Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4)

by Sarah O'Rourke

  “I don’t want to talk about my past, Dr. Daniels. It was painful while it was happening. I have no desire to revisit it now. Tell her, Zeke. Tell her I don’t have to do this!” Honor pleaded, turning wide eyes toward Zeke. Why wasn’t he saying anything, she thought as panic welled inside her. “Zeke?”

  “Honor, the doctor is right. Your family and I think that this is the best way to go. This is therapy that I think you should have gotten years ago, babe. Things might not have gotten to this place if you’d had it earlier,” Zeke supported Dr. Daniels firmly.

  “My family and you? You’ve all decided? How nice of all of you to try and manage my life so neatly while I was unconscious,” she spat angrily as the feeling of bitter betrayal flooded her system. “But I’m awake now, and you’ll all have to get over your disappointment when I say that I absolutely am not going to therapy. Not with Dr. Daniels or anybody else! I do NOT consent to any of that nonsense!”

  “Honor, I understand your fear here. Your aunt explained earlier that you had some severely upsetting experiences with your previous doctors after you were assaulted. I can assure you, that I only want the very best for you. You and I can find a way to get you the help you need to begin healing. It’s long past time you start to be able to enjoy your life.”

  “I like my life just fine,” Honor said softly, refusing to look at the other woman as she stared down at the sheet covering her legs. “And the answer is still no.”

  Bree sighed as Honor saw Zeke shove his aggravated hands through his thick, dark hair. No doubt he probably wanted to strangle her with them, but there was nothing she could do about that.

  No, scratch that.

  She could do something, but she wasn’t going to.

  For a very simple reason…

  She hated talking about her past. And she wouldn’t do it. Not even for him.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Daniels, but you’re wasting your breath and your time,” Honor apologized without looking at her. “Zeke and my family might have left you with the impression that I’d accept your offer of therapy or maybe they just thought I’d accept to be polite to you, but obviously they were wrong.”

  “I want you to think about this overnight, Honor. I’ll try and have you released in the morning, pending the director of the psych department’s approval…”

  “Why in the world would you need his approval?” Honor moaned, lifting a hand to her aching temple and rubbing the skin.

  “Because Honor, on paper, this reads like it could have been a potential suicide attempt. I believe you when you say you didn’t deliberately try to harm yourself, but if I’m being completely honest with you, I’ve got to say that you can’t prove it.”

  “What?” Honor gaped.

  “You can’t prove that you didn’t seek out that Seconal and take it on purpose in an effort to end your life. Don’t worry… I’m going to note my opinion of what truly happened, but if the director chooses, he could override me. I’ll be honest, it’d be much easier if you’d just agree to outpatient therapy,” Bree informed her bluntly.

  “I won’t lie,” Honor countered. “And I don’t want any therapy.”

  “Do you want out of here?” Zeke growled, his hands lowering to fist against his hips as he stood, his legs planted a foot apart, facing her.

  “Of course I do,” she retorted.

  “Then agree to the fuckin’ therapy, Honor!”

  “Stop bullying me,” Honor demanded in a furious hiss.

  “Stop acting like an obstinate child,” he countered with an equally irate growl.

  “Alright, we might have crossed over the line into this conversation being counter-productive. Sheriff, remember what I advised you of earlier this morning,” the doctor advised evenly.

  Honor watched as Zeke snapped his mouth shut even though his eyes continued to throw sparks. She didn’t know what advice Bree Daniels had offered him earlier, but she was grateful that it had the power to press the invisible mute button on Ezekiel. Dropping her head back against the pillow, she stared at the ceiling and tried to locate a way out of her current predicament. Why couldn’t either one of them understand that she wasn’t exactly gung ho to open the Pandora’s Box that constituted her past? Sure, she was aware that nothing that had happened to her was her fault, but what HAD happened to her was HER business. She didn’t want to take those nasty memories out and dust them off so she could examine them.

  She knew how that particular story ended, and it wasn’t with a happily-ever-after. And it bothered her that Zeke and her family were unwilling to let it go.

  But it was becoming increasingly obvious that she’d reached a rather dangerous impasse here. It was a confrontation she wasn’t sure anyone was going to allow her to win.

  So, for now, she’d give them what they wanted… tell them what they had to hear to get free of this place. Desperate times called for desperate actions, she reasoned.

  “I’ll think about it,” she bit out from the hospital bed, her eyes glued to the ceiling above her.

  “Think about what?” Zeke asked.

  “The therapy,” Honor clarified through barely moving lips. “I’ll think about it,” she repeated finally turning her head to look at Bree.

  Aubrey beamed. “That’s wonderful, Honor. Why don’t I go ahead and set you up an appointment with me. The promise of that session will go a long way towards satisfying the psychiatric director, I can assure you.”

  “Fine,” Honor replied dully. “Just get me out of here in the morning, please. I hate hospitals.”

  Honor wasn’t sure what else the friendly physician said as she lay there in the bed. She was busy feeling guilty for the bald-faced lie she’d just told. Zeke was likely to come unhinged and her family would probably be disappointed, but she couldn’t help it. She had no intention of sitting in any office anywhere and letting anyone, including Bree, pick over her bad memories like some kind of vulture.

  No! Wasn’t happening.

  It was only when she heard Bree telling her goodbye that she allowed herself to be drawn back into the present. Waiting until the door closed behind the friendly woman, she slowly aimed her accusing eyes at the sheriff still in the room with her. “Please leave, Ezekiel,” she ordered softly, no inflection in her voice.

  “Honor, Kitten, I know you’re upset…”

  “Ezekiel,” Honor began huskily, “Right now, I don’t think you know me at all. If you did, you’d have never pushed me into this. You’d know that by doing this… bullying me into what YOU want… I won’t forgive that.”

  “It’s what you need, Honor. I told you a long time ago, any need you ever have will always trump any want I might possess. If you recall, babe, I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

  “And you get to decide what I need? In your oh-so-elevated position of all-knowing Sheriff, you get to do that?” Honor asked, hurt shining in her gaze as she stared at him.

  “Fuck, no. I’m the man that gets that right because I’m the guy that will kill and die for you without a second’s hesitation. When you finally decide to take a break from being a brat, maybe you’ll see that!” Zeke barked, his eyes darkening as they took in Honor’s stubborn face.

  “When did you become so arrogant that you think you know me better than ME? Why does everyone think they can tell me what to do? What in the world gives y’all the right?”

  “Because we love you, woman. We want you to get better!” Zeke maintained.

  “You are like a dog with a bone. You just won’t give this up!” Honor fretted aloud. “Zeke, this isn’t love. Someone that loved me would never take away the ability to make my own mind up about things and nothing you’re gonna say will convince me otherwise.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Here’s what I know, you pigheaded pain in my ass. I know you need help,” Zeke remarked slowly, keeping his voice low and even and careful as he spoke to her. “It’s time, Honor. Past time. I want you to feel whole again, and in order for that to happen, you’re gonn
a have to open up to somebody. You won’t confide in your sisters about what happened to you. You’ve made it clear that you don’t want to talk to me about it. So, that leaves us with Aubrey Daniels. She’s discreet. She’s friendly. And most importantly, she’s qualified. Damn it, you’ve told me more than once that you like Dr. Mack’s sister,” he contended inflexibly.

  “Yes, she’s nice. I never denied that. And, I liked her well enough to make small talk when I delivered a plate of food at the café… you know the way a normal business owner likes her customer. I certainly don’t feel comfortable enough with her to listen as she spouts psychological babble at me about the trauma I endured as a teenager,” she snapped, her jaw clenching as she stared out the window at the sun setting outside. “Newsflash here. I don’t need to revisit that ordeal once a week on some shrink’s couch. I already have to relive it in my nightmares almost every time I close my eyes. That’s enough. I don’t want her therapy. I don’t need it.”

  “Do you even hear yourself? You just admitted that those bastards torture you in your sleep night after night. That’s the definition of needing therapy! Just try it, Honor. What the hell could it hurt to just attempt this? If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for the rest of the people that care about you,” he urged.

  “I did try it. Remember?” Honor shouted, unable to believe him. Zeke had been there during those dark days after her rape. He’d seen her every single day. He knew as well as anyone that she’d already experienced that psychological mumbo jumbo.

  “Babe, that wasn’t the same as what Bree’s offering you.”

  “Bullcrap! I’ve already done the shrink bit,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Right after it happened, the hospital sent those awful head shrinkers in here to study on me… asking all kinds of personal questions that they had no right to know the answers to. Badgering me. Bullying me. They wanted to commit me, Zeke. Remember that? All because I couldn’t talk about it. I couldn’t talk, period. I tried. It’s not my fault I couldn’t get words out, is it?”

  “Of course it wasn’t,” Zeke offered softly, his eyes soft on her pinched face.

  “You need to understand me, Zeke. You AND the rest of the family. I’m not goin’ through that mess again. I won’t, you hear me?”

  “Aubrey has already said that any kind of so-called commitment isn’t even on her radar, Kitten. No one is going to force your hand. I won’t allow it and neither will your sisters or Aunt Orla.”

  “You’re already forcin’ my hand,” Honor disputed willfully. “Or are you tellin’ me I can walk out of here right now and nobody – including you - will stop me?”

  “Honey….” Zeke hedged uncomfortably, wincing when Honor laughed harshly.

  “I see I’ve got my answer,” she noted haughtily, crossing her arms over her chest as she threw herself back against the pillows behind her back. “You’re on their side.”

  “I’m on your side, Kitten. Always and ever on your side. Unfortunately, you’re too mad to see it clearly though. I’ll just have to trust that one day you’ll be able to see that I was always acting with your best interests at heart.” Seeing her dubious look, he cleared his throat. “Look, woman, no matter what I do or don’t say on your behalf, the doctors aren’t going to release you from the hospital until either they’re convinced you aren’t a danger to yourself or you agree to therapy with Aubrey. Agreeing to counseling is going to be a whole lot faster.”

  “I don’t understand. It’s already been determined that I didn’t try to kill myself, Zeke. I took the medication based on the assumption that the pills in the bottle were what the label said they were. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why am I being punished like I’m some kind of high risk patient.”

  “You aren’t being punished,” he assured her calmly. “We’re trying to get you better. That’s all your family and I want. You. Happy, healthy, and whole. Can you honestly tell me that you’re any one of those three things, Honor?”

  Oh, how she wanted to lie to him. Of course, Zeke knew her better than almost anybody on Earth. He’d be able to spot one of her fibs from a mile away. “I’m fine,” she declared instead of answering his question. “Even if I try this, it’s going to be a waste of both my and Aubrey’s time.”

  “Bree didn’t seem to think so,” Zeke pointed out gently. “Face it, Kitten. It’s time for you to lower those defenses you’ve built up and let us past those walls you’ve built to keep yourself apart from the rest of us.”

  “You keep ignoring the fact that I don’t want you behind my walls, Zeke.” Honor’s face tightened as she turned her bitter gaze toward the man intent on wreaking havoc on what was left of her patience.

  The man had never known when to leave well enough alone. No, he was constantly pushing her for more than she could give him. When would he learn that his love couldn’t heal what’d been shattered inside her? Just like her love for him wasn’t strong enough to overcome the very real fears she had of both men and intimacy. And no, she wasn’t deluding herself anymore. She loved him. Of course, she loved him. He was her strong, noble Ezekiel. A man that would do anything to protect her. She’d have been a fool if she hadn’t loved him, too.

  However, when you added all those qualms she had to the fact that she knew – even if she was completely normal – she’d never be able to give him what he evidently craved in the bedroom, she didn’t understand why he couldn’t see what she did. Why couldn’t he see that there was simply no chance for them? Their love was doomed before it was given a chance to bloom.

  And she had to make him see it. For his own good, she had to convince him that she wasn’t what he really wanted.

  “I told you when I was eighteen that I was too broken to ever be fixed, Ezekiel,” she reminded him as she hardened her voice and her heart, her delicate features clenching as she fought back a tortured scream of frustration. “Nothing has changed. I’m still just as irreparably damaged. For God’s sake, most days I feel like I’m held together by spit and a prayer!”

  “And I told you way back then, that business about being broken was bullshit. I still say it now. You heard Dr. Daniels earlier, babe. You’ve been lost in yourself for a long time. It’s understandable. I guess that sometimes we have to get a little lost in Hell to know that the fires there won’t kill us. Eventually, though, if we look hard enough, God shows us the way out of the inferno.”

  “Funny,” Honor murmured with a rueful scoff, hating herself for what she was about to say. Her daddy had always said that if you couldn’t get over, under or around a problem, you were really left with only one choice. A body had to grab the nearest keg of dynamite, find the weakest point of entry and blast right the hell through whatever obstacle stood between them and a solution. And right now, Ezekiel was that obstacle, and God forgive her, she knew his weak spots like the back of her hand. Reminding herself that what she was doing was ultimately to save him for a woman that could love him the way he deserved to be loved, she set her jaw and glared at him.

  “I don’t remember seeing you during my stroll through Hell, Ezekiel,” she began in a lethally quiet whisper designed to get his attention. “In fact, as I recall, you left me to face those fiery pits all on my own that long ago night while you went off to continue your… should we call it a date?” she asked with feigned curiosity, her gut clenching as she saw his reflexive flinch. Steeling herself, she continued. “Although, it seems like that’d be a bit of an overstatement based on all the rumors I heard about you over the years. Dating would be a real loose term for what you did with your women back then, wouldn’t it? Tell me, Sheriff, do you think a few years of celibacy make up for what I endured that night while you were getting your rocks off?” she asked as she stared at him with outwardly cold eyes. Seeing Zeke’s visible grimace and the pain that flashed in his dark eyes, Honor felt a wave of shame flood over her. What the hell was she doing? While part of her truly felt betrayed by him that night, she knew she wasn’t being entirely fair to him. It wasn’
t Zeke’s fault that she’d been kidnapped. She hadn’t been his responsibility. But, damn him, she didn’t want to take a trip down memory lane with him or her family. And she sure as the moon didn’t want to do it with some freaking therapist! And the only way to get rid of his need to help her was to get rid of him.

  God, it was all so infuriating, but between the blasted eternally interfering doctors, her sisters and him, it appeared that no one was willing to allow her to make up her own mind about the matter. The scariest part was that she wasn’t sure that digging up the past wouldn’t just cost her a future.

  “Been saving that up for a while, have you?” Zeke finally asked softly when the silence had yawned between them for an almost unbearable length of time.

  Biting her lip, Honor shook her head dumbly, astounded that she’d uttered words so hurtful to a man she loved – even if she refused to admit that fact out loud. Now that it was between them, her earlier plan seemed stupid and juvenile. “I…I didn’t mean that. Not at all. I’m so sorry, Ezekiel,” she babbled, her apology sounding clumsy and inept. Mostly because she knew it was, just like the woman herself. Her momma had been right. Ugly actions had uglier consequences.

  “You meant it, Honor,” Zeke returned, a hard edge to his deep voice as he stared at her. “And you’re right. I failed you that night. I shouldn’t have left you there. You were a little girl waiting alone on the side of the road, and I left you there,” he said starkly. “It was the single biggest mistake of my life.”

  “You didn’t know what would happen,” Honor whispered, squeezing her eyes shut to avoid seeing the emotional wound she’d inflicted on him. What the hell was wrong with her? She wasn’t the kind of person that intentionally caused another person pain - especially not the man who’d spent years trying to protect her. Hearing Zeke inhale deeply, Honor licked her dry lips. “Nobody could have known what would happen that night,” she added, staring at her hands.