by Haley Travis
His sweet gesture was touching, but I had so much to say that I knew I should wait until we were inside. I wanted to nuzzle my head into his chest, so he would throw his arms around me. I wanted to look up into those warm eyes, and see how much he cared.
But my anger wouldn’t let me. It felt like there was a wall between us that I couldn’t just ignore.
I turned to go into the small medical building, and we walked into the office of Dr. Gretchen Henry.
“I’m so glad you came,” she said warmly, shaking our hands and ushering us into what looked more like a cozy living room than an office. We were seated on a couch that was so small that it forced us to be close together.
Looking around at the warm, comfortable colors, the flower arrangement, and the soft lighting, I couldn’t help thinking that the room was its own kind of set. A space for people to let down their walls.
“So, Alice, Taylor, please just call me Gretchen. I’d like to start off by thanking you for coming today. The fact that you’re both open to working on your relationship is admirable.”
Taylor’s fingers were tapping nervously on his knee, as his eyes darted around the corners of the room, as if searching for the cameras.
For the first time on this crazy show, I felt exposed. Pretending to buy a car or a house was just a silly game. Pretending to be a married couple was much more serious. Almost disrespectful of the entire institution of marriage. Pretending to be a married couple in trouble, well, that was just too much.
“Alice, would you like to begin?” Gretchen asked. “Please share why you’re here today.”
Before I could speak, Taylor wrapped his coat around my shoulders more tightly. “Sorry, but I don’t like thinking that you’re cold.”
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Staring down at my knees for a moment, I tried to collect my thoughts. “I don’t like being treated like a little girl,” I said slowly.
Taylor turned to me with his mouth open and eyes wide. “Jesus Christ, baby, I never meant for–”
“Please,” Gretchen said, holding up her hand. “Let Alice speak her piece, then you can respond.”
“Sorry,” he muttered. Stealing another look, his eyes looked positively haunted.
“I had…issues when I was young.” It was difficult and humiliating to say, but somehow I had to spit it out. “My father thought that because he controlled the money, he controlled everyone in the house. He didn’t listen to a word my mother said, and treated her like an idiot until she left.”
Taylor’s fingers slipped through mine, as he mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”
“When the bills were due, there were some months we had to choose between food and the electric bill. But he never told me what was going on. So I was literally in the dark many times. I had to lurk around trying to overhear phone calls and finding where he hid the bills just so I could try to survive. I hated not knowing what was going on, and I ended up hating him for it.”
“Very good,” Gretchen murmured. “Keep going.”
Nodding slowly, I took a deep breath. “It’s really hard for me to trust people. One strike, and you’re out. I gave my father dozens of last chances, and it broke me.”
Sliding sideways to face Taylor head on, I continued. “So when you strongly suggest I avoid getting a light gray car because you’re concerned for my safety, it’s overly protective, but sweet. But when you don’t tell me the entire truth about other things, it makes me feel like I’m not your real partner. Hiding anything from me drives me completely insane, and I don’t think I can change that part of me.”
Gretchen nodded, smiling widely. “Very good. Thank you, Alice. Taylor, how does that make you feel?”
“Horrified,” he growled softly.
“What makes you use that word?” Gretchen asked.
“Just thinking about my sweet girl not having electricity, not having heat in her home, kills me.”
“It sounds like you truly care about her,” Gretchen said softly.
His thumb ran along my palm so gently that it started to melt the wall between us. My body was once again paying zero attention to the stresses in my mind.
“Alice, I would never want to control you. I will suggest things, but you can always tell me no.”
I managed to meet his eyes for a moment, and nodded encouragingly.
“The money means nothing to me,” he said softly. “It piled up because I didn’t have much to spend it on. Now I have plenty of it, and I hope that you’ll let me share. What’s mine is yours.”
Gretchen nodded. “Alice, can you think of a way that you could share his wealth while still keeping your own personal boundaries?”
“I think I could learn to share completely if I knew he trusted me completely,” I said. “If I knew that he would tell me the entire story at all times.”
“Has he ever not told you the entire story?” Gretchen asked.
“Yes.” I paused to sort out how to be vague enough. “It was a business venture, but he knew I would have strong opinions about it, so he kept it from me.”
“Taylor,” Gretchen asked, leaning back in her chair, “Have you ever lied to Alice?”
From the look in his eyes, she might as well have punched him.
“Never,” he said. “And I never will. If it was absolutely necessary, I would lie to anyone else on the planet. But never my Alice.”
He paused, then squeezed my hands gently. “I honestly didn’t mean to hide anything from you, I just didn’t want to dump too much on you at once. I won’t make that mistake again, I swear.”
Taylor held up a finger to Dr. Gretchen, then leaned in to breathe in my ear. “I swear, if it’s what you want, I’ll give everything to my cousins and wash my hands of it. I need you, baby.”
“Is it me that you really need, or the idea of having a little trophy wife?” I regretted the words the second they fell from my lips.
Taylor pulled me against him and whispered, “I love you, Alice. My entire life didn’t make any sense until you appeared.”
He leaned back to look at my eyes, ignoring the fact that Gretchen was listening intently. “I love every single thing about you, even though I don’t know nearly enough. I do want you as my partner, in every possible way. I’d love to take you to Italy to study those artists you love. And Paris. And wherever else you want.”
“You’d come with me? What about your work?”
He shook his head. “I’ll put everything on hold. Or I’ll put one of the other guys in charge of security scheduling. I only care about you.”
My shoulders began to quiver. Then my bottom lip. “Nobody has ever gone out of their way to do anything for me. It’s strange.”
Suddenly I was in his lap, as he held my head against his shoulder, rocking me gently as the sobs rattled straight through me.
“I’ll always be open with you about everything,” he said, stroking my hair. “And you can help me figure out the right thing to do about that real estate project.”
“I don’t want to get in your way.”
“Alice, you are my way now,” he said. “You’re the only one that matters. I know you have to feel this between us.”
Nodding, Gretchen pressed a tissue into my hand so that I could dab my eyes. “Thank you.”
“I can tell you two truly love each other,” she said gently. “We all get tangled up sometimes, trying to do the right thing, and trying to keep stress away from our partner. The more we can bring the walls down and be completely open, the better.”
Nodding, I twisted to breathe into Taylor’s ear, “No more trying to get around the rules of your grandfather’s estate?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
Gretchen smiled, looking pleased as punch. “You two are going to be just fine. I’m going to give you some brochures with homework assignments.”
Taylor gave her a flat look, then raised his eyebrow to me. “You’ll do your homework and you’ll like it,” I smiled, dabbing away the la
st of the tears.
“Don’t worry,” Gretchen said with a smile, “Most of the exercises are fun, like cooking for each other, sharing positive childhood stories, and finding new ways to say ‘I love you’ without using words.”
Taylor’s warm hand caressed my side. “Does taking my beautiful wife home and giving her a bubble bath count as homework?”
14
_____
Taylor
Alice was quiet on the way home, but I reached out to hold her hand as often as possible. When we got back to my house, we kicked off our shoes and went straight to the living room couch.
Holding her hands between us, I asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Are we all right?” I asked, watching her eyes carefully.
My heart nearly stopped until her tiny smile took over. “I think so.”
My loud sigh of relief made her smile more widely.
“I still don’t like that the terms of your grandfather’s Will specifically stated to create educational programming, and you and your cousins have tried to find a way around it,” she said slowly. “It’s like you’re bending the rules. Cheating.”
Nodding, I picked up my laptop from the coffee table. “Let’s go through it together then.”
“Really?”
“Yes, absolutely. If we can’t make this existing show an appropriate level of educational entertainment, we’ll scrap it and do another show.”
Her pretty little mouth fell open. “You’d do that for me?”
My head cocked to the side as I considered my answer. “It’s not exactly just for you. It’s so that I’ll be the kind of man you deserve.”
Her hand rubbing the back of my shoulder made me feel a bit better. “You’re far more than I deserve,” she said softly. “Far more than I would have ever dreamed.”
I called up the terms of the Will, then handed her the laptop. “Why don’t you give that a read, and I’ll be back soon?”
“Okay.”
When I returned ten minutes later, Alice looked up at me with a bright smile, patting the couch beside her. “The existing show is close, actually. I think if you added two more episodes, that would do the trick.”
Snuggling in beside her, I asked, “What do we need?”
“If you had a psychologist, a psychotherapist, and maybe an acting coach review the first two episodes, they could discuss all of the intricacies of lying convincingly. Then after the episode with the couples therapist, have the experts back as a finale .”
“So Gary’s idea about having viewers vote multiple times to make it look like there were more viewers – does that interfere with how educational the show seems?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Interesting.”
Alice pointed to a section of the terms. “Entertainment is actually encouraged. And your experts don’t have to be top of their fields, just qualified resources.”
She set the laptop back on the table, then rested her hand on my knee. “It means a lot to me that you want to include me in this,” she said softly.
“Of course, baby. You’re my wife.”
Her eyes sparkled as she laughed. “Not anymore, now that we finished shooting the last challenge.” She held up her bare finger, that was slightly tinged with green.
“I’m seeing a few months into the future,” I smiled, putting my fingers to my temples and doing a bad impression of a mind reader. “You’re going to be my wife. You’re going to let me pay your tuition, and buy you that car. And you’re going to move in with me immediately.”
Those beautiful lips pursed for a moment as she stared at me. “You’re awfully bossy.”
“Sugar, I can’t stand the thought of you stuffed into a windowless room where it’s too loud for you to study. Let me show you something.”
Leading her upstairs, we walked past the master bedroom, then I ducked into my small home office to grab a sheet from the printer. At the end of the hall, I opened the guest bedroom door, and held up the page.
“I asked my decorator for a sketch of how she would envision this room as an art expert’s home office,” I said. “We can do it up any way you like, but this is a good place to start.”
Her mouth fell open for a second as she surveyed the room. Taking the page from me, she began to laugh. “I’ll need bookshelves across that entire wall, eventually,” she said. “But this is a great start.”
Slipping an arm around her, I gripped her hip. “You’ll be so much more productive in a good space, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’ll let me do this for you?”
Alice looked up at me as I realized was surprised that her eyes were glassy with tears. “Yes. But if you’re doing all of this for me, what can I ever do for you?”
Tossing the page onto the dresser, I pulled her against me, burying my face in her hair. “Just love me, baby. Just be mine. You’re my little shining light that gives me joy. That’s all I want.”
The closeness I felt with Alice was back, thank goodness. I didn’t want to ever feel her angry and frustrated with me again.
Kissing her gently, the heat flared between us, just as strong as before. “I want to do some homework,” I said, taking her hand.
We walked down the hall back to the master bedroom, then into the washroom. She gasped as she looked around at the dozen lit candles, and the giant bathtub piled high with bubbles.
I turned her toward the giant mirror, unzipping the back of her dress as she stared at me in the reflection. She pressed back against me as my hands slipped over her stomach. “You know, we look incredible together,” I said softly.
“Like a couple who has been together much longer than a few days,” she smiled.
I swept her hair to the side, kissing down the side of her neck as I slid her dress off. I unhooked her bra, then slipped my hands up under the cups to squeeze gently.
The back of her head fell against my chest, and I watched in the mirror as she seemed to melt back against me.
“That’s it,” I murmured. “I want you to totally relax.”
Slipping off her bra, I tossed it aside, then slipped my hands into the sides of her silky panties to pull them down as well.
Once she was completely naked, Alice turned to me. “What are you going to do with me now?” she whispered with a saucy smile.
Grabbing her ass roughly, I grinned. “My dark side says I’m going to do anything I want. The truth is, I’m just going to bathe you. I don’t want those cute little fingers to be cold anymore.”
Taking her hand, I led Alice to the tub, helping her step in. She tied her hair up in a messy topknot that made her look even more adorable. While she got comfortable under the bubbles, I took off my shirt so my arms were free.
Folding a towel to use as a cushion under my knees, I knelt behind her as her fingers traced along the intricate tattoo of bones that circled my bicep.
“I’ve thought about getting a tattoo someday,” she said dreamily.
“No.”
She looked at me sharply, and I shook my head. “What I meant to say was, I absolutely love your perfect body the way it is, but I will support you in every decision regarding it.”
Her laughter echoed around the marble bathroom. “Good answer.”
Once Alice was settled in the tub, I poured a few drops of floral body wash into the palm of my hand. Massaging her shoulders gently, I could feel her energy soften.
“I know we won’t have time for this every day,” I said softly, “but I would love to be allowed to bathe you at least once a week.”
“You’ll do anything to have me living in your house,” she smiled, twisting around to wink at me.
“Our house,” I corrected her. “No divisions.”
“Does that mean I’m going to be part owner in a TV station?” she laughed.
“Absolutely.”
“Absolutely ridiculous,” she giggled, then I heard a soft moan as my thumbs
ground into the back of her shoulder blades. “But you have magic hands, I’ll give you that.”
I chuckled as I moved my palms lower to caress her entire back. “I can’t wait to go to Italy with you, baby.”
A long, low sigh escaped her throat. “You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to take with me.”
