Standing Outside the Fire

by Jillian Neal

  Jessie asked questions the way all moms asked them. The kind where you didn’t really feel like you had the option not to answer. Charlie cleared her throat. “Uh, well, the parsonage where my family lived when I was little burned. My mom….” She glanced out the window praying that Jamie would make a sudden return. She wanted to run away from this particular line of questioning. “She didn’t survive the fire.” That statement performed like some kind of twist valve on a pressurized tank. Everything else spilled from her mouth like she was vomiting out the words. “So, you get how I could never be in love with a firefighter. It’s too dangerous. I’d never sleep. I’d have panic attacks again. All the time. Even now every single time I know he’s at work and I hear sirens I have to count to ten and take deep breaths. I just couldn’t. I…couldn’t.” If she said it enough, surely it would stick.

  Katy looked crestfallen. “I’m so sorry about your mom. That’s terrible.”

  Charlie managed a robotic nod. It had been terrible and unacceptable and so unfair. Her mom had been such a good Christian woman and Jesus was supposed to protect them and…. She shut down that line of thought for the thousandth time since the night of the fire.

  Jessie gave her an understanding nod. She reached and gave Charlie’s arm a maternal pat. “Can I ask you something, sweetheart?”

  “I guess.” Charlie really wished she wouldn’t, but manners had been bred into her since birth.

  “Do you really believe that it would hurt less if something awful happened to Jamie and you hadn’t told him how much you care about him and then seen if maybe the Good Lord’s got a future in mind for the two of you together? Heartbreak and pain, they don’t exist in measurable degrees, honey. You can’t set a dial to make sure if worse comes to worst that you can handle the pain. That just ain’t how life works.”

  Charlie made another nod. “I guess I never really thought of it like that.”

  “So, maybe think about it. When your time comes, regret the things you’ve done if you have to, but you don’t want to regret the things you were afraid to try. It sounds to me like you think you’re negotiating a small amount of pain every single day to avoid the potential of the ultimate pain later on. You’re trading a whole lot of happiness for a bag of magic beans that aren’t the pills that keep bad things from happening.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jamie mopped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief he borrowed from Aaron Weber. He’d met Aaron once when he was down on Holder Ranch with Jamie’s cousin, Maddox. They’d worked together in the army. Quiet guy but he got shit done, that was for sure.

  The heavy-duty wreckers had finally shown up and were trying to figure out how to get the trucks off of the road. Most of the cows were scared but were able to walk without a problem. Two of them, inside the truck, had been fatally wounded. Jamie hated it for the owner and hated the loss of a good bull for the Camdens.

  Just like every time he left the scene of an accident or a fire, another round of adrenaline surged through him. Life was precious. He wanted to live it while he had the chance, and dammit, he wanted to do that with Charlie.

  That brought him back to the issues at hand. It was getting late in the day. Luke and Austin’s wives had brought food up to them twice now. He needed to get back to the guest cottage and try to get Charlie to talk to him, not that he had any good ideas on what to say.

  “Hey Dec,” Colt called from beside Jamie. “Could you do me a favor and give Jamie a ride back to the cottage? Maybe go the long way,” he urged. “I gotta get back and help Avery with the kids. They’ve probably staged a mutiny by now.”

  Jamie shot his cousin a glance that let him know he didn’t appreciate being forced into this.

  The doc gave Colt a weary smile. He was just as exhausted as the rest of them, and Jamie doubted he was in the mood to work on his other profession. “Certainly.” He gestured to his SUV.

  Feeling every eye surrounding them burn into his skin, Jamie stumbled forward when Colt shoved him. Fucker. “Thanks, asswipe,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Anytime.” Colt laughed.

  He was too tired to argue much, so he took the passenger seat in the Suburban. Dec climbed in the driver’s seat and offered Jamie a kind smile. “You’re not the first, nor will you be the last, unsuspecting guy that one of the Camdens has shoved onto my couch so to speak. I might be able to help, and if I follow my instructions to take you the long way we’ve got a while to talk.”

  “I appreciate Colt trying to help and your offer, Doc, but I kinda prefer to figure shit out on my own. No offense.”

  “None taken. The way Colt explained it to us at supper last night, you’ve been in love with the woman you’re currently sharing our cottage with for twenty years, but she was planning to marry someone else yesterday. So, figuring things out on your own must be working for you.” His British accent didn’t soften the blow at all. Jamie ground his teeth but still refused to take the bait.

  Dec continued talking. “Not knowing much about either you or...Charlotte, was it?”

  “Charlie,” Jamie corrected but then immediately wondered if Dec had just been trying to get him to speak and he’d just lost that battle of wills.

  “Charlie,” Dec corrected. “I will say that, for the most part, it matters a great deal more who you’re running to and much less who you’re running from if that helps at all.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “I assumed it was. Advice one could find on Facebook isn’t typically why people come into my office.”

  Rolling his eyes, Jamie conceded a little. “What’s going on is between me and Charlie. I don’t kiss and tell, even with a sex doctor. Not without her okaying it. I’d never go behind her back on something like this.”

  Dec’s entire expression morphed to one of genuine understanding. “I respect that a great deal, and I apologize if I pushed too hard. To be perfectly honest with you, Colt mentioned the issue to me on one of our trips out to guide the cattle to the field.”

  “Yeah, well, my cousin needs to keep his jaw shut.”

  “I might have an idea of how I could help without doing anything that would be disrespectful to Charlie or what she’s going through. Female orgasm is something I’m highly skilled at.”

  “Bet you put that on your business card,” Jamie huffed.

  Dec chuckled. “I didn’t quite mean that the way it sounded. I only meant that I’ve treated a number of patients who struggle to climax. My wife wrote her thesis on society’s implications on female pleasure. I helped her do a fair amount of research on the subject to go along with my multiple degrees.”

  “What was your idea about how to help without helping?”

  “On top of the counseling clinic I run here in town, I am also the head of the online psychology department at UN. Several times a month, I go to Lincoln to give lectures. One of the things I often teach in the Sexual Psychology classes is about female orgasm. What if I simply gave you the lesson I’d give at university. You can take from it what you need. If it helps, brilliant. If it doesn’t, maybe you could talk Charlie into coming to see me with you, and together we can work on the root cause of the distress.”

  Jamie considered that from every possible angle. He couldn’t find a flaw, and truthfully he could use some guidance. He cleared his throat, “Uh, so in this class that you teach, do you cover how to help if she can come on her own but not with another person?”

  Dec did not acknowledge that Jamie had given anything away. “As that is quite common, it is one of the first things we cover.”

  “Okay, then let’s hear this lecture.”

  “Glad I can help.” Dec launched into the lecture, and Jamie wondered if he should be taking notes. He tried to really focus. He’d always sucked at school, but he sensed this was a critical key to him and Charlie. “Female sexuality is vastly different from that of males. Her views on sex tend to be made up of three major components—what her religion has taught her abou
t sex and her body, what her parents have to say about it, and then what society has imprinted on her as what is and is not acceptable and what is and is not sexy.”

  “Damn,” Jamie sighed. That was a whole lot of fucked up is what it was. “Her Daddy’s a preacher. He wouldn’t even let her date until she was out of college. That’s why I never asked her out in high school. I swear he’s wound tighter than a nun’s nasty.”

  “Perhaps don’t refer to her genitalia as such,” Dec urged.

  “I’m not a dumbass, Doc.”

  “Understood. But if her father is a religious leader, then her parents’ views and her religious views are likely intertwined, and they were probably reinforced early and often. That can be a lot to overcome.”

  “No shit. He was always on her about representing the church wherever she went. I know he’s in her head still. She ended up engaged to that shitlicker because of her old man. She still feels like she has to keep him happy.”

  Dec nodded and slowed the Suburban to a crawl as they drove through a herd of cattle standing along the dirt-packed path. “Holly says just to keep the car moving slowly to get them to move out of the way. I’m always afraid I’m going to hit one.”

  “Holly’s right,” Jamie assured him. “They’ll get out of the way if you stay in motion, but if you stop completely, they’ll set up housekeeping here, change their mailing address, the whole deal.”

  Dec chuckled at that. “See, we all need advice on occasion.”

  It sounded to Jamie like Dec’s wife could teach him anything he needed to know about ranching, but he appreciated the effort to keep him from feeling like an idiot. “Keep going on the women’s sexuality thing. Her daddy hates me, so I’m betting that plays into this.” That wouldn’t necessarily explain why Charlie had never had an orgasm with anyone else, though.

  “It might, but it’s far more likely that it doesn’t matter who her partner is, allowing herself to climax in their presence isn’t something she feels she’s allowed.”

  “So, how do I change her opinion on that?”

  “I’m getting there. Remember there are three parts and you’re going to need to approach it from all three sides. I’m going to also remind you that her orgasm is not for your ego, and you’ll make better decisions if you try to step away from the idea that the only way she enjoys being with you is if she climaxes.”

  Okay, the ego comment stung a little, but Jamie brushed it off. “She said something like that last night. It’s not the destination it’s the trip kind of thing, right?”

  “Precisely. Intimacy is not actually about sexual encounters, particularly for women. The double-edged sword of this issue is that the majority of women need to feel intimacy in order to fully embrace a satisfying physical relationship.”

  Jamie hated feeling like he was completely inept, but he had to admit that he kind of was. Swallowing down that momentary irritation, he let Dec’s last statement roll through his mind. “Sounds like you’re saying I need to get her to trust me outside of my bed before I try to get her to come in it. But she does trust me. We’ve been best friends forever. I’ve never let her down. I would never let her down. She knows that.”

  “Perhaps, she trusts you with her present. The key to intimacy is getting someone to trust you with their past and their future. The present is by far the easiest part of the puzzle.”

  Defeat sank through Jamie. It physically pressed him deeper into the seat. He was already in for a penny, and Charlie was likely already going to be furious with him for talking to Dec, but he’d never wanted anything as much as he’d wanted her as his wife. He’d find a way to apologize for this, but he needed some answers. “From what I could tell, she’s got some scars on her side.” He gestured to his own ribcage. “They have to be from the fire she was in when she was a kid, but she’s never told me about them. I thought she told me everything.”

  Dec’s eyes lit and concerned revelation seemed to tense in his brow. “What do you mean from what you could tell? Have you not seen her fully naked?”

  “She wouldn’t let me take her shirt off last night,” Jamie choked on the admission. The doc was quiet for several beats too long, as if he didn’t want to state the thing that was now sitting between them in the truck. “Which means she doesn’t really trust me, right?” The inevitable conclusion was worse than a fist to the throat.

  Dec offered him an apologetic look. “You can build that trust, but it isn’t going to be easy. Communication is going to be key. She’s going to need to help you build a bridge so that you can both cross it. Don’t press too hard, but the key to her issues might be hidden under her shirt. The thing about scars is that, ultimately, they’re the cover to the book. The events that led to the scar are vastly more important than the marking left behind. Slowly and cautiously, never pushing her faster than she’s willing to go, you’re going to have to be willing to go back in her mind to things she’s frightened of. Show her that you’re willing to meet her wherever she is and that you’ll lead her out of that fear.”

  “I can do that.” Jamie immediately began trying to come up with ways to get Charlie to tell him about the fire. She’d started to the night before, but it had all gotten tangled up in the sheets when he was taking her.

  “I have no doubt, but there’s another issue with scars. It gets back to the third part of female sexuality. Women are constantly told that if they don’t look like cover models that they are not sexy. That point is hammered home dozens of times every single day. You’re going to have to prove to her that no matter what those scars look like, you still find her sexually attractive.”

  “That won’t be a problem. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and I’ve thought that since the first time I saw her.”

  “Have you ever told her that?”

  “No.” Jamie instantly regretted that. “That wasn’t us, you know? We were best friends, and she wasn’t ever allowed to date when we were younger. Plus,” he loathed what he was about to say but it was the truth, “she’s not the kind of girl you mess around with. She’s the real deal. I thought it was my right to sow my wild oats, so to speak. Plus, she didn’t want me. I guess it kinda got comfortable when we were older, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. She’s terrified of my job. It just seemed like there was too much against us to chance fucking up the friendship.”

  Dec finally got through the herd, but he wasn’t driving the car that much faster. “What changed?”

  Considering that from every angle, Jamie once again told the truth. “Ever since she got engaged to Ed, she hasn’t been coming around as much. She was busy and Ed doesn’t like me any more than her daddy does, but it scared me, you know? I hated it. I missed her every fucking day. When I saw her hanging off the side of her daddy’s church yesterday, it felt like it was now or never.” Dec made no response, so Jamie kept talking. It felt good to get some of this off of his chest. “And see, I get it. Other people don’t because they don’t have to. But I’m the guy who cuts people out of cars on the worst day of their lives. I’m the guy who can make five minutes feel like an entire lifetime when I go in to get your family out of a burning house. I know how precious life is, and how quickly it can all be taken away. I can’t do this anymore. I want to live while we’re all here, and I want a life with her.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dec stopped the car in the middle of an open field and threw it in park. “Then let’s really talk about how you’re going to go get the life you and Charlie deserve. I understand that you don’t want to betray her trust. If I feel like you might be crossing that line, I’ll tell you to stop. But what’s happening in this relationship is happening to both of you. Asking for help might be the bravest thing you could do at this point. It sounds like she carries a great deal of trauma from her past and it continues to scar her future. It might not be fair, but I personally believe that you’re the man who can help her be able to look at her past and understand that it doesn’t have to own her future.”
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  For a split, spiteful second Jamie hated just how good the doc was, but when someone hands you a lifeline you take it. His ego had been running the show for way too long. Hell, his ego was part of how he survived, but he was tired of just surviving. He wanted to live.

  “All right,” he swallowed down every ounce of pride he had and urged, “how do I get her to trust me enough to allow herself to feel when she’s with me.”

  “It’s not unusual for people who’ve survive a traumatic childhood event like a fire to carry residual trauma with them well into adulthood. Tell me everything you know about the fire. I’d bet my license that the key to her control issues lie in that.”

  Talking fire was something Jamie could do with ease. As long as he didn’t think too much about whose home had been involved, it became a work discussion. “It was a two-alarm when the call went out. Started in the chimney on the north end of the house away from the bedrooms. Two trucks arrived on scene. Fire wasn’t yet venting so they followed protocol and sent in a four-man rescue team with an inch and three-quarter. The other truck went defensive from outside. Man named Clint found Charlie and her little sister, Becca, passed out in the hallway near their parents’ bedroom. He got them out. While he was getting them masked in the ambulance, the roof caved, and they had to get the team out. Her father survived, but her mom didn’t make it.”

  Dec studied Jamie while he processed that. “A few pieces of advice that aren’t in any psychology textbook, these come from my own life—when you lose a parent, especially the parent you were closest to, which so often happens with daughters and their mothers, you don’t ever want to gamble on that piece of your heart again. It’s already broken and so thoroughly damaged you’re not certain it could withstand any more pain. You being so closely professionally involved with the very thing that took her mother away from her became a legitimate excuse for her keeping you friend-zoned, so to speak. You’re going to have to show Charlie that you’re okay with her loving you in pieces as long as eventually you both are working toward her understanding that you want to love every piece of her until she’s whole again. Try to keep in mind that what you’re asking her to risk doesn’t seem like much to you, but the cost to her is significant. You need to make her understand that you get that.”