn’t look thrilled with her response.
    â€œYour self-reliance leaves me off balance,” he said, turning his head to look out the window at the chill black of a January night.
    â€œMy self-reliance is what you like about me,” she contradicted. “If I needed you, I think you’d turn and run.”
    The hell of it was she could be right. That seemed to be exactly what he was doing anyway.

 
    Chapter 7
    Georgia was in an ethical dispute with her own psyche, but was just too fascinated to step in and end it.
    No true physician allowed this situation, and yet here she was still stretching boundaries. She pursed her lips and then asked a mundane question. “How did you feel?”
    Jason Santiago was a bit different than her usual patient. He dealt with personal issues so directly he probably didn’t even need her, but there was no argument he was carrying a lot of baggage around, so talking to someone was not a bad idea.
    He looked perplexed. “About what?”
    â€œWhen you discovered so long after the fact that your father had passed away.”
    He thought it over for a moment, but then just lifted his shoulders. “I don’t think I felt much of anything. It was no big secret he was going to drink himself to death. If anything, I was kind of surprised it didn’t happen earlier. I was pretty happy it didn’t happen in a drunk driving accident where he took out someone else too so I’d have to feel guilty about that.”
    â€œYou’d feel more compassion toward a stranger?”
    â€œHe wasn’t a man who inspired a lot of deep feeling.” The detective lounged back in his chair, his long legs extended. As usual he was dressed a little carelessly, this afternoon in worn jeans and a denim shirt, his hair curling over his collar. He was attractive, but in a bad boy sort of way—never mind he was a police officer. She knew he’d been in trouble with his job a time or two because he’d freely admitted it. It didn’t surprise her at all. If anyone would bend the rules if it needed to done, her impression was he would. For her part, she’d much rather be on his side than pitted against him.
    â€œI sense you aren’t all that interested in talking about your father.”
    â€œWhat you sense is that there isn’t much else to say. He and I existed in a state of mutual indifference until I was old enough for him to tell me to get out. I didn’t know he’d died for months because I hadn’t seen him in so long no one knew where I was or if I was even alive. I was stationed in California at the time. As far as I’m concerned, he died anyway the day my mother walked out when I was five years old.”
    â€œYou’re angry with her.”
    â€œI’m pretty pissed she left me with him, but otherwise, I don’t remember her all that well. Give me a break, after all, like I said, I was five.”
    â€œDo you think that is why you don’t trust women?”
    He looked at her with those very vivid blue eyes. “Dr. Lukens, I don’t trust anyone, man or woman, and if you did my job, neither would you. I’ve seen examples of man’s inhumanity to man that make me want to wake up screaming at night.”
    It wasn’t at all unusual for police officers to suffer from depression, and he also carried the burden of his less than idyllic childhood, plus active military service, but he wasn’t clinically depressed as far as she could tell. That didn’t mean he didn’t have issues, but she didn’t think that was one of them.
    Georgia asked carefully, “An interesting statement. Do you?”
    â€œLiterally wake up screaming? No.”
    He wouldn’t, she already knew that about him. She’d first seen him for mandatory