It wasn't until almost at the end of the hour that we spent visiting with Elanna that she suddenly got a cloudy, confused look in her eye. "Forgive me," she said politely, breaking off her current story mid-sentence as she peered at me. "But who are you, again?"
"I'm Linda Bisson," I said, patting her hand as she held it out to me. "I'm a friend of Richard's."
She shifted her gaze over to Richard, peering at him as if he was a stranger. "Oh, I didn't even recognize him at first!" she exclaimed, reaching out with her other hand to pat him on the cheek. "You've grown up so much since I last saw you!" Her voice sank a little, her expression clouding over. "I remember you as a boy, but you've grown up..."
In a flash, Richard was on the bed next to his mother, his arms around her. "It's okay, Mom," he said softly, holding her in his arms. She looked almost like a child, so small in his hug. "It's okay. I'm still your boy. I'm here."
I watched this, my heart aching for Richard. To have to see his mother like this must be torture, and I thought guiltily of my own parents, still alive and living happily in their retirement home in Florida. I didn't know how I'd be able to bear seeing them at this stage.
We said goodbye to Elanna and Richard promised that he'd be back soon to visit her again. "And maybe you could bring Teddy and Sebastian, too?" she asked, looking up at him hopefully.
Richard's face nearly crumpled, but he nodded, somehow keeping himself together. "I'll bring them, too," he promised, and I think that I was the only one who heard the cracking in his voice. "I'll keep them safe for you, Mom."
Elanna smiled, patting his hand with her own wrinkled fingers. "That's my boy," she said softly, her eyes shining. "Always looking out for everyone else. So strong."
Richard didn't say a word for the entire drive back to his house. We didn't make love that night, and I sensed that his mind was still back at Copperfield. I hugged him, lying in bed beside him and just wrapping my arms around him, and I listened to his breathing until it slowed, until he fell asleep.
Richard was opening up to me, letting me discover more about his life, his past, who he truly was. I loved spending time with him, only now realizing just what I'd been missing from my own life by not having someone to share it with. I looked forward every day to when I'd get to see him, and we spent almost every night together.
But still, at the back of my mind, I couldn't fully shake the feeling that there was something that he wasn't telling me.
He never spoke about it, never gave any indicator that he had a secret he refused to reveal. But at night, sometimes, he'd twist in bed, his arms pumping and murmuring concerned, unintelligible words under his breath. I would wake up and gently rub his shoulder, soothingly whisper that it was okay, that he didn't have to be scared. He never remembered these bad dreams in the morning – or, at least, he claimed to not remember them. Sometimes, when I asked, I'd see his eyes slide away as he assured me that I didn't need to worry about it. I'd drop the question, but I saw how that dream, whatever it contained, lingered in his mind and distracted him during the morning afterwards before I left for work.
I hoped that, given enough time, Richard would come to trust me enough to open up and tell me about this hidden, stressful memory. I asked gently, doing my best to not pry, and always dropped it when he started getting irritated. I just wanted to let him know that I was always open to listen, whenever he wanted to talk.
But when things finally came to a head, one Saturday evening, the result turned out to be disastrous.
Chapter Eighteen
LINDA
*
The night that everything fell apart started off so well.
Although I still enjoyed when Richard swooped in to take me out to some fancy and exclusive restaurant, I felt like I needed to return the favor. His kitchen, although well-stocked, seemed to be essentially unused except for the coffee maker and the fridge. I dug through the cabinets, however, and discovered that it was fully outfitted with pots, pans, spatulas, and everything else needed to cook a meal. I promised Richard a few home-cooked meals, and happily delivered – although I soon learned that he tended to creep in while I was halfway through cooking and slip up behind me, wrapping his hands around me and biting at my neck...
Okay, maybe it wasn't bad at all when he strolled into the kitchen and decided to seduce me solely over the smell of my sautéing chicken. Sometimes, the food ended up a little more well done than I intended, but I couldn't bring myself to object.
But tonight, I made the mistake of trying to engage him in conversation when he strolled into his kitchen and found me stirring a large saucepan with Asian stir-fry vegetables steaming inside. "You know, I told you my favorite food," I remarked as he sidled up behind me, his hand settling on my hips and guiding them back towards his crotch. "What about you? What's your favorite?"
He paused for a moment in his distracting efforts as he considered the question. "You know, I'm not sure."
I turned around, looking up at him in surprise. "What, you don't have a favorite food? What about when you were out on duty; what did you crave the most? When you lay awake at night, out defending freedom from the other side of the world, what did you want most?"
I expected a flippant answer, or a quick food suggestion. Instead, however, Richard turned away, his face going blank as if a shield had been dropped down in front of it. "I wasn't thinking much about food, those nights," he said softly.
And there it was again. I realized, even as the stir fry sizzled behind me. I'd come up against that invisible wall inside of Richard's mind, the wall that cut me off from whatever he still refused to tell me. I kept on trying to approach that wall from different angles, trying to find my way around it – and every time, he refused to let me through.
"Richard," I said softly, and I heard a catch in my own voice. "Are you ever going to talk to me about it?"
"About what?" he asked, even as his expression grew harder. The heat in his eyes was gone, now, replaced by chips of ice.
I reached behind me, turning off the burner before the stir fry started burning. I moved the pan slowly off to one side, off the direct heat.
"About whatever you're holding back," I said. "I know that you've got something that you refuse to share with me. And I'm willing to wait for you to open up, let you come to it in your own time. But I'm not going to wait forever."
"Why are you waiting at all?" he fired back at me. "You don't need to take me apart like a damn puzzle, Linda!" The heat was totally gone from his voice, and his hands had tightened until his nails dug into his palms. "You don't need to keep on psycho-analyzing me, like I'm still one of your patients!"
And there it was, I realized with a clap of recognition. I was still trying to understand Richard, still looking at him almost like a patient. I wasn't looking at him as a lover, and he knew it.
"No," I said, taking another step back. "You're right. I'm still thinking of you as a patient."
Even as I spoke these words, they echoed to me, grew louder, added more implications. We had a great time, but I now saw that, whenever I wasn't distracted by being naked and with Richard inside of me, I kept prying at him and digging at his history. As I looked at Richard, standing in the kitchen next to the stove, I saw a man that wasn't yet ready to be dating, wasn't totally whole.
"I'm sorry." The words came out of me with hooks attached, ripping at my chest. I saw that they hit Richard hard, too, and his eyes closed in a moment as a wince. "I'm sorry, Richard, but this isn't right."
He blinked, stunned for a moment. "What are you saying?" he asked, and I heard the pain in his voice. Had he not anticipated this? Did he not understand the endpoint that would come from pushing me out, keeping part of himself walled off and private from me?
"I think that we need to stop seeing each other."
I scarcely believed that I'd spoken the words. Richard looked like I'd just punched him in the chest, taking another step back. He put out a hand behind him, thankfully not landing on the stil
l-hot stove. The stir fry would probably be cold by the time that he thought to eat anything, I thought with a strange sense of disconnection in my head.
"Linda," he said, hoarsely. "Please, let's not rush anything. We can still talk about-"
I shook my head. "No, we can't," I replied. I looked back over my shoulder, back towards the exit. My purse was sitting on the end of the counter, and I had left my coat on a hook in the front hall. Other than that, however, I didn't have anything else that I'd leave behind in his house.
He took a step forward, towards me, as I picked up my purse from the counter. "And you're just going to leave? Abandon me?"
I stopped, turning back to look at him. The sight of him twisted a corkscrew further into my heart, but I knew that staying here would be wrong. "Richard, you still need more help, more than I can give you." I certainly couldn't be the one to help him, not now that we'd crossed that line of professionalism, now that we had become so much more than just doctor and patient. "And I really want you to get help, to get past this."
"We can talk about it," he said again, but the words were hollow. Even he knew that this wasn't true.
"Please." I picked up my purse and slung it over my shoulder, moved out of the kitchen and down the hallway that led back towards the front door. Richard followed me, and the expression on his face nearly broke my heart in two. "Richard, I want you to get help, but it can't be from me."
"Linda," he repeated in his husky voice. His steps quickened, and before I reached the front door, he caught up with me. His arms slipped around me as he caught me in the big open front hall, and I almost melted back against him, like old times, when I'd throw myself into his arms as soon as I got to his house.
Old times. We'd only been dating for a couple weeks, but it already felt like we'd been together for years, like I was walking out on the man who had grown to become the other half of my life.
"Please," he repeated, and he bent down to kiss me. So much of me wanted to let him do it, to put it all behind us as a silly fight. I could just pretend that we hadn't had that fight, that there wasn't this invisible wall that separated off some of Richard's past for me, created a dark side of him that he refused to address. Maybe we could stick to light conversational topics during those lulls between bouts of sex, and we'd be able to put off approaching those more serious topics. We could be happy, at least for a while longer.
But then what would happen? That couldn't last forever. I would always know, at the back of my mind, that we had an expiration date on our relationship. I'd never fully be able to relax, knowing that we didn't really have a future together.
I had to leave.
I reached up and put my hand, gently, against Richard's chest. My fingers splayed out, feeling the warmth of his body soaking through his shirt. I pushed him back, disentangling myself from his arms.
"Please, Richard," I repeated one last time. "Think about getting help, about finding someone who you can open up to, who you can let past that invisible wall and tell me what it is that keeps on bothering you so much." I slipped my hand down into my purse, felt the clink of my keys. "But it can't be me."
He didn't say anything else. He just stood there, so big and physically strong in the middle of the foyer, but helpless to stop me. His shoulders slumped, and he watched me go. The overhead chandelier lights caught at the tears welling up on the corners of his eyes, making them glitter as they traced paths down one cheek.
I felt sympathetic tears in my own eyes. Reaching up with the sleeve of my coat to brush them away, I turned and ducked out the front door before I totally lost control.
Outside, I climbed behind the wheel of my car and drove away, but I had to pull over to the side of the road just a block away from the mansion. It was only then that I finally broke down and lost all remaining semblance of control, weeping as I buried my head in my arms on top of the steering wheel. My whole body shook as sobs ripped through me, and I had to keep my feet away from the pedals so that I didn't accidentally send the car racing forward and crashing into a light pole or something. In the darkness, thick flakes of snow started falling out of the sky, perfectly setting the mood. They clung to the windshield of my hatchback until I had to turn on the windshield wipers, sucking in one last breath and trying to keep myself together long enough to drive the rest of the way back to my apartment.
At home, I dug out my phone and called Callie. No texts this time; I needed to talk with her in person.
As usual, she read me from the moment that I picked up. "Oh no," she said immediately, even before I got a single word out. "Linda, what happened?"
"It's over," I choked, feeling the tears returning into my eyes.
"Oh, honey. I'm so sorry. I'm dropping everything and heading right over. What do I need to bring?"
I shrugged, forgetting that she couldn't see my gestures. "I don't know. Nothing. A time machine."
"I don't have a time machine, but I have a couple bottles of white wine. Will that do the trick?"
I didn't feel at all like drinking at the moment, but I really wanted to be drunk. Maybe that would help the pain go down. "It's better than nothing," I said, although I suspected that Callie would bring the drinks no matter what I told her.
"Okay, I have to hang up, but I'm on my way. I'd talk while driving, except that I'd probably get in a crash and end up trapped in a blizzard on the side of the road for three days or something. Given my bad luck, that's probably what would happen. But just sit tight, and I'll be there soon, and you can tell me all about it." I knew that Callie was worried for me, because that concern made her babble on even more than usual. "Will you be able to make it until I arrive?"
I looked around at my shabby little single person apartment, the shelves lined with my medical textbooks, the little kitchen area that had seen considerably less use since I started spending most of my evenings with Richard. "Yeah, I'll be okay," I lied into my phone.
I hung up and sat down on the couch, turning on the television and scrolling listlessly through the channels. Nothing really caught my attention, and I wasn't really focusing. In just a few hours, these tiny little cracks had swelled up to rip my life apart, and I was still in shock, staring at the devastating aftermath.
All I could do was wait and hope that, at some point, it would settle and fall behind me.
Chapter Nineteen
RICHARD
*
After Linda left, I stood in the front hall of my house for a few more seconds, just trying to process what had happened.
Maybe some part of me, filled with absurd hope, believed that she'd come rushing back at any second to apologize, to tell me that she'd made a huge mistake and to forget about everything. That crazy, wild hope quickly faded, and I felt simmering, almost murderous rage rising inside of my chest to take its place.
She had been the one who insisted on always treating me like a patient, not like a real man for her to date, and she was still the one to leave? She accused me of holding out on her, refusing to tell her secrets, as if I ought to be sharing absolutely everything? Did she think that every girl I dated got to learn everything about my past, all my darkest secrets?
How dare she insist on that. I already told her more, gave her more access to the secrets of my past, than I'd ever revealed to any other girl. I'd told her everything, opened myself up like I'd done for no one before, and she responded by getting mad that I hadn't told her absolutely everything and walking out on me? She dumped me for this?
I took a step forward, towards the door, reaching out as if to wrench it open. I closed my fingers into a fist, however, before I could wrap them around the handle. Instead, I slammed my fist into the wall.
I hit it harder than expected, I realized, as my hand went right through the plaster and sheetrock of the wall, leaving a hole behind and sending a shocking pain coursing up my arm. I yanked my fingers back, howling with even more anger.
"God fucking dammit!" I shouted out, clutching my injured hand and turning arou
nd, unsure of where I even wanted to go in the big, empty house. "God dammit, fuck everything! Fuck her, fuck everyone! How could she leave me?"
I moved blindly back into the house, not aware of where I was headed. I came into the dining room, bumped into a chair that someone had pulled out from the table and not bothered to push back in. With another wordless howl of emotional agony, I scooped up the chair and hurtled the whole thing against the wall. It hit and smashed itself into smithereens, leaving another chunk missing from the plaster of the wall. I glared at the broken pieces of wood, and then kept moving through the house.
I needed a drink. The thought came slipping up from the deepest parts of my mind, whispering and tempting. I considered it, but fought off the urge. That hadn't worked for me last time. I could resist.
I took out my growing anger by instead picking up another chair, hurtling it into the same spot of wall where I'd smashed the first. It also came apart, although it left a large chunk still in my hands. I hurtled this after the rest, watching it stick in the plaster of the wall.
"What the hell?" I turned as I heard the exclamation behind me, and Sebastian came running up. He turned to me with his mouth hanging open, his eyes flicking between my angry, flushed face and the remains of the two chairs where they'd shattered against the wall. "Richard, what the fuck are you doing?"
"Taking some goddamn control!" I shouted back at him. "Why the fuck does everything always have to go wrong?"
Seb's mouth remained open in confusion for a second – and then abruptly snapped shut as things clicked into place. "Linda," he said softly, as realization dawned for him. "That's what's going on here. What happened?"
I, however, didn't want to talk about it. Talking about things was what got me into this whole, goddamn mess in the first place. "Nothing," I growled, turning and stalking away from him. "Absolutely nothing. Whole fucking thing's over."
For Love of Valor: A Bad Boy Military Romance Page 12
