Different Shades of Red

My therapist says I have a pattern.

She's right. She's always right. That's the most annoying thing about Deborah Vance - thirty years of clinical experience, a voice like a closed door, and a checklist for every red flag I've ever ignored.

So I keep going back. Every week. Same chair, same tissues I never use, same question she asks with her pen already moving: and how did that make you feel?

It made me feel like a good girl. That's the problem.

Because Him - and yes, He gets a capital letter, He's earned it - is every warning on Deborah's list wearing a very nice jacket. He holds my jaw when he looks at me. He says things that should come with a waiver. And I have never felt safer in my life, which Deborah insists is exactly what danger feels like.

Then Cynthia joined our sessions. Licensed forensic therapist. My defender. Deborah's worst nightmare. She uses Deborah's own vocabulary like a weapon and calls it advocacy.

Now it's two against one in that office every week, and Deborah's composure is starting to crack. She says it's professional concern.

It doesn't look like concern.

It looks like she knows something about a man like Him.

Different Shades of Red is Book One of the Therapy Sessions series - a dark romance about the flags we call green, the women who argue about the color, and the therapist who's been lying by omission the whole time.