by Lizzie Shane
But he’d driven away and left her there, dealing with the fallout of her mistakes.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The therapist’s office was very taupe. Candy studied the décor and wondered if that color was supposed to be more soothing than others. More conducive to psychological breakthroughs.
Dr. Erica Rosenthal had dark, calm eyes and an abundance of black curls. She wore a cream Chanel pencil dress with a narrow black belt which Charlotte would have coveted and sat with her Ferragamos elegantly crossed in a way Candy’s mother would have approved of—and yet for all that she looked like someone who would fit right into her parents’ world, Candy liked her on sight.
Though that did nothing to ease the nerves twisting around in her stomach. It was probably normal to feel like you were about to have a panic attack the first time you went to a therapist, right? If she was perfectly well-adjusted, she wouldn’t be here.
Dr. Rosenthal smiled at her, calm and easy. “Would you like to have a seat?”
Candy plunked down onto one of the comfortable chairs. No couches. Was that standard? Were couches out? She realized she was fidgeting with her keys and shoved them into her pocket, gripping her own hands to stop their movement. “How do we do this?”
“I like to let you take the lead at first,” Dr. Rosenthal said. Her voice really was lovely. Soothing and rich. If she ever decided to give up therapy she’d have a prosperous career as a voice actor. “This is your session. We’ll take things at your pace.”
“You aren’t going to make me dig into my feelings?”
“Do you want to dig into your feelings?”
Candy frowned. “I’ve never done therapy before. My parents don’t put much stock in it. No offense.”
“None taken,” Dr. Rosenthal smiled, utterly unfazed. “Not everyone values it the same way. Many people do feel there’s a stigma attached to therapy. As if by coming in, you’re admitting something is wrong.” Candy cringed internally to hear her own thoughts echoed out loud. “But I like to think of it more as personal maintenance,” Dr. Rosenthal went on. “A tune up, to keep yourself running optimally. I can’t presume to know what brought you here, but we’re here for you. Because you wanted to come. So, what would you like to talk about today?”
Candy swallowed nervously—and her mind went blank. What was she doing here?
“We could start by talking about why you decided to come in?” Dr. Rosenthal prompted.
Why was she here? Because Scott had told her to come? Because she couldn’t seem to even think the words I love you at Ren without having a complete breakdown of her verbal abilities? Because she’d finally managed to wear through his patience and drive him away, destroying the best friendship she’d ever had in the process?
Candy’s throat closed and she pursed her lips tightly, trying to hold back the waterworks she could sense building behind her eyes. God, she missed him. Like a hole had opened up in her chest. He was her best friend. The one person she always knew she could rely on, no matter what. The one person who really knew her—no matter how much she’d tried to keep him at a distance. He’d always seen right through her disguises. And now…
She could feel the sob climbing up her throat and barely managed to get the words out before it burst. “I drove away the love of my life.”
Then she crumpled into ugly, sloppy tears.
Dr. Rosenthal gave her a tissue box—the good kind, with the lotion—and a kind smile. “All right. Let’s start there.”
*
If Ren had expected the guys at EP to treat him differently after his identity became public knowledge, he’d grossly underestimated his coworkers. Alex just shrugged and muttered, “I figured your parents hadn’t named you Pretty Boy.” Elia smiled—but then Elia was always smiling—and asked, “But we can still call you Pretty Boy right?” But both of them were newer. It was Tank he’d been more worried about. And Cross. Men he’d worked with for years. Both of whom found him in the sparring room one day.
“They say you’re famous,” Tank commented, folding massive arms across this chest. “Are we going to be guarding your ass now?”
“God, I hope not. I’ll never survive.” Tank snorted, but Ren’s one stab at a joke didn’t last. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Tank shrugged. ‘Your business. Though I was surprised to have my wife show me a tabloid story about your parents.”
“No more surprised than I was.”
“I always figured if you ended up in the gossip rags it would be because one of our clients developed an unhealthy obsession for your pretty face and started stalking you.”
Ren met the gaze of his friend, seeing no condemnation there. “We’re seriously okay?”
“You’re family. Finding out you’re rich and famous doesn’t change that. Though I feel I should warn you, my girls are going to expect much more extravagant Christmas presents from Uncle Ren now. You have no idea how mercenary six-year-olds can be.”
Ren grinned. “I’ll try to live up to expectations.
“See that you do, Pretty Boy.” Tank grinned and headed toward the cardio machines.
“I was thinking I’d go by Ren from now on,” Ren called after him.
Tank laughed. “Whatever you say, Pretty Boy.”
Cross, who had been hanging back watching the whole exchange, simply gave him a nod as if nothing more needed to be said, though he paused on his way to the weights.
“Candy knew the whole time, didn’t she?”
Ren nodded. “She dug it up before I even had my first interview.”
The left side of Cross’s mouth lifted in a half-grin. “That’s Candy.”
“Yes, it is.”
He’d been avoiding her. Which felt cowardly and childish. And it still wasn’t doing any good.
Max had kept his word and scheduled Ren in jobs that took him away from the EP offices and away from Candy for the first couple weeks back.
He’d tried to get back to normal. But there was no back to normal. Even though few people recognized him from the press coverage around his parents and only the EP clients seemed excited by the news that they were being guarded by the child of two bona fide celebrities.
The story had been eclipsed by another scandal later that week—someone had cheated on someone with someone else’s daughter and suddenly no one cared about Ren anymore. Javi hadn’t given up. He kept trying to get Ren to do interviews, to feed the flames, until Ren finally snapped at him that Javi didn’t want him to go public because Javi wouldn’t like what Ren had to say when he did.
That had finally shut his uncle up. Turned out, all Ren had to do was threaten his image.
He spoke to his uncle primarily through the lawyer for his father’s estate whom he’d informed of the missing foundation funds. His uncle was still trying to wheel and deal his way back into Ren’s good graces—willing to sell his soul for another fifteen miliseconds of fame, let alone fifteen minutes, hungry for every drop of celebrity he could get, which would conveniently give him the money to pay back his debt, but sadly no one was buying. The world had already seen more than enough of Javier Tate.
And Ren couldn’t agree more.
Though he did wonder sometimes what the hell he was going to do on Thanksgiving and Christmas without Javi there as at least nominal family. Work, probably. Work was the only thing that made sense—but it also reminded him constantly of Candy.
She’d been at Elite Protection even longer than he had. His work there was inextricably linked to her. Even when he wasn’t seeing her every day, he was still hearing about her from his coworkers and aware of her, up in her lair, pulling all the strings.
He couldn’t even seem to escape her at home—where the bed reminded him of her and Wicket reminded him of her and even ordering pizza in the freaking kitchen reminded him of her.
He loved working at EP, but it was deeply shitty to break up with someone and still have to see them at work. If there was a Doctors Without Borders thing for b
odyguards, he’d be all over that, but he couldn’t exactly take a foreign-exchange year in Ethiopia to sort his shit out.
He’d had clients offer him full time security jobs before and he’d never been tempted, but now he was starting to wonder if he should. Or if it was time to start thinking about that next phase again.
Who was he if he wasn’t at Elite Protection anymore?
Unfortunately, he didn’t have the first clue. Turned out changing what you wanted in life wasn’t as easy as wishing you could. But he could do this.
He’d become an expert at hanging onto Candy over the years. Now he just had to develop the skill of letting her go.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Do you think your boss is weak for loving his fiancée?”
Candy frowned at Dr. Rosenthal’s question. After three weeks of two sessions a week, she’d gotten used to the therapist’s lines of questioning and had learned to trust that there was always a destination in mind when she asked something that seemed so out of the blue, but the idea that Max was weak for the way he felt about Parv irritated her to hear spoken aloud. “That’s a ridiculous question.”
“And your other married coworkers, in your mind are they weak or somehow lesser for loving their wives?”
“Of course not.”
“And yet you always describe your feelings for Ren as a weakness. A vulnerability.”
Candy’s frown deepened. “Do I?”
“Let’s leave that for a moment.” The doctor tapped a finger on the back of her other hand where they were folded in her lap. “When someone—Ren, for example—suffers a heartbreak or loss and breaks down into tears, do you think less of them for it?”
“You know I don’t.”
“And yet you apologize every time you cry.”
“I do?”
“Do you feel like people are judging you when you show your emotions?”
Candy snorted. “If you grew up with my mother, you would too.”
Dr. Rosenthal smiled gently. “I’m not arguing with that. I only mean to point out that you judge yourself for behavior that you readily accept in others. Showing love. Showing pain. Those human feelings. You see them as weaknesses in yourself, but strength in others. Why the double standard? You’ve made a point of moving across the country to live your life by your own rules, but is it possible you brought your idea of your mother’s rules for yourself along with you?”
When Candy stared, incapable of answering, Dr. Rosenthal smiled again. “Just something to think about.”
*
“I’ve been thinking about what you said last time. About my double standard. How I judge myself for being in love with him. But it isn’t feeling love I seem to have a problem with. It’s talking about it. I choke every time.”
“What are you afraid will happen if you tell him how you feel?”
Give him an inch, he’ll take a mile. Candy frowned, but she’d learned to be honest about her instinctive answers. “I guess I’m afraid he’ll want more. He’ll want everything.”
Dr. Rosenthal lifted a brow. “And what exactly is ‘everything?’”
The life she’d written about in the emails. “Marriage. Kids. The picket fence.”
“Has he told you he wants those things?”
“Not in so many words.”
“But he’s been clear about what he wants in a life with you.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ever tell him what you want instead?”
Candy frowned. “I don’t know what I want.”
“Well, then.” Dr. Rosenthal smiled her breakthrough smile. “That’s the first thing to figure out.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” How did anyone figure out what they wanted out of life? Wasn’t everyone just adapting to what life had dealt them?
“We’re almost out of time, but I have some homework for you. Before your next session, I’d like you to write down five things you would want if you didn’t have to be afraid of not getting them or losing them. Five things you would want if you knew you could have them, no strings attached.”
“Five things?”
“Any five things you want.”
It sounded so easy. But then, if Ren had taught her anything it was that the things that sounded the easiest never were.
Five things.
The problem was, she could only think of one. And it was something she was afraid she was never going to have again.
So damned scared.
Candy made her way out of Dr. Rosenthal’s office.
How long had she been scared to want things? Fifteen years? Wasn’t that long enough to have her life be held hostage by fear? But she didn’t know how to get free of that feeling on her own. She needed Dr. Rosenthal as her hostage negotiator. And she was impatient for it to happen already. Every day she made progress, but every day Ren slipped a little farther away.
*
“It’s good to see you again, Ren. I truly regretted the way things ended between us.”
“So did I.” Ren folded his hands around his coffee cup and smiled at the woman seated across the tiny, precarious table. “I definitely could have handled things better.”
The woman he’d once hoped could turn out to be his soul mate gave him a wry smile. “You weren’t the only one. Storming out of your house and leaving my favorite skillet behind? Very poor planning.” Jessica gave a short, self-deprecating laugh.
“I’ve been meaning to call you about returning it,” he said with a grin to match hers.
“I’m lucky you didn’t throw it in the nearest dumpster after my grand exit.” Jessica sipped her iced tea and gave him a sympathetic look. “I saw the article about your family. I take it that was the big secret she was keeping?”
He grimaced. “I should have told you—”
“No, I understand why you didn’t. That has to be a lot to carry around with you. Never knowing if people are going to change toward you because of who your parents were. I was just so jealous of her. I hated that she had a hold on you that I didn’t.” Another lingering sip of her tea. “How did the wedding go?”
He arched a brow. “How do you think?”
“That good, huh?” she said wryly. “I take it you didn’t decide to make it a double wedding.”
He cringed. “Jess…”
His phone ringing cut him off. He flipped it over where it lay on the table—and both of them saw Candy’s name and photo bright across the screen. She hadn’t called him since he told her they weren’t friends anymore. If it had been a work emergency, she would have used the office line. This wasn’t Elite Protection calling, it was Candy—
“Go ahead.”
He jolted, realizing Jessica had been watching him stare at his phone. “No.” He tapped ignore and flipped it back over. “It’s nothing.”
“Candy’s been a lot of things to you, but she was never nothing.”
He grimaced. “You knew from the beginning, didn’t you?”
“That you were in love with her? I had my suspicions. But I really wanted to be wrong. I liked you a lot, Ren. Maybe even loved you a little bit. Or at least I loved the idea of what we could have been to each other.”
“Past tense?”
Jessica smiled gently. “I think I’m done playing the girlfriend for someone who’s in love with someone else.”
“I’m not in love with her anymore.”
Her smile widened, not unkindly. “That’s what you said last time. And I know you want to mean it, but I saw your face just now. You’re still in it. Even if you don’t want to be. And I think I want to be with someone who agonizes over ignoring my calls. I could use a little more undeniable passion in my life. And I don’t think I’m going to get that if I’m playing pretend with you.”
“I’m not sure having someone who agonizes over ignoring your calls is a good thing.”
“Maybe not. But love makes everyone a little crazy, right? It’s science.”
He lifted his coffee. “To science.
Fuck that noise.”
Jessica laughed, lifting her own glass. “To science.”
*
After fifteen more minutes of comfortable conversation, they arranged a time for Jessica to pick up her favorite skillet and she drove away—leaving him with a voicemail burning a hole in his pocket.
It was his day off. He could get on his bike and go for a drive. Pretend he hadn’t heard his phone ring. Pretend it wasn’t driving him crazy wondering what Candy had said in her message. She hadn’t left messages before.
Did he want to know what she had to say? Did he want to open that particular wound again right when it was starting to close?
He pulled his phone out of his pocket to turn it off, but instead found himself queueing up the voicemail. His thumb hovered for a moment between deleting it unheard and listening to it, but as reluctant as he was to do so, the end result was inevitable.
He lifted the phone to his ear.
And thirty seconds later he was swearing and throwing his leg over his bike.
She was alone at EP and Hank the fucking Hammer was back. He wove through traffic at reckless speeds, headed into the heart of Beverly Hills. He didn’t want to feel this. The worry. The panic. He should have called her back, checked on her before his hands were occupied by keeping the bike on the road. It was probably nothing. She was probably fine. Hank had never done anything to harm her in the past. But all he could think as he drove was what if? What if he hadn’t picked up that voicemail? What if, the one time it counted, he wasn’t there when she needed him?
She was the love of his freaking life. Even if she never wanted to say the L word. Even if they never got married or had the traditional life together. Even if he never had what his parents had. If he had her for even one day—even on her terms—that was better than a lifetime without her.