Losing Lola (Mercy's Angels Book 5)

by Kirsty Dallas

  “Are you having trouble sleeping?” David asked, no doubt taking in the large dark rings hanging below my eyes. I nodded. “Taking all that fear, anxiety, and stress to bed with you means unsettled sleep. Have you ever tried meditating?” My brow arched of its own accord and David chuckled. “You don’t have to be a pot smoking hippie with an incense burner to meditate. Many people use it in their day-to-day lives to help deal with stress, and in particular, insomnia.”

  “No, I’ve never tried it.”

  David sat up with a spark of excitement in his eyes. “I’ve got some guided meditation classes I can give you on a USB stick. Let me go grab them.”

  He disappeared out of the enormous living space just as Drew sat down beside me.

  “How’s it going?” he asked as Max trotted over to his feet. He bent forward and gave the little terrier a scratch behind the ears before Max moved on to my feet. I picked him up and set him in my lap. It only took a moment for the dog to settle as I ran my fingers through his fur.

  “I’m fine.” I hated that word, ‘fine.’ It was a word used to disguise everything that wasn’t fine. 'Fine’ was my go-to word, assuming if I said it often enough, I’d be just that. I was not fine.

  “Here you go.” Noticing my hands buried in Max’s fur, David turned and handed Drew the USB stick. “This is for Lola. She’ll need to play it on a laptop or something.”

  “Not a problem,” Drew replied, tucking the small device into his pocket.

  David sat back down in the chair he had vacated and set those grey, studious eyes right on me. “Are you familiar with deep breathing exercises?”

  I nodded, casting Drew a nervous sideways glance. He stood up to leave, and my heart flipped over in a short, sharp state of panic. The moment Drew had sat down in the chair beside me I had felt the tension seep out of my body. It wasn’t that I thought David would hurt me, but Drew’s presence was something that needed to be bottled; he soothed me. I guess the panicked look in my eyes gave me away, because he hesitated halfway between sitting and standing.

  “Would you prefer I leave while David chats with you?”

  I shook my head from side to side, and he lowered himself back into the chair. Once I was satisfied he wasn’t going anywhere, I returned my gaze to David and waited for him to continue. Although I was far from ready to begin a heart to heart, if he wanted to play therapist with me, I wasn’t going to ungratefully reject the help he was trying to bestow.

  “Perhaps I could offer another suggestion to help you. Would you be open to trying something for me, a little cognitive therapy?”

  My head nodded, though my mind wasn’t completely on board. It was ready to reject any nut-job exercises thrown my way. It had been the same dance I played with my last therapist as a teenager. The skeptical part inside of me was on guard.

  “When you get back to the apartment, I want you to write down all the things that you fear on a piece of paper, everything. That could be the dark, maybe open spaces, crowds, men, anything that makes scared or anxious. Then I want you to tear off each fear and place it in a bucket. Every evening, a couple of hours before you go to bed, I want you to sit with the bucket, reach in, and pull out one of your fears.”

  I listened but was ready to reject the therapy he was suggesting. Reliving my fears every night sure didn’t seem like a good way to help me get past them.

  “Then I want you to really think about that fear,” David continued. He considered me for a moment before continuing. “Give me one now, one fear we can use as an example.”

  “The dark,” I answered easily. It was a true fear, but also an easy one to admit.

  “Okay, what is it about the dark that scares you?”

  “The unknown, not being able to see if there is anyone in the room with me. When I was younger, I was terrified there were monsters under the bed and in the closet. Now, I'm still scared of monsters, just a different type of monster, and this one didn’t hide under the bed or the closet.”

  “So you’re afraid of waking up to find your attacker in your room. Your fears are being dragged up by the past.” David was thoughtful for a moment before continuing, “Look around the shelter, take in everything you see: the people, the furniture . . . the lights. Look hard at everything and remember it.”

  Glancing around the room, I took everything in, my gaze finally ending on Drew who leaned back in his chair, the intensity in his gaze stopping me in my tracks. He seemed awfully worried, and I offered him a small smile of reassurance as my gaze returned to David. I was tired of that worried look Drew always saved just for me. To be honest, I was just so darn tired of everything. Being scared, feeling dirty, of people treating me like broken glass; perhaps David’s help could go a long way in helping me shake off some of those feelings.

  “Now, close your eyes.” David’s voice brought me back to the present task, and I closed my eyes. “There’s your darkness. Tell me about the room you’re sitting in, Lola.”

  “I’m at Mercy’s Shelter, in the living area. There are beds, people.”

  “Hmm-mm, and what do you hear?”

  “Your voice, other people talking.”

  “What else do you hear besides the voices?”

  I took a deep breath and listened more carefully. “I can hear a hum, maybe it’s the heater? And cars outside.”

  “Good girl. By doing this, which is called mindful meditation, you are keeping yourself in the present. There is no slipping back to the past where there are thoughts that upset you, and no peeking forward into the future to search for things to worry about that haven’t happened yet. This is you, existing in the now.”

  I continued to breathe deeply, taking in the sounds around me, finding a sliver of peace at being locked in the present.

  “Are you in danger here?” David asked.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “So, you are in darkness, in an unfamiliar place, but you’re not in any danger?”

  “No danger,” I repeated, thinking of the room around me and the people within it. Drew’s steely presence was the balm that calmed me.

  “Open your eyes, Lola.” I opened them to find David watching me with a proud smile. “You fear the dark, but there’s no danger in it. When you are back in your apartment tonight, try turning off the bedroom light for a moment, and I want you to repeat the words, ‘I fear the dark, but I’m not in danger of it.’ Acknowledge the fear, accept it, but understand you are not in danger. Work at it each night. The fear is not going to disappear the first time you try it, but you will reach a place where maybe you can turn the light off and use a nightlight instead.”

  A small smile crept across my face. For the first time in a year, I didn’t feel like I was drowning. Oh, I was still treading water, deep, dark, murky water, but my head was above that water and a glimmer of hope shone from the shoreline.

  “Each evening, pull out one of those fears, understand it, think about it, accept it, talk it out, and remember, you are not in danger. Your fears can’t hurt you, they are nothing more than feelings, emotions, and you are not in danger from your feelings.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  David beamed a genuine smile of affection and pride. Talking with David hadn’t been as daunting as I expected. I actually felt better for it.

  “You’re going to work your way through those fears, all of them. If you feel a sense of calm and control over the fear you’ve picked out of the bucket, throw it in the trash. Some fears will take longer than others, but eventually, that bucket will be empty. Also, facing your fears will help with the OCD.” I gave David a surprised look and he simply nodded. “I’ve noticed,” he softly admitted.

  “When I get a little stressed it gets worse, the OCD kind of grows into a monster.”

  David smiled. “You understand what your compulsions, and the triggers?”

  “Counting is a big one. I like even numbers. When I was a kid, I was in and out of foster care. One of the families I lived with already had tw
o biological children. They weren’t much older than me, and they weren’t particularly happy their folks had taken me in. Apparently, I was the ‘odd one out,’ odd number three, the unwanted kid. It kind of stuck. I became obsessed with grouping things into even numbers. It got pretty bad when I was a teenager, and I couldn’t lock the door without flicking the lock back and forth six times. Same when I made my bed. I’d have to shake out the sheets to lay them flat on the bed six times. If they still had creases, I’d do it again, another six times. Sometimes it would take me an hour just to make my darn bed.”

  “What are your techniques for denying the compulsions?” David asked.

  “I’d tackle one trigger at a time, with the door, I cut back to flicking the lock just four times, and then two, and eventually, it was just a single turn of the lock. With the bed, I just stopped making it,” I said with a smile. “That was kind of nice.”

  “But anxiety and stress triggers the compulsion, and you’re back at square one,” David noted. “Or square six,” he added with a smile.

  “Something like that.”

  “If we work on eliminating the stress with the meditation, it will help you control the OCD. I can prescribe medication but let’s use that as a last resort. Be aware, center yourself in the present as often as you can, use those meditation lessons I’ve given you, and you’ll gradually climb out of that dark hole you’re stuck in.”

  Dark hole was an understatement. My world had become so fucking dark it felt intangible. I’d been locked in this darkness for a year now, tumbling deeper after the assault with every hazy memory and those unforgettable nightmares. Even as the memories and nightmares faded, I still felt stuck at the bottom of that damn hole. I was ready to claw my way back out.

  “You ready to go?” Drew asked from beside me.

  The thought of fleeing back to the apartment relaxed me, but I also knew I was using the apartment as a coping mechanism, as Mercy had so helpfully pointed out when she suggested I speak to David. My attachment to being indoors was only going to get worse if I didn’t face that fear and defeat it.

  “Do you think we could stop and get some takeout for dinner? I think I feel like Chinese.” Delaying that moment I stepped into my safe zone seemed like the right thing to do, however uncomfortable it made me feel.

  With a nod, he stood and Max jumped from my lap. Drew reached out a hand towards me, and I took it without hesitation. It seemed to catch us both off guard for a moment, as our gazes dropped to our entwined hands. Drew gave mine a gentle squeeze and looked over to David who was doing a great job of ignoring our awkward moment.

  “Do you think we could talk again?” I asked David.

  “Drew has my number. You can call me anytime, and I mean that. If you need me in the middle of the night, I’m a phone call away. If you want to meet every week, we can do this again the same time next week.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “See you next week, then, if not before.”

  “Thank you, David.”

  “You’re welcome, honey.”

  CHAPTER 17

  DREW

  Two weeks had passed, and I was beginning to get cabin fever. I wasn’t used to being cooped up as much as I had been with Lola. Gabbie had stepped in a couple of days while I helped Bomber work on a security upgrade at Mercy’s. But yesterday, Bomber and Gabbie left for Lebanon on an abduction retrieval, and I found myself in a cranky-ass funk. I adored Lola, and I would do everything in my power to keep her safe, but there was only so many hours a day a man could handle being stuck staring at the walls of a two-bedroom apartment. The moments in the offices downstairs, helping Sam with IT bullshit or Dillon with paperwork, was enough to push me over the edge. I needed to get out.

  The familiar weight of my gun sitting in the holster on my hip made my thoughts travel to Claymont’s shooting range. A couple of hours firing at a target with Ben Crane’s imaginary face on it would sure as hell help blow off some steam.

  Lola sat at the kitchen table, her head buried in a game of Sudoku. Fucking numbers. The apartment was carefully organized into bunches of even numbers. Two towels hanging in the bathroom; two face towels folded on the counter; two hand soap pumps, one perfumed, one not; two coffee mugs sat neatly beside the coffee machine; four coffee pods lined up ready to go. Every day I caught Lola trying to resist the compulsion, and failing. This morning I’d watched as she battled with the salt shaker. I’d already put the pepper away in the cupboard, rather than leaving it on the counter beside the salt shaker as Lola positioned it every morning and night. She stood in front of that fucking salt, breathing long and deep like she was about to go to fucking war with the thing. In the end, she picked up the shaker with a slight shake of her head and gently placed it in the cupboard, alongside the pepper. Closing the door with a satisfied nod, she caught me watching her and offered a small smile. “Out of sight out of mind, right?” I’d nodded, not sure if she’d really won that round or not.

  “Let’s get out for a bit, Mouse,” I growled, unable to hide the irritation in my voice.

  Lola simply glanced up from her game and nodded, disappearing down the short hallway and reappearing moments later in a baggy grey hoodie over her baggy t-shirt and skinny jeans. She always dressed to hide herself, yet I still thought her the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Reaching for my own jacket, we stepped out of the apartment and rode the elevator to the underground parking garage. Stepping out in front of Lola, my eyes quickly noted every shadow and possible hiding spot.

  Lola slipped into the passenger seat of the black SUV and buckled up.

  “Could we stop by Dillon’s place and visit Max?” she asked.

  “One we’re finished at the range, I’ll call and see if anyone’s home.”

  “Range?”

  I squinted as the bright sun temporarily blinded me as we exited the garage. Being indoors so much was sure as fuck messing with my body. Reaching for a pair of sunglasses, I nodded, while taking in the street. It was busy, but I didn’t notice anything out of place.

  “Yup. I need to blow off some steam, so we’re headed to the shooting range.”

  Too late, it occurred to me that Lola might not want to go to the range; the noise could possible spark a panic attack, or cripple her with fear. Before I could ask her if she was okay with it, a small bark of laughter escaped her lips that froze me in place. It had been a long time since I had heard laughter spill from her mouth. At the red light, I pulled to a stop and glanced at her. The smile she wore was pure radiance.

  “You’re okay with going to the range?”

  “I’ve never shot a gun before,” she rushed on to say. “Do you think I could try? Do I have to have a gun license or something? Oh crap, you probably have to have your own gun. I don’t even have a driver’s license on me.”

  The way her face lit up only to fall again so quickly hit me hard, and I barely avoided growling like a pissed-off grizzly bear. I wanted her excitement and laughter back.

  “Mouse, you can fire off as many rounds as you please. You can use my gun, and you don’t need a license.”

  Her answering smile made my chest ache, and I gave the damn thing a rub as we pulled away from the lights. Hell, if shooting put a smile like this on her face every time, I’d get Dillon to install an indoor range in the basement tomorrow.

  ***

  “It’s lighter than I thought it would be,” Lola noted as she held the Glock in her tiny hand. I’m not sure if it made me a sick fuck, but seeing her delicate fingers wrapped around the gun gave me a perverse pleasure I would admit to no one.

  “Before we start, gun safety for dummies.” I looked into her eyes to see if she would find offense at my words. Instead, I found a small smile. “You don’t point a weapon unless you intend on shooting some fucker.”

  “I don’t want to shoot some fucker right now,” she said with a furrowed brow, and I almost smiled hearing the dirty word off her lips. It was the first time I’d ever heard her curse, a
nd while holding a gun, it caused my dick to twitch with interest.

  On the few occasions I’d indulged in a woman, it was always the bad girls with the dirty mouths that pulled me in like a moth to a flame. Lola was about as polar opposite from my usual taste as one could get. From the loose lipped curse that spilled without hesitation, maybe Lola wasn’t entirely the good little girl I pegged her as.

  “You’re shooting some pretend fucker, out there,” I pointed to the target in front of us. Taking the gun from her, I confirmed there were no bullets in the clip or a round in the chamber. “This is a Glock 21 generation 4, and even though it isn’t loaded, we still exercise gun safety and make sure it’s pointed away from the body and to the floor.” I exaggerated the motion as I held the gun pointed to the ground. Lola watched with rapt interest. “There is no safety switch on this gun that you need to flick to make it fire.” I looked her straight in the eye. “Your finger is your safety; you don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you want to shoot, got it?” She nodded, her eyes never leaving mine. “It has internal safety devices that prevent it from going off if you drop it, so it won’t fire unless you pull the trigger. If you pull the trigger, Mouse, you want to make damn sure you mean it.” Another nod. “Okay, put the safety glasses and ear muffs on.” Her nose scrunched up real cute-like as she slipped the safety glasses into place, then pulled the ear-muffs over her head. After loading the gun, I handed it to her. She took it in those tiny little hands, and I gently held her shoulders and turned her to face the target. “Feet shoulder width apart,” I mumbled.

  She moved her feet slightly while I tried my damnedest to ignore the sweet smell of pure woman before me. My hands remained on her shoulders, feeling the warmth from her body bleed into mine. We were standing so close the desire to reach around and pull her flush against my chest beat at me like a ruthless fucker.

  “Raise your arms and hold the gun between both hands.” Her grip looked clumsy, so I leaned forward and adjusted her hands. I was sporting a noticeable semi right now, so I tried to keep my hips away from her sweet ass as I checked her grip one more time. Casting her a quick glance to make sure she was okay, I noted her cheeks had deepened in color, her pink lips were slightly parted, and her gaze glued to mine. “You good?”