Nightingale: A Reed Security Romance

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  “So, you slept with someone else for an ego boost?” I asked.

  “Yeah, if that’s the way you want to look at it. I needed someone to want me, and she was there.”

  I glanced away, unable to look at him anymore. Not because he had slept with another woman, but because I was ashamed that I had pushed him into feeling like that. How long had he been feeling that way? How long had I been making him feel like he was nothing?

  “Florrie, I know this doesn’t mean anything to you, but when I…after I slept with her, I knew it was the stupidest thing I could have ever done.”

  “Why do people say that?” I snapped. “Of course you knew it was stupid after. If you had thought about what you were doing before and thought, this is a stupid idea, you wouldn’t have done it!”

  “Because in that moment, I wasn’t thinking! I just wanted something to dull the pain. I wanted someone to fucking want me! Do you know what it was like to walk around for months with you berating me in front of all our coworkers? And some were on your side, and others looked at me and wondered why the fuck I was putting up with you constantly saying that shit to me in front of everyone else. And you know what I told them? I said that you were hurting and you needed an outlet. And I knew that I had let you down, so if you needed to take it out on me, I would be there to fucking take it until you felt like you could forgive me, because I knew we would eventually get past it.”

  “Until you decided you’d had enough and you stuck your dick in another woman!”

  “Because you wouldn’t let me in! How much am I supposed to take, Florrie? How much shit am I supposed to let you hurl at me before I finally walk away? You said you didn’t want me. You said I didn’t fucking matter to you! Well, guess what? I finally believed it. I told myself all along that you didn’t mean it, but I saw it in your eyes that night. You wanted me gone. You didn’t want me there anymore. You were practically begging me to walk out that door and never come back!”

  We were in a stand-off, neither of us knowing where to go from here. It seemed like no matter how much we tried to move past our issues, they always reared their ugly heads again. With the way things were going, I just couldn’t see how we would ever get past all this and be in a place where we could look at each other the way we used to.

  “I have some homework for the two of you tonight, and every night until our next session. I want the two of you to start working toward being comfortable around each other again. So, before you go to bed tonight, I want each of you to tell each other one positive thing that you need the other to know. After you’re done, I want you to hold each other for five minutes.”

  “You want me to let him hold me,” I said slowly. “After his hands were on another woman.”

  She looked to me and quirked her head to the side. “He needs to be able to show you affection in some way, and since touching of any other kind is out of the question, we’re going to start with hugging. He needs to hold you and comfort you, and you need to learn to accept that from him. At the same time, Alec, you broke her trust, and her letting you hold her is putting a great leap of faith that you’re going to protect her heart. Now, it might be awkward at first, but the point is to move forward. Is that something you think you can both do?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Alec

  She was dressed in flannel pajamas and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Everything about her was screaming Do Not Touch. She thought that dressing like that would protect her from me, but she should have known better. She looked just as sexy dressed like this as she did in the skimpiest outfit in her closet. But this wasn’t about sex, and if I ever hoped to sleep in the same bed with her again, I had to respect that and take what I could get tonight. That didn’t mean that I had to play fair. I left my shirt off and wore a pair of low-slung pajama pants so that she still had to look at me and feel my skin under her fingers.

  “You’re the strongest woman I know,” I said, kicking things off.

  She pursed her lips at me, crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re the most stubborn man I know.”

  “That doesn’t sound very positive.”

  “Well, I guess it’s good that you’re stubborn or you would have lost me a long time ago.”

  I smirked and walked over to her, pulling her into my arms. “Well, I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  She was tense and I knew she hated every minute of it. I ran my hand slowly up and down her back and felt her loosen up just a little. Her nails dug into my back, but I knew it wasn’t out of lust. She was angry with me for making her do this. I didn’t even flinch when I felt the first scratch. She could make me bleed and I would take it. I deserved it. Hell, I would let her claw up my whole body if it made her feel better, because at least she was still in my arms. I knew that if we could just keep doing this night after night, she would eventually get more comfortable with me.

  “Time’s up,” she said, pushing away from me. I gripped her arms and pulled her back to me.

  “Nice try. You’re cutting it short by a half a minute.”

  “It’s close enough.”

  “If you keep pulling away, I’m gonna tack on an extra minute,” I growled.

  She glared at me, but wrapped her arms around me again. I closed my eyes and pretended that things were good between us, that I had her back in my arms because she wanted to be there. I knew it was crap, but as long as she chose to do the homework, there was still a chance that we could make it.

  “Good?” she asked, pulling out of my arms.

  “Not good enough,” I grumbled. “But I’ll take what I can get.”

  She turned away from me and started shoving her pillows around on our bed. Usually, she shoved the pillows to the foot of the bed and then kicked them off in the middle of the night. Now, she just piled them up on my side of the bed. I wondered what she would say if I slipped into bed with her tonight. Would she push me away? She turned and quirked an eyebrow at me.

  “Was there something else you needed?”

  I shook my head slightly, turning for the door. “Just you.”

  ✯✯✯✯✯

  “So, how did the exercise go?” Dr. Sunshine asked.

  “Uncomfortable,” Florrie snapped.

  “Yeah, she dug her claws into my back, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.”

  “And what were you expecting?” Dr. Sunshine asked.

  “Well, honestly, I was expecting a kick to the balls at the very least. Possibly a shot to the back when I walked out of the room,” I smirked.

  “Do you find this funny?” Florrie asked. “Because I don’t see how you could possibly be laughing when we’re here to fix what you broke.”

  “I wasn’t the only one in the relationship,” I reminded her.

  “No, you were just the one that decided our relationship didn’t mean enough for you to stay loyal to me.”

  “Right, because you were so enticing with your ‘fuck offs’ every day.”

  “Did I go out and cheat on you?” she snapped.

  “I don’t know. You ran off to your rich boyfriend and I haven’t once asked you what you were doing with him for an entire fucking week!”

  “Why does that matter? You cheated on me first with that skank.”

  “She wasn’t a skank. Now, I’m not saying that you have to like her, but she wasn’t the one that did something wrong. I told her that it was over between us. She thought I was free.”

  “So, you’re a cheat and a liar. Charming.”

  “I may have cheated on you, but there was no fucking emotion there, other than to be wanted by someone. You ran off with another man for a whole week. I have no fucking clue what you said to him or if he was holding you in his fucking arms.”

  “Nothing happened with him. I told him what happened between us and he was there for me. He listened to me, something that you haven’t been too good at lately.”

  “Yeah? And did he hold you? Did he kiss you?”

  “I k
issed him!”

  My rage hit a boiling point and I stood, stepping away from her before I reached out to strangle her. I knew I had fucked up, but for her to kiss that douchebag just to get back at me really fucking pissed me off. “Did you fuck him?”

  “He wanted me. He told me that first night I was there, but I was too fucked up over you.”

  “And after that?”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head angrily. “The day you showed up, I decided that I’d had enough of feeling shitty over you, so I initiated it, and yeah, I would have fucked him. But he stopped me. He said that he knew my heart would always belong to you. So, it looks like you owe him a thank you.”

  I turned to look out the window and calm myself down. I hated that she came that close to fucking him, but what pissed me off even more was that she had him to turn to in the first place. Sure, I had turned to a woman that I came to know recently, but Jamie was different. I had known since the first time that I met him that he and Florrie had something different, a friendship that I couldn’t compete with. And the fact that she turned to him, ran to him when we were falling apart scared the fuck out of me. Would she turn to him every time we had problems? Or would she just decide that she had enough of me and go back to him, knowing that he was there waiting?

  “Why don’t we bring this back to that for just a moment? Alec, please come sit down.”

  I listened to the doctor and took my seat again, even though I still felt on edge and ready to snap.

  “Why don’t we discuss what scares you most about moving forward. Florrie, what are some things that scare you right now?”

  She didn’t bother looking at me as she spoke. “I’m worried that I’ll never trust him again. I don’t know how to get that back. I’m scared that the next time we have an argument, he’ll get pissed and find another woman to fuck. I’m…I’m scared that I’ll never look at him the way I used to.”

  Dr. Sunshine nodded as she took some notes. “Alec, what about you?”

  “I’m scared that she’ll continue to shut me out, just like she has for months. I’m scared that there’s nothing I can do to ever make her trust me again. But most of all, I’m scared that she has something with Jamie that I just can’t fucking compete with. And if she realizes that, what the fuck does she need me for?”

  Again, Dr. Sunshine scribbled down some notes while I sat there feeling fucking uncomfortable with everything I had just said. It wasn’t in me to divulge that much about myself, but this was make or break time. If I had any chance of getting Florrie back, I had to lay it all on the line and do this the right way.

  “Alright, now that you’ve voiced those fears, we can start to work through those in each session. In the meantime, I want you to continue doing your homework every night, only this week, I want you to try laying in bed together.”

  “No,” Florrie immediately said. “I’m sorry, but there is no way I’m ready to get in a bed with him.”

  “Then lay down on the couch,” Dr. Sunshine said calmly. “Remember, this isn’t supposed to be sexual in any way. This is about finding comfort in each other. Now, you’ve already done the hardest part, which is holding each other again. Just think of this as another step toward your ultimate goal.”

  I was ready to take on this next step, but as I looked over at Florrie, I knew that she would fight me every step of the way.

  ✯✯✯✯✯

  I scrubbed a hand over my eyes as I yawned wide. The coffee was slowly trickling into the pot, not nearly fast enough for me this morning. I hadn’t slept for shit for the past two weeks. Every night, I held Florrie in my arms, told her all the things that I loved about her, and every night I was able to extend the length of time I held her. Sometimes it was just a few seconds, but last night, I had held her in my arms for a whole fucking ten minutes. She hadn’t tried to pull away and seemed to even be relaxing into my arms. It was the best and worst night of my life, because at the end, I had to leave her and go sleep in my own fucking bed. Except, I was hard and I needed her, but that wasn’t going to happen, not if we were just doing our exercises for therapy. I had to set the stage. I knew if I could just get her back in my arms, the rest would fall back into place.

  The problem was, she didn’t trust me. I had taken what was special between us and thrown it all away, and I wasn’t sure that she would ever trust me not to do it again. But I had to try. I would do whatever it took to get her back in my arms.

  She walked into the kitchen, stopping in the doorway when she saw me standing next to the counter in only my pajama bottoms. Yeah, I would use whatever I could to draw her attention. Her eyes slowly trailed up and down my body, and I waited for the pursing of her lips, but it didn’t come this time. Well, not as quickly anyway. That had to be a start.

  I pulled a cup down from the cabinet and poured her a cup of coffee, handing it over to her. My fingers brushed against hers, but there was no shiver of anticipation. Damn. I walked over to the table and pulled out a chair for her, waiting for her to take a seat. She rolled her eyes at me, knowing that I was pulling out all the stops to get her to acknowledge my efforts in some way. Yeah, I knew that pulling out her chair wouldn’t repair our relationship, but it had to help, right? And when she sat down, I leaned down to kiss her cheek, lingering just slightly, then brushed my hand across her shoulders.

  I sat down across from her and stared her down, determined to get her to actually talk to me today. “I was thinking we could go somewhere today.”

  “I have to train,” she said abruptly.

  “No, you don’t. Cap has us off work. The whole point is that we get our shit straightened out so that we can get back to work. That’s not going to happen if you keep running off to train every day and avoid me.”

  “Fine, what do you suggest we do?”

  “We could go for a walk.”

  “Great,” she said sarcastically. “We can walk in awkward silence together.”

  “Or, you could try talking to me.”

  I knew she was reluctant to go with me, but she stood, drained her coffee and jerked her head for the door.

  “Get dressed.”

  I was back downstairs minutes later, tugging on my shoes and ready to hit the trails. There were plenty of places to go on a walk on the property that would give us some privacy. Once we were out of sight of any prying eyes, I slipped my hand around hers. She tried to pull away, but I held tight until she finally gave in.

  “So, what do you want to talk about? Should we talk about how cold it is or the snow storm that we’re expecting?”

  “It is getting cold, but that’s not really what I want to talk about. I was thinking we could talk about Reid.”

  She stopped walking and jerked her hand out of mine. “I don’t want to talk about Reid.”

  “I talked to the Fullers,” I continued, hoping I could draw her in a little. “I told them how much you missed Reid.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest protectively and looked away. I knew she was hurting, hearing all this. I knew she didn’t want to talk about Reid, but I had a little surprise for her, and it would have been better if I thought I had any chance of getting her on a plane without a full out fight.

  “Yeah, I’m sure they really cared.”

  “They did.” She looked at me hesitantly, but I saw the hope in her eyes. “Believe it or not, Florrie, they only want what’s best for Reid. They said that Reid is adjusting well, but he misses us. They said that we could go out for a visit.”

  She stopped and stared at me, hope flaring in her eyes. “They’ll let us see him?”

  “Yeah, but Florrie, we’re just going for a visit,” I said cautiously, hoping that she wouldn’t get any ideas about kidnapping him. “And Cap has a few conditions for us going out there. One, we have to bring a team out with us.”

  “For what?”

  I waited for her to get it. She had to realize that Cap wouldn’t trust her to go out to visit Reid without assurance that sh
e wouldn’t be able to try again to take him on the run.

  “He doesn’t trust me,” she finally said.

  “He doesn’t trust you when it comes to Reid. And he doesn’t trust me to be able to stand up against you a second time if it came down to it.”

  “Fine,” she said irritatedly. “What are the other conditions?”

  “No weapons.”

  “But I go everywhere with my gun.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Fine. When do we leave?”

  I grinned at her. “Is now too soon?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Florrie

  God, I was so nervous. I was just a few minutes away from seeing Reid again and I was terrified. I hadn’t seen him in months, hadn’t even spoken to him. I’d sent him a Christmas present, but I wasn’t sure that he had gotten it. I had no idea how things had been going for Reid. OPS was still at the house, but everything they told us was so generic. I didn’t know if he was making friends or if he enjoyed school. I didn’t know if the Fullers were good to him. All I knew were the little pieces of information that I received in the reports.

  I felt Alec grip my hand and it took everything in me not to pull away from him. I was so conflicted on my feelings for him. I loved him for doing this for me, but I hated that it even had to be done. I spent a lot of my time reminding myself that Alec wasn’t to blame for what happened with Reid. I had come to accept that in our therapy sessions. But getting my brain and my heart to be on the same page was taking some time.

  We pulled into the driveway and Reid opened the door to the house, stepping outside. He didn’t walk closer or even look like he was happy to see us. My heart sank and tears pricked at my eyes.

  “Give him a minute. He’s been through a lot of changes,” Alec reminded me before we stepped out of the SUV.