I roll my eyes. “So, basically, you did with her what you did with me. Just stretched normal therapy to suit the person you’re helping.”
“What?”
“You pushed me in ways no other therapist ever has, Amelia. I told you I knew it wasn’t traditional practice. But it’s what fucking worked. What’s wrong with that?”
She shakes her head helplessly and says, “Everything.” When I don’t react to this, she continues to spell out her concerns. “With Felicity, she didn’t consent to what I was doing. I broke her trust. I was the one making all the decisions on her behalf. Yes, I only thought I was helping, but I had completely lost my perspective. I should have been upfront with her, should have admitted my friendship would come with therapeutic advice so she could decide whether she wanted any part of it. I should probably have my license taken away for that.” She pauses and scans the room, including the bed where the sheets have been thoroughly displaced. “And for this.”
I ignore that last bit and focus on what is clearly bothering her most. “With Felicity, did you end up helping her?”
“I, eh, I think so, but—”
“Then, so what if you bent a few rules for the greater good?”
“Daniel, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Not for someone like me.”
I understand her implication is that someone like me, a fuckup with no real expectations, can get away with a hell of a lot more than a respectable person such as herself. But I don’t feel any judgment from her. It’s just our different realities.
“Listen, I’m sure it’ll all sort itself in the end. Felicity is a logical person, she’ll come to realize you meant well.”
She looks at me for a long moment before smiling weakly. “Thank you. You’re sweet.”
“Sweet” is not something I tend to get called.
“I just hated to see you torn up over this,” I tell her.
Leaning into me, I think she’s going to kiss me. Instead, she wraps her arm around my neck and presses her forehead to mine, her eyes closed.
“For someone who doesn’t know how to connect,” she whispers, “you’re doing pretty well.”
This makes me feel ridiculously good, like a star pupil. Like I not only got the best grade in class, but the teacher has given me a pat on the head in front of everyone. I’m beaming. It’s a fine thing to feel like I can be of some use. After all, that feeling has come few and far between in my recent history. And for it to have come from my Dear Amelia, well, that’s just the topper.
21
Amelia
* * *
It’s not quite light out, but I can’t sleep. Daniel is lying on his stomach beside me, one arm draped over my waist. He’s in a deep sleep, having worn both of us out after our talk. He’d reacted to my telling him he was doing a good job of connecting by connecting our bodies once more. He’s insatiable in a way that goes beyond sexual gratification. It’s likely to do with his addict personality. The therapist in me would see this as yet another reason to be cautious, to guard against becoming a crutch in his life. I’m floating on my own endorphin high, though, and don’t entertain the worries for long. He won’t let me, anyway, not when he’s focused on steering us into pure sensation and pleasure.
Confessing my mistakes with Felicity has lifted, at least partially, the weight I’ve been carrying. I was careful not to share any of what Felicity had told me in confidence. And I left Conor’s part out of it entirely. Daniel is quick to forgive my professional indiscretions and I’m not surprised. We don’t see such things through the same lens. Despite that, his support feels surprisingly good. It’s nice to be with someone who has my back no matter what.
Turning on my side away from him, I wonder if I am actually with Daniel. What is this thing we’re doing? A holiday fling? Something more?
The answer is made clear to me when his hand cups my bare breast and he pushes his groin into me from behind. The only thing I can do—the only thing I should do—is enjoy the moment.
He had promised to fuck me senseless. To make me see stars. And fireworks. I laugh out loud at all this. It’s very him: over the top, intense, passionate. It’s exactly what I bargained for, I remind myself.
“Baby,” he purrs in that way of his. It’s both seductive and endearing. That he calls me baby and makes me feel like I’m his is just what I need.
“Daniel,” I say with a catch in my breath because he’s pinched my nipple with just the right amount of pressure so that I feel it all the way down between my legs.
“Turn around.”
Smiling, I do as he says. He looks into my eyes in the dim light of the room. I’m ready for him to make some dirty suggestion for what he’ll do to me. Or what he wants me to do to him.
Instead, he says something that surprises me.
“I’ll get a flight today to go home when you do,” he says. “May not be the same flight. I have to make special arrangements for Roscoe.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to take you from visiting with your brother.”
He kisses me, gently at first, and then deeper. “I want to be where you are. I won’t last without you. I’ll go through Amelia withdrawals,” he says, and I laugh. “Now, get on top of me and wave those beautiful tits in my face, won’t you?”
That’s the Daniel I expected. I smile and do as he asked.
The guest bath has a deep soaker tub and as I sink into it, I have company. Daniel doesn’t favor baths, so he is sitting on a low wooden stool next to the tub. Roscoe is on the floor beside him. I’d told him he could sleep while I bathed since it’s still not even eight in the morning, but he insisted on coming with me.
“Now, I do want to dive in,” he says with a wicked smile. His eyes are firmly fixed on the tips of my nipples rising through the layer of bubbles.
“Down boy,” I say with a laugh.
Roscoe’s soulful eyes stir, and he glances at Daniel for reassurance. “She didn’t mean you, buddy. I’m the dog in this scenario.” After a firm pet and pat, Roscoe settles.
“Not so much a dog,” I say, “as an animal with needs I’m not sure I can satisfy.”
He smiles with satisfaction. “You do very well for yourself.”
I’m struck by this moment. Struck by the fact that I’m intimately involved with this man. Things have turned out far differently than I ever expected upon meeting him for our first session. He’d basically come in kicking and screaming. It was all obligation to Shay, of course, and he made that clear. But sooner than I would have predicted, he started to speak in more than one-syllable replies. And he soon revealed himself to be funny, perceptive, and thoughtful. All he needed was to get out of his own way. He says I was instrumental in him finding his way, and I’d like to believe I played a part. But I realize that the timing of our therapy together was just as important. He had come to a place in his life where he was finally ready to do the work required to better himself. The fact that he had Shay and his new friends to support him made all the difference. I really shouldn’t discount the effect Roscoe has had, either. Their bond is undeniable. The way he cares for that dog gives me some insight into how he’d be as a father. It’s endearing.
“How excited are you to be an uncle?” I ask.
“I’m over the moon, really. It’ll be fantastic to see Shay as a dad.”
“Is he excited? It’s not always easy to tell how he feels about things.”
He laughs. “Yeah. I think they invented the word ‘stoic’ to describe my brother. But he is thrilled. I came upon him last night staring at the sonogram photos. There might as well have been little heart bubbles coming out of him.”
“That’s adorable.”
“That’s Shay. Adorable.” He laughs once more. “He’s just adding to this big mix of kids with the group now. It’s wild to think of all these guys as parents. Those years of rockstar mayhem have come and gone.”
“But having babies around has got to be more rewarding.”
“I suppos
e,” he says dubiously. “Thing is, I missed all their early years when they were free and single. I missed those days of partying and no responsibilities. Must have been the life.”
I slowly drag a washcloth over my shoulder and chest and his eyes follow the movement.
“You don’t really think you’ve missed out on good partying, do you?” I stop myself from adding, you, the decades’ long heroin addict.
“No, of course not. The thing I missed out on was epic times with those guys. With my brother and my friends.”
I silently note that he’s lost his reservations over calling Shay’s bandmates his friends. Another sign of progress.
“There will be epic times still, I’m sure,” I say. “It’ll just involve kids, too.”
His eyes drift away from mine, and I can tell he’s digesting this new reality.
“You never imagined your life like this, did you? So full of friends and normalcy, complete with stable families all around you.”
“Eh, I never imagined I’d have any kind of life, to tell the truth,” he says absently. “There were times I’d rather not be living at all, in fact.”
This confession makes my heart stutter. He must see the alarm on my face, because he laughs.
“No, I mean, I just never really looked to the future, is all. But, you’re right, there are plenty of epic times to be had.”
He’s backpedaling, but the damage has been done. Whenever I think he’s made progress at moving on in his life, he reminds me that he’s still broken and damaged from a lifetime of neglect by his parents and abuse by his own hand.
“Talking of kids,” he says, “that reminds me that I need to set up a video chat with Daisy.”
In the past, if this had come up in one of our sessions, I would have steered him back to what he’d blurted out. I would have asked him how he feels about the conflict he obviously still has over who he is now. I’d have suggested that it is okay for him to have trouble reconciling how different his life is now given that it hasn’t been all that long since he’s made amazing strides to get himself into a better place.
But I’m not in my therapist’s chair. I’m in a bathtub. And it’s a good reminder that my boyfriend—if I dare call him that—needs someone to comfort him, not analyze him. And so, I let him change the subject.
“What do you and Daisy chat about?” My memory is that she’s only about two years old or so.
The smile that comes over his face is clearly born out of the joy he gets when he thinks of Daisy. It warms me from the inside out to see that side of him.
“It’s mostly nonsense,” he says. “But at the same time, it also feels like the deepest conversations, you know?”
I nod. “That’s exactly what I feel with Max.”
“Can’t wait to meet him. And your sister. I suppose your parents, as well?”
He’s said that last part as an afterthought. I suspect that because his own parents were such a non-presence, he often forgets that other people have a different experience, that they might actually have a relationship with them.
“I do,” I say with a laugh. “But let’s take things one step at a time, shall we?”
“My dear Amelia,” he says as he gets up from his bench seat, “you, of all people, should know I don’t do things in steps. I take big fucking leaps. And I’m taking you with me.”
I don’t have the chance to ask what that means, because he leans down and kisses me. And before I realize it, he’s climbed into the tub with me, sending water sloshing all over the floor and making Roscoe whine in irritation.
“What are you doing?” I ask with a laugh.
The jeans he’d put on are soaked through, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“Couldn’t stay away, baby.”
He’s pressed between my legs, one arm braced against the edge of the tub as he grins at me. I smile back and scoop up some bubbles and spread them over his chin and nose.
“You are something else, love.”
“Ooh, love. I like it.”
The endearment had slipped out naturally. And he’d picked right up on it. No use in trying to deny how I feel.
“I like you,” I say.
“I always knew you did.”
“Oh, Daniel.” I shake my head. But I’m smiling. Because he’s right. And because I’m right where I want to be—with him.
22
Danny Boy
* * *
The next couple of days go by quickly. Shay takes us on a sail and it’s spectacular. We have the luck of amazing weather and stay out on the 84-foot racing yacht until sunset, with Shay and the crew giving us a thrilling taste of the speeds the vessel can reach. I take Amelia to all my favorite parts of the city, including The Haight for its hippie history, Lower Pacific Heights for its one-of-everything (great restaurants, live music, furniture shopping, and more) accessibility, and North Beach for the bars. We eat well and stay up late into the evening, chatting and drinking at a pub or at the house. But it’s never to excess.
The only thing that goes to excess is the sex. I can’t get enough of Amelia and have kept her from getting sustained sleep most nights. We have true chemistry. But not in the same way as it was with Jules. With her, I felt depleting. With Amelia, I feel revived.
When Amelia goes with Jessica to the ballet school one morning, I’m left with time on my hands that I suddenly don’t know how to fill. I walk Roscoe. I make myself breakfast. I flip through the hundreds of cable channels on the television. Finally, Shay comes up from the basement where he’d been on a conference call with the lads back in Dublin to talk about the tour.
“Bloody hell, that took forever,” I say.
“A world tour condensed into twelve months takes some sorting out,” he replies.
“Won’t really be the whole world, will it?”
“No, we don’t have the time. We’ll cover Europe, Australia, New Zealand first. Then, Canada and America. We’ll have a three week break once we get here to the west coast, then go back at it with some dates in South America. We’ll wrap it up with some homecoming shows in Dublin.”
“Talking of home,” I say, “I’m going to go back.”
“When?”
“When Amelia goes back.”
Shay, who is rarely ruffled, looks surprised. “What happened to going slow?”
I laugh, remembering the advice he’d given me when I made him sit in the bathroom while I showered. “That was your plan, kid.”
“I see.”
“You have a problem with me wanting to be with her?”
“No, I don’t.”
I eye him for a moment. He’s his usual impassive self, but I can sense something more.
“Bullshit. I thought you liked her? Thought you said me sleeping with my therapist was the way to keep my head on straight.”
“Come on, Danny Boy. You know why going fast with this can be dangerous.”
“Dangerous? Really?”
He sighs. “Fuck it. Do what you’re going to do. Nothing has ever stopped you before, including me, right?”
“Why are you so pissy?” I honestly didn’t expect this reaction from him. In fact, I thought I might be wearing out my welcome. I’ve been here for over a month. And Jessica made that comment about house guests just last night at dinner.
“This just feels impulsive. And when you get impulsive, it’s never a good thing.”
That stings. But not for any legitimate reason. I know what he’s afraid of. He’s afraid that I’m going to revert to my old ways. Sure, he won his bet against Conor that I’d stay out of trouble, but he knows better than anyone that the odds are always stacked against me. Still, it rubs me the wrong way and I lash out.
“I realize I have to live with the fact that I’ve done basically fuck all to make you trust me but try to give me a little credit with this one. This isn’t like when I was fucking around with Jules. Amelia knows me and only wants me to succeed. She’s the most positive thing I’ve got going and I’m not g
oing to let her go.”
He looks away from me and I exercise rare patience in letting the silence go on as he stares out the window.
“Well, I’ll miss having you here,” he finally says. “But I suppose we’ll be back at it once the tour gets under way in just a couple months. Unless your plans for touring with us have changed now that Amelia’s in the picture?”
Now I understand a bit more what he’s afraid of. He’s worried that Amelia will become my new drug. The thing that will cause me to disappear. I suppose it’s a fair worry, but it’s not a real one. I’ve told him before that I’m completely committed to the band, and I mean it. I’m also committed to being around for him. It’s been too many years where I took from him instead of giving. Not that I have all that much to offer, but I do know what he said is true. He’ll miss having me around. Just like I’ll miss being around him. We’ve established a deeper connection since I’ve gotten clean and I don’t ever want to jeopardize it.
I can’t say out loud all that mushy stuff, of course. So, instead I tell him, “No, of course not. You know you can count me in. Me and Roscoe both.”
This seems to loosen him up and he actually smiles, something he doesn’t do enough of. His relief spurs my own. I hate to be on the outs with my brother. For a second there, it felt like he was going to make me choose between him and Amelia. I don’t know what I would have done. I mean, I may have hesitated when Amelia got here, but I think we’re both past that. I’m all in.
“Why don’t you buy me lunch, kid?” I say, eager to return to our easy way with each other.
“I think I got the last one,” he replies and a beat passes before he adds, “hundred.”
“That dry wit, that’s what I love most about you, you know?”
This gets me a laugh and I’m happy all is well once again.
Problematic Love (Rogue Series Book 8) Page 11