“Therapy?”
“Yeah. As in, I see someone and talk to them once every couple of weeks. Before, it was a couple of times a week. Now though, I’m to the point where sometimes I go a few weeks without seeing her. Tyler decided that in order to help me, he would do the same.” She crossed her legs and turned to face him in her chair. “That’s not to say that he goes with me every time, because he doesn’t. He only goes when he feels that there’s something he needs to discuss. There was a point in time when he needed to discuss some pretty big issues that had to deal with me. Now it’s a little bit different. Sometimes we have things as a couple that we can’t agree on together. When we get to that point, we take it to our sessions. The doctor helps us discuss things on even ground and helps us so that we don’t hurt each other in the process of getting our feelings out.”
That made sense to Jagger. “He is pretty set in his ways,” he grinned.
“You don’t live with the man.”
“So, it doesn’t make you look at Tyler any differently for going to see this doctor?” he asked.
The concern was genuinely there, and that surprised her. Maybe there were other issues in Jagger’s life that he wanted to seek guidance on, but that wasn’t for her to find out. “Not at all. Just like he doesn’t look at me any different.”
Jagger took a deep breath and then let it out. It obviously weighed heavily on his mind.
She reached over and gently touched his hand. “It’s an investment in the rest of our lives, Jagger. We know that we want to be together and things can’t be perfect all the time. Those first few moments of being newly in love and thinking that your partner is always going to be what you need them to be aren’t realistic. Tyler and I learned that pretty early on. If you have issues, it’s good to try and work those out. Nobody is going to think that you’re weak or wrong for wanting to do that.”
He bit his lip. “Do you think you could give me the number of the person that you see?”
She smiled softly at him. “I’ll do you one better—here’s her card.” She fished around in her purse until she pulled out a well-worn card. “I have the number committed to memory now, but you call her if you need her. She’s an amazing woman. It will only make your relationship with Bianca stronger if the two of you are honest with each other from the start. Don’t be scared of it.”
What she said was true, and he knew without a doubt that there would be some backlash from the things that had taken place in the kitchen. For once in his life he wanted to be proactive about what could happen with the two of them. Protecting her hadn’t worked, but he could help her heal. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her and helping her heal would be small in the grand scheme of things.
“Since you’re here, I’m gonna head out. Call us if you need anything?”
He nodded as she bent down to hug him. “Thanks for everything.”
“You’re family,” she grinned. “And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for family.”
Bianca’s head hurt, even before she opened her eyes to see that it was blessedly dark—wherever she was. Her neck was stiff as she tried to work the tension out of it and her throat felt as if she had swallowed glass. Forcing her eyes open, she realized she was in a hospital room and Jagger sat at her side, doing something with his phone. She was so thirsty.
“Jagger?” she whispered, her voice sounding distorted even to her own ears.
“You’re awake? Oh thank God!” He rushed over to her side and put his hands on her, making sure that every part of her was there and accounted for.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
Tears pricked his eyes and his throat was uncharacteristically tight as he nodded. “I’m fine, I’m more worried about you.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Do you need something?”
“Thirsty,” she managed to press past her lips.
Quickly he went to where a pitcher of water sat and poured some into a cup. A straw lay next to the pitcher, and he put it into the liquid and bent it so that she would be able to get the drink easily. With his help, she lifted up off the bed, groaning as her body protested. After she took a few sips, she indicated she was done and lay back against the pillows with a sigh.
“You in pain?”
“Yeah, I feel like I’ve been in a car accident,” she admitted.
Upon closer inspection, he could see a purple bruise sneaking out from where the gown gapped at her shoulder. “How did you hurt your shoulder?”
She looked at where he pointed and cleared her throat cautiously. “We went down trying to get the gun from each other. The metal serving line isn’t made to lie on,” she tried to crack a joke.
Jagger watched as she glanced around the room. This was awkward and he wasn’t sure why. He was so excited to have her open her eyes and sit up, but she seemed to be nervous around him. “Do I make you nervous?”
Her tongue popped out from between her lips, and she licked the bottom one. “I just feel off-kilter,” she admitted.
“Do you want me to go get the doctor?” he asked. He hated that she felt weird with him. He should be the last person in the world she felt weird with. They had never had that dynamic in their relationship, but he remembered what Meredith had told him. She would need him to be patient.
“If you don’t mind. I would like to know when I can go home.”
So formal with him, but he knew he had to make things as easy for her as he could. “I’ll be right back,” he told her. Before he left, he picked up her hand and kissed the back of it tenderly. “I know things are different right now and we both need some time to decompress, but know that I love you more than anything in this world.”
All Bianca could do was nod. Words came to her mouth, but she couldn’t open it. She couldn’t form them like she normally did. It was like that part of her had been ripped apart and not put back together yet. She wanted so badly to return the sentiment that he had just given her, but it just wasn’t here. Not like it had been hours ago. Putting her arms around her stomach, she realized all she wanted was to feel like herself. The startling reality came to her that she didn’t know when that would ever happen again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jagger sat on the porch of Doctor Jones’ office.
Waiting.
He had allowed two weeks to go by. Two weeks in which he had wordlessly given Bianca the space that she requested. He had let her stay at her own apartment, not pressuring her to stay with him. The way she tensed every time he came near, the way she refused to meet his eyes, the way she shrank away from anything resembling a real conversation between the two of them. Now, he was ready to move forward—tired of waiting on her to admit she needed him. Instead, he was going to make her see just how much she needed him in this journey with her.
Meredith had been right on many of the things she had assumed when she handed Jagger the card for Doctor Jones. He did have issues that needed to be worked on—just like he knew Bianca did. They had issues together. In the past two long, lonely weeks he had spent without her, he’d worked on himself. Now, more than any other time in his life, he was equipped to handle whatever she needed from him. Talking to Doctor Jones had been, for lack of a better word, therapy for him. He understood things about himself that he had never before understood. The only thing that escaped him was how to get Bianca to talk to him.
After speaking with Denise and Meredith, they had let him in on the fact that Bianca had a standing appointment with Doc Jones on this day at this time each week. On a leap of faith, he had called the good doctor and explained to her what he wanted to do. She had agreed, without breaking any confidences, that the idea had its merits.
That brought him to where he was today, sitting on the porch waiting for Bianca to come to her appointment.
He missed her, that was the root of all this. He couldn’t live without her, and he had to make her see that. Out of everything he had learned over the past few weeks about himself, his greatest lesson was that he cou
ldn’t make it without that person standing beside him. That person for him was Bianca.
“Are you sure she made an appointment this week?” He walked to the door and spoke to the doctor.
“You know there are only certain things I can tell you, Jagger. The only thing I can tell you about this is that you’re double-booked.”
He knew that to mean that Bianca was scheduled to be here. The fact that she was a few minutes away from being late made him nervous. Just as he was about to talk to the doctor again, he saw her car coming down the drive, kicking up dust and gravel as she made her way to the office.
Bianca saw him as she parked and her heart beat faster. He was the person she had longed to see for weeks, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to call him. She still felt awkward where he was concerned. At the same time, she was excited that he was here right now. As she got out of the car, he made his way to her. The loose-legged gait that held just a little bit of swagger ate up the distance between them. When he stood directly in front of her, he stopped, obviously waiting for a sign from her.
Hungrily, her eyes soaked him in. His hair was longer than the last time she had seen him. The whiskers on his cheek and chin showed a full beard instead of the smattering he usually had. His eyes, blue though they were, held a tiredness that she hadn’t seen before. “Hi,” she whispered, scared to speak too loudly.
Jagger grinned and reached forward with one of his hands to grip her own. “Hey,” he answered back.
She knew by the way he stopped abruptly that he wanted to say more but he was worried about spooking her. This would be all her. Whatever came out of this, whatever happened, would be because she wanted it too. “I missed you,” she told him, her throat clogging with emotion.
“I missed you too,” he told her. He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her there forever, but he wasn’t sure how it would be received. Nothing was the same as it had been.
It was hard to tell him what she wanted, when before it was so easy with the two of them. No one had offered her physical comfort since that fateful day at the school, and she wanted it desperately. The rub of it was that she wanted it from this man, and somehow she had scared him off. “Can you give me a hug?”
The thinness of her voice and the tears that he could hear broke his heart. Pulling her into his arms, Jagger wrapped them around her, squeezing so tightly her feet lifted off the ground. “I’ve wanted to do this since you woke up,” he admitted, burying his face in her hair.
“I’m so sorry,” she told him, her voice muffled as she dug her face into his chest. “I was in such a weird place,” she tried to explain to him.
“Hey.” He pushed her face back from his chest and cupped her cheeks with his warm palms. “You don’t have to apologize to me.” He gave her a small smile. “Just promise me you’re not gonna shut me out. Let’s go talk to this doctor and fix what got messed up.”
“Let’s go.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the office where the good doc sat on her ever-present chair.
“Bianca, you look much better than you did last week,” Doctor Jones commented as the two of them had a seat.
The couch didn’t moan as much as when Tyler sat in it, but it groaned a little under Jagger’s weight, and she had to suppress a grin. These men that she seemed to be counseling on a more frequent basis were enigmas. She wasn’t sure that anyone would believe her, even if she could talk about it.
“I am.” Bianca grasped Jagger’s hand, pulling it into her lap. “I feel much more in control of myself than I did a week ago.”
“Like I explained to you before, sometimes when we go through a shock, it just takes a little bit for us to get our sea legs under us again. It just takes us a while to feel normal.”
Bianca nodded. “I get now what you were saying when you told me that. A week ago, I was still jumping at the weird sounds my apartment makes when the heat comes on. Last night I slept with the light off for the first time since this happened. It’s just taking time—like you said.”
“Jagger, how are you doing?” she asked the man who sat so stoically next to the woman who so obviously had his heart.
He swallowed loudly and then used his free hand to wipe at his forehead and eyes. “It’s been rough. I’m still having those dreams we talked about before.”
“Why don’t you tell Bianca about those dreams?”
This was something he really didn’t want to do, but she was an integral part of them, an integral part of his life. He knew that in order for them to move on, he had to be honest. He had to explain to her how badly this was affecting him. “It’s the same thing as before. We get to the kitchen and Raymond’s got his hands around her neck. I see her take a breath, and then he tightens his hands around her neck. I hear it crack and that’s it. I know she’s dead. I stand there and watch him kill her and don’t do anything to prevent it.”
Bianca gasped as he spoke. His speech was so even, almost emotionless, but she knew that wasn’t the case. The hand that held hers gripped tightly as he told the story. “I’m here, Jagger.”
A smile that didn’t quiet reach his eyes appeared on his face. “I know, but I haven’t been able to see you, and it’s caused my mind to play some crazy tricks.”
“I’m so sorry. I was selfish, I should have known that you needed to see me as much as I needed to see you. I just felt so awkward about everything,” she admitted, letting her foot tap against the floor.
“Why did you feel awkward?” Doctor Jones asked as she leaned forward in her seat.
She shifted, not wanting to go into this. “He made me feel guilty.”
“About what?” Jagger asked. “You did absolutely nothing to encourage him.”
“He called me a whore,” she bit out. “And in a way, he really was right. I don’t sleep with men for money, but I play them for it. It’s all an illusion—an illusion made to make men give up their hard earned paychecks. Do you know how many of them have wives at home? Children? I can see where he believed the shit that we force-fed down his throat. For that I feel guilty.”
Jagger didn’t know how to answer that. Luckily for him, Doctor Jones had an idea.
“Okay, so you take responsibility for your part. However, I need you to remember that nothing in any of that you just talked about gave him the right to get obsessed with you. Neither did it give him the right to hold you against your will, to touch you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable, or threaten a school full of children.”
“I know,” Bianca nodded. “Realistically I know that, but I still feel responsibility for it. I quit Wet Wanda’s last week. I graduate in a few weeks as it is.”
“You quit?” Jagger asked, his eyebrows raised.
“I had to, I just didn’t feel right when I went in there. It didn’t give me the feeling of family that it once did.”
“What are you going to do about things financially?” Doctor Jones adjusted her glasses. “We’ve spoken at length about how you worry about finances.”
“I took out an extra student loan. I didn’t really want to do it, but it was the best thing for me at this point. I’ll deal with paying it back when the time comes. As it is, I’ve been asked to be a full-time teacher by the school board, so I’m secured a job for next year.”
“That’s great, B!” Jagger hugged her around the shoulders.
She blushed. “I really think it’s more to keep me quiet about what happened than them really wanting to hire me, but who gives a shit at this point. They asked, I accepted. I’ll just prove to them how good of a teacher I can be.”
Doctor Jones looked at the two of them. They sat so close together that every part of their bodies touched, and Jagger softly played with the hair at the nape of Bianca’s neck. They were relaxed against each other. Bianca, who two weeks ago had held herself so rigid during therapy sessions, was now lounging against Jagger. Jagger, who hadn’t smiled in the entire time she’d been seeing him, had one on his face right now that rivaled that of a super
model. They were going to make it. She was sure of that.
“It looks like the two of you are on your way.”
“I think so.” Bianca smiled widely, raising the hands they had entwined. “I think we just had to get over this awkwardness.”
“Then I think the two of you should spend some time with one another. If you feel like you’re okay being with him, then you two need to do that. The only way Jagger’s going to get over seeing you up against that wall is if the two of you make memories that show you living, Bianca.”
Jagger nodded. “You’re right. I feel less stressed now that I’ve actually seen her.”
She leaned in and kissed his cheek before he turned into her lips, making them meet in a full on kiss.
Doctor Jones grinned as Jagger’s hands moved to Bianca’s hair and held her mouth closer to his. “Okay, you two. Get outta here.”
Bianca bit her lip and dipped her head as they pulled apart. “Sorry, Doc,” she giggled as she and Jagger scrambled to their feet.
“If you need me, I’m here. I hope the two of you know that.” They both nodded.
“Good! Now get outta here and go live your life. There’s no reason the two of you can’t have an amazing life together. I think you have a really good base for your relationship. Don’t lose sight of how you feel right now, this feeling that you feel now is why you love each other. It’s pure, plain, and what many people search for. Keep nurturing it and know when you need help, there’s nothing that’s gonna stop you.”
Jagger knew that the doctor spoke the truth, and he planned on never being stopped again when it came to the woman who stood in the circle of his arms.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Where are we going?”
Jagger glanced over at Bianca and grinned. They were coming through on the other side of the hurdles that had been placed in front of them. It was nice to see her excited about something. “Just sit over there and look pretty,” he told her, a full smile breaking out over his face as she huffed.
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