Ryan (The Mallick Brothers #2)

by Jessica Gadziala

  We moved toward the exit. The stairs, not the elevator. I might have been making progress, but I was no Wonder Woman. That one was going to take some time. I tried to talk Bry into meeting me down, taking the elevator, because he was still favoring his side something fierce from where he had broken two ribs.

  But Bry being Bry, he wouldn't hear of it.

  So we went down the stairs as slowly as he needed until we moved outside.

  We were going to go make good on my idea for trying to do lunch again, but not for another hour and a half. There was one stop first and it was what had my belly doing strange little insistent flip-flops as we got into the car and drove into town.

  The office was what one might expect- neat, neutral, comforting but impersonal.

  I was standing at the desk, Bry refusing to listen to my telling him I was fine and he could run and get coffee if he wanted, was sitting reading some woodworking magazine on the table.

  And then there was a voice I'd have recognized anyywhere, having heard it as much as I had. "Danielle, you have Miss McRae as my one o'clock. You must have this wrong. She is always a video..."

  "Hey Amy," I interrupted her, using the name she preferred.

  Her head snapped up from her papers, her mouth falling open, her eyes going huge. "Dusty? What... how..." She shook her head hard, clearing it, slipping her professional mask back on. "When you cancelled your last few video sessions, I figured you were going through a rough patch," she admitted, concern clear in her voice.

  I figured that being a therapist had to have been boring a fair amount of the time- people whining and moaning about the most banal, uninteresting things for hours on end, not actually having mental issues, but essentially needed to pay someone to listen to them because no one else would ever want to do it for free. But there had to have been patients here and there who really touched them, made them want to help.

  I was pretty sure I was one of those patients to Dr. Amy Robertson.

  "I actually had a lot going on," I admitted as she moved to open the locked door toward the back of the office and let me through.

  "Is that Bry?" she asked as she closed the door and led me down a narrow hall that had my chest getting tight.

  "Yeah."

  I put my hand on my belly and took a few deep breaths as she let me into her office. There was a white desk situated almost in a corner, out of the way, with the main focal point being the four places she had to sit in the center around a low coffee table. There was an old-fashioned gray tufted couch, an armchair, an accent chair with no arms, and a papasan chair. A lot of thought went into that set-up and I found myself going toward the papasan, slipping out of my shoes and letting it surround me, needing to feel a bit protected. I imagined the couch was for laying down and the accent chair was for people who didn't like feeling trapped.

  Taking her cue from me, she sat in the armchair and gave me a smile. "I'm going to be honest here. I wasn't sure I would ever see this day."

  I wasn't offended by that.

  I wasn't sure I would ever see this day either.

  "Yeah, me either," I admitted.

  "You alright anxiety-wise? Need anything?" she asked, her eyes dipping to where my hand was still on my belly for a second before moving up.

  "No. I'm alright for now."

  "So. You're here," she said, giving me a smile. "Did you want to talk about that 'lot you had going on' you mentioned?"

  "Sure," I said, taking another deep breath.

  Then I launched into it. From the night of the alarm ringing and being carried out of the building fireman-style to getting robbed and beat, heavily editing out the details. I knew about the patient-client thing, but I wasn't exactly sure how it would stretch. I talked a lot about Ryan and our strange, but utterly perfect and unprecedented romance. I told her that I had visited my uncle, met Ryan's sisters-in-law, and a neighbor of Ryan's, meaning Ross Ward, but not giving names.

  "You have been busy," she observed when I finished, shaking her head a little like it hadn't completely sunk in yet. "I'm really proud of you, Dusty," she said, the weight in her words showing how much she meant it.

  "Turns out you were right all these years," I said with a wry smile. "All I needed to do was do something."

  "We both know it's not always that easy," she said with a soft smile of her own. "Had I known that a fireman hold out of the building would have done the trick, I might have sent one there two years ago," she added, making me laugh. I liked that quality of hers. She was a professional, but she was also just a person. She joked around and made comments that were perhaps not exactly appropriate, but humanized her to me so much more. "This Ryan thing. It sounds serious."

  "It is," I admitted, feeling the butterflies in my belly, the conversation still fresh in my mind from three nights before when he came home from work, dropped down on the couch, hauled me into his lap, and had the talk.

  The relationship talk.

  And he had instigated it.

  I don't think I had ever had the relationship talk with a willing man before in my life.

  It was yet another wonderful thing about Ryan. He wasn't scared of anything. Not even commitment. He made that abundantly clear to me when he informed me that, so long as I agreed, I was his and he was mine and that was that.

  So, yeah, that was that.

  I still got the warm and fuzzies when I thought about it. Which was often. Because... come on! If you had someone like Ryan Mallick, you obsessed over the sheer luck that brought you two together.

  Forty minutes later, I was leaving Amy's office with a promise to try to continue my exposure therapy and she even penciled me in for another in-person session later that week. Hopeful. She was hopeful.

  As we walked down the street and dipped into the diner, so was I.

  Ryan - 11 months

  It wasn't always linear; healing often isn't.

  The first week, she went nuts. She went to therapy twice, went out to lunch with Bry, grabbed coffee with me, and even braved her apartment to clean it out and move more things into my our apartment.

  Then the following Friday, we tried to head to Famiglia for dinner, something she was excited for, had spent hours dolling herself up for. She was beside me in the car trying to figure out what was her favorite thing on the menu, of which she had extensively tried in the past obviously. She had decided on the chicken alfredo when we finally parked and climbed out.

  But two feet in, she froze. Her hand went to her throat. Her eyes went huge. Her breathing stopped. We paused, seeing if she could breathe through it, force herself to deal with the symptoms. In the end, the anxiety won out.

  We went home and ordered it to be delivered while she sat and obsessed about 'failing'.

  But the next time we went, it was fine.

  That was just how it was, especially those first few months. You never really knew if it was going to be a good or bad outing but, after me reassuring her a couple dozen times about it, she started to believe that it didn't matter to me. And it didn't. I wasn't the kind of person who liked going out all the time anyway so when she just couldn't force herself to go through with it a time or two, it genuinely wasn't a hardship for me to head back home instead.

  It never became 'not a problem'. There was no real 'cure' for her anxiety and agoraphobia. But she got better at managing. It got to the point where she never said she "couldn't" go to a certain place, but that she had issues there a lot and would try. Sometimes trying was enough, sometimes it wasn't.

  But every day, week, month brought with it progress.

  That had always been all I wanted for her.

  After about six months, she finally agreed to letting her lease lapse and sold, tossed, or moved the rest of her stuff in with me. Without that rent to pay every month. Actually, without any bills but things like her cell, health insurance, and various subscription services, she was doing alright with just her money coming in from her stories.

  It was a bit too soon to convince her
that she wouldn't have to worry about money anymore anyway, that I was at the point where I knew I was eventually going to have her popping out a bunch of my kids and she would be staying home to take care of them anyway so she didn't need to worry about work unless she wanted to.

  Actually, on her birthday, Fee and Hunt showed up at our door with all three hellions who proceeded to drive Rocky crazy for an hour. Fee brought her about a year's supply of clothes. And Hunt made her something that had her running to him and throwing her arms around him.

  See, Hunt, aside from doing tattoos, also made furniture.

  And having had a heads up about her birthday, had set to making her an elaborate writing desk to work on. The leg had been knocked loose on her old one and because it was that fake wood shit, couldn't be fixed and we hadn't gotten around to a furniture store. Mainly because I kept putting it off because I knew Hunter would make one ten times better than anything we could find in a store anyway.

  Eventually, I got her to my parents' for Sunday dinner where she spent the beginning of the evening holed up with the kids, them being more of a comfort zone thing for her. Then she worked herself up to joining the rest of us and after about an hour, my mother not-so-discreetly asked me to help her with something in the kitchen.

  I had given Dusty a squeeze and followed my mother who immediately turned around and informed me that I better get my woman a ring.

  So, I had a ring in my pocket.

  And it was one year to the day that the carbon monoxide alarms rang, an event that had brought us together in the first place.

  I was out in the hall, having just knocked.

  She wouldn't check the peephole because she was expecting Bry.

  And she was expecting Bry because he was in on it with me since I had not only asked her uncle, but him for permission when I finally got my shit together.

  "Coming!" she called, sounding distracted. "I just have to get these cookies, damnit!" she hissed and I felt myself smile. She didn't curse often, but when she did it, it was with real flourish.

  It was another minute before the door pulled open and I found her whole front covered in powdered sugar. There was a smear of it over her cheek as well.

  And I knew just what kind of cookies she was making.

  "Oh," she said, brows drawing together when she saw me.

  I watched her as I lowered down by her feet, seeing her lips part, her gorgeous green eyes going wide with understanding.

  "I thought about setting off an alarm," I admitted, making her lips turn up, "you know, for authenticity purposes," I added, reaching into my pocket for the ring- one that Fee and Lea had helped me pick out because 'men knew nothing about this kind of thing'. It was a simple halo diamond on a platinum band. Really, it did suit her perfectly.

  "Ryan..." she said, her voice airy, but somehow heavy at the same time.

  "Marry me," I said simply, reaching for her hand that was visibly shaking and sliding my ring on her finger.

  Eight months later, she did.

  After weeks of debating, she eventually thought it was best to just have a small family thing. So she, Fee, and Lea transformed my parents' backyard. We had a Justice of the Peace, family, Bry, and Lo from Hailstorm and that was it. And that was more than enough.

  Dusty- 2 years

  "It's such a crapshoot," Fee told me, climbing in the bed with me and pulling the blanket back from the baby's face. I was musing on what his eyes and hair would look like seeing as the eyes were a very dark blue that neither of us had and the doctors said were likely to change and he was almost bald. "I have two with green eyes and one with blue. The hair is different too."

  It was a full day after I had given birth before Fee showed up because 'no new mom wants to be gawked at five minutes after having her vag sewn up with a pile of ice in her panties'. She also brought makeup which I had forgotten.

  "I know you just gave birth, but everyone wants to look decent in their hospital pictures," she told me as she applied some mascara and concealer with expert hands. "Did you guys pick a name yet?"

  "Danny," I supplied automatically. Easy. We actually had it picked out from the moment I knew I was pregnant. Danny, the only father I had ever known. I figured if we kept popping out boys, we would eventually pay homage to his father and then maybe even Bry.

  "Love it," she declared, meaning it. While my uncle was never used to a big family dynamic like me, he had somehow fit in effortlessly with the Mallick clan. They were just... accepting. He came with me and that was all they needed to know to consider him family.

  "I wish Eli..." I started, feeling the pang somewhere deep.

  "I know," Fee said, looking sad.

  Eli was always a heavy heart topic.

  "You think he would let..."

  "No," Fee cut me off, voice firm. She wasn't being cruel, just honest. And I knew she was right.

  "Mark just lost a hundred bucks," I said, changing the topic to lighter things.

  Mark was losing big on the baby betting department. He got the color of Shane and Lea's firstborn, Jason, wrong. Then he went ahead and got the bet on the sex of the next being a girl. It was twins and they were both boys, for which his brothers made him pay double.

  "I think he just wants more girls in the family now," Fee said, smiling wistfully. Enough that I wondered if she was maybe reconsidering her 'three is more than enough Mallick offspring' idea.

  "Then maybe he should start making some," I said with a smile. "He's got the girl now. What are they waiting for?"

  "You know Mark," she said, shrugging.

  And I did. Mark was the most go-with-the-flow of the brothers. He certainly would never plan on something like making babies. If it happened, it happened. Other than that- he was content with what he had.

  "Hey Fee," Ryan said, coming in the room after I forced him to go home and shower and change, assuring him that I was fine alone for a while. But there was no such thing as 'alone' in the Mallick family. Where he left, Helen and Charlie showed up. When they were gone, Fee and Hunter and the girls made an appearance. "Hunt looks like he's about to lose his fucking mind," he added as Fee jumped off the bed so he could slide in next to me.

  "That'd be my demons for you. I'll catch you guys when you head home," she added, giving me a warm smile and leaning down to kiss her nephew. "Try sleeping through the night, Danny. Mommy and Daddy will be a lot more tolerable if you do."

  With that, she was off.

  "Did I miss anything?" he asked, running his finger down the baby's face.

  "Oh, only my about gazillionth try at nursing," I grumbled, annoyed that it didn't come as naturally as something so natural was supposed to. He wouldn't latch on me, but he would suck on the unnatural bottle like it was nobody's business.

  Ryan leaned over, kissing my temple. "Did he get anything from you?"

  I shrugged, taking a deep breath. "About half what he was supposed to I guess."

  "Half is better than last time," he told me, giving me a small smile. "That's progress, honey."

  "You're right," I agreed, smiling the stress away. "It's progress."

  Progress.

  It was what we had built our relationship on the hope of.

  And it was what we had slowly but surely made.

  And it was what there was sure to be much, much more of in our future.

  XX

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Dusty is a character who is near and dear to me. As someone who has suffered from crippling anxiety and has dealt with stints of agoraphobia, some of her inner turmoil was ripped right out of me. Her sensations of panic, her hopelessness, the feeling of aloneness as she watched herself lose people to her mental illness are all things many of us struggle with silently. It can often feel like there is no way out and that we are somehow unloveable because of our struggles. I just wanted to take a short minute after you watched Dusty find her HEA in Ryan to tell you that that is not the case. We can and do find men who are not intimidated by the condition and, in f
act, have a deep respect for the strength it takes for us to overcome it.

  So, to my fierce little warrior ladies, don't lose hope.

  Your wolf tamer is out there.

  <3

  DON'T FORGET

  If you enjoyed this book, go ahead and hop onto Goodreads or Amazon and tell me your favorite parts. You can also spread the word by recommending the book to friends or sending digital copies that can be received via kindle or kindle app on any device.

  ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  The Henchmen MC

  Reign

  Cash

  Wolf

  Repo

  Duke

  Renny

  The Savages

  Monster

  Killer

  Savior

  --

  DEBT

  For A Good Time, Call...

  Shane

  The Sex Surrogate

  Dr. Chase Hudson

  Dissent

  Into The Green

  What The Heart Needs

  What The Heart Wants

  What The Heart Finds

  What The Heart Knows

  The Stars Landing Deviant

  Dark Mysteries

  367 Days

  Stuffed: A Thanksgiving Romance

  Dark Secrets

  Unwrapped

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jessica Gadziala is a full-time writer, parrot enthusiast, and coffee drinker from New Jersey. She enjoys short rides to the book store, sad songs, and cold weather.