I nodded and followed him to his truck, waving at Sean as we passed. When we got back to my place, Logan shifted into park and held out his hand.
“Give me your keys. I’ll bring your truck back here.”
I gave them to him and shuffled inside, feeling like my whole body was dragging on the ground. I collapsed into bed and stared at the wall, hating that I was fucking feeling sorry for myself.
CHAPTER SIX
Lola
“LOLA.” I TURNED to see Cap walking up to me, a weird expression on his face. He stopped in front of me and rubbed the back of his neck.
“What’s going on?”
“Shit. I don’t know how to say this.”
“What? Are you firing me?”
“No,” he jerked back in surprise. “I need a favor.”
“Sure. What do you need?” I was relieved that he needed a favor and wasn’t here to tear me to shreds over fuck knows what.
“Ryan had a bit of a breakdown on the side of the road while giving James a driving lesson. He’s pretty fucked up right now. James let it slip the other night that you two were…”
“Fucking?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and looked away from me like he was embarrassed. “I think he needs someone right now and he said that you make him happy. I was wondering if you could just go check on him?”
I blinked in surprise. “Cap, are you asking me to go fuck your friend?”
His face turned bright red and he shook his head quickly. “No. No, I would never ask you to prostitute yourself out or do anything that-”
“Cap, shut up. I’m fucking with you. I’ll head over there now.”
“Thanks,” he murmured as he walked away.
Well, that was only slightly awkward. I gathered my shit and headed for my truck. I wasn’t sure what had happened with Ryan, but I knew that after the way he helped me the other night, there was no way I would walk away when he needed someone.
When I pulled up to his house, I realized that I hadn’t bothered to call first and let him know I was coming over. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I twisted the knob and walked in when I found it unlocked.
“Hello? Ryan?”
He didn’t answer, so I started wandering around. He had a nice house. I hadn’t really taken it in the other night. I was too wrapped up in my own shit and then the awkwardness of meeting Cassie’s parents. When I found his bedroom, I saw him asleep on the bed. Walking over, I kicked off my shoes and gently climbed onto the bed, not wanting to wake him up. He still had on his shoes and his clothes, like he had just walked in and plopped down on the bed. I started to pull off his shoes and stopped when he jerked away from me.
“Lola? What are you doing here?” he asked, sitting up groggily. I pulled his feet back to me and finished taking off his shoes.
“Sebastian told me what happened. I wanted to come check on you.”
“Fuck.” He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I’m not a fucking charity case.”
“I didn’t think you were. Was I when you pulled me out of the bar the other night?”
“You know you weren’t.”
I climbed over to him and slipped beneath the covers, pulling his arm behind me and snuggling into his chest. “So, what happened?”
He blew out a breath and shifted on the bed to get more comfortable. “I was taking James driving. He’s in driver’s ed and I’ve been putting off taking him out. Cal told me the other day to get my head out of my ass and take him out. It was fine. I mean, I was scared shitless with him driving, but he was doing okay. I guess I didn’t realize what road we were on until we were coming up on the intersection. I just flipped out. I started yelling at him to pull the truck over. It was all downhill from there.”
“Where’s James now?”
“Sebastian took him. I was so lost in my head that James called Logan. He was worried I was having a heart attack.” He let out a self-deprecating laugh as he shook his head.
“You know, it hits me like that sometimes too. You can’t prevent when that happens.”
“I just hate that it happened in front of my kid. I haven’t lost it like that in years.”
“Tell me about her,” I whispered. I wanted to know what she was like. He obviously loved this woman very much if he was still so broken up over her all these years later.
“I chased her for two years. She was just this amazing woman and from the moment I met her, I knew that she was the one. I didn’t even know she had a kid until two years after I’d been taking her out. We never dated in all that time, but I could get her to come out with me every now and again.”
“Why didn’t she tell you about James?”
“She really didn’t think I would be interested when I found out she had a kid. I came around one day and she was freaking out. His biological dad was back and wanting custody. I had the brilliant idea that we run off and get married.”
I shifted so that I could see his face. He had a big grin that was lighting up the room. “Did she agree?”
“Reluctantly. I wanted to help her out and I saw that as my chance to keep her.” He laughed again and ran a hand over his face. “Shit, when I realized what I had done, I was a mess. I was like holy shit. I just married someone and now I have a kid. It was a total mind fuck and it took awhile for us to find our rhythm.”
“But you did.”
“Yeah. And James, man, I hit it off with him almost right away. We had a little trouble in the beginning. I kept calling him the wrong name because I couldn’t believe what I had just done. We started reading together one night and it’s been our thing ever since.”
“Was it hard? Going from being single to having a family?”
“At first, but I instantly fell in love with both of them. I think I had already been in love with Cassie. There was something about James, though. That kid instantly won me over. He didn’t take any shit from me and I just kind of realized that I was responsible for him. I didn’t want to let him down.”
“How did he deal with his mom’s death?”
“A hell of a lot better than me,” he said grimly. I almost regretted going down that road when he had just been so light, but I wanted to know. I wanted him to tell me what he went through. “He was just a kid and the most important thing to him was knowing that I would still be there for him. I was just a wreck. I insisted on going to see her in the morgue. I had to see her for myself. It was probably a fucking stupid thing to do because that’s what haunts me most nights, the image of her there on that table. But I just knew that I would always question if she was really dead if I didn’t see her for myself. How fucking stupid is that?”
“Not at all. I get it. It’s not real until you see it.”
His fingers started running up and down my arm, almost like he was trying to soothe me. I was the one that was supposed to be comforting him, though.
“The hard part about it, the thing that just fucking killed me, was how sudden it was. You always think you’re going to have a chance to say goodbye to someone. That you’ll get to tell them one last time how much they mean to you. That morning was just like any other. You know, she almost stayed home that day. We were supposed to renew our vows in another two weeks and we were fucking like crazy. We just couldn’t get enough of each other. She had a meeting that she couldn’t reschedule before the wedding. So, I got James and took him to school. I remember she told me she loved me before she left for work, and that was the last time I saw her. I went to work and it was just before lunch when Sean came in and told me that she had been killed.”
His voice choked and I rested my hand on his chest, hoping that it brought him some comfort.
“She was just gone,” he whispered. “Everything we had planned, it was gone just like that. We only had a year together.”
“At least you got that time with her. You were meant to be with her, even if it was only for a little while. You have James and he’s a great kid.”
“I know.” He was quie
t for a moment, staring up at the ceiling as his hand moved up and down my arm. “Have you ever met Drew?”
“I think at Sebastian’s wedding. Big guy, right?”
“Yeah. His wife died of cancer years ago. I sometimes stop and wonder what would be worse. I feel lost because I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, but Drew watched his wife slowly deteriorate until she passed away. Maybe this was a blessing. The coroner said that she was probably dead before she even knew what happened, but I always wonder what her final thoughts were. Did she see the truck coming? Did she know that she was about to die? Were her last thoughts of James and me? I think most of all, I just want to know for sure that she wasn’t alive for minutes after the wreck before she died. I can’t stand the thought that she knew she was going to die and she was all alone.”
“I know those questions bother you, but you’ll never get your answers, Ryan. Torturing yourself isn’t going to change the fact that she’s gone.”
“I know. I just can’t seem to stop thinking about those things. I don’t know how to let her go. You know, it took a year for me to finally pack up her stuff, and I couldn’t even do it. I had my friends’ wives come take care of it.”
“Did it help to have her stuff gone?”
“Not really. I used to spray her perfume in here just so that I felt like she was still here. The book she was reading is still sitting on the table by her favorite chair.”
“That’s not a bad thing. James knows that you still think about her. Maybe that’s what helps him.”
“I don’t know. He’s just so much more adjusted than I am.”
“He’s just a kid. I’m sure he misses his mom, but he has you.”
We laid there in silence for what felt like hours until the sun finally set in the sky. I got up and made us some dinner and we ate in the living room before heading back to his bedroom. He didn’t try to have sex with me that night and I didn’t expect it. He was too strung out over what had happened. I slept snuggled up to him all night, just holding him and hoping that I was doing something to help him.
✯✯✯✯✯
Seeing Ryan all broken up yesterday was enough to spur me into action. I needed to deal with my own shit so that I wasn’t still fighting my demons in another ten years. Sebastian gave me the number for the psychiatrist that he kept on speed dial for the company. He was able to fit me in right away today and I took the appointment, ready to finally move on.
“Sebastian sent over your file,” Dr. Penwarden said. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here today?”
“You read about the incident. I’m here to work past that finally.”
“Is that what you like to think of it as? The incident?”
“I’m not sure what else I would call it,” I said, trying not to let my emotions take over.
His eyebrows lifted and he nodded slightly. “I would think it would be more significant to you than that.”
“What I call it doesn’t change what happened. Why does it matter if I refer to it as the incident?”
“You’re downplaying what happened so that you don’t have to deal with it. The incident sounds a lot less terrifying than almost being scalped.”
“That’s not what the problem is,” I said hastily.
“Then why don’t you tell me what the problem is?”
I hesitated, not really wanting to go into this anymore. Why had I agreed to therapy? I didn’t need it. I was working through my issues.
“If you’re not willing to talk about it, you’re not going to move past it. Keeping it all inside isn’t going to help.”
I knew he was right. This was why I was here. “I don’t like to think about it if I don’t have to. I don’t want to feel anything about that day. I hate that I walk around with a scar on my forehead, but at the same time, it’s a reminder to me.”
“A reminder of what?”
“To not make the same mistakes. To be stronger than I was.”
“Do you blame yourself for what happened?” he asked.
“In a way, yes. I was trained and I didn’t have the strength of mind to beat him.”
“But you weren’t the only one injured on your team, right?”
“No, but it was different. Derek was shot trying to defend our client. You can’t stop a bullet. And Hunter was smashed in the head with a rock. He didn’t even see it coming.”
Dr. Penwarden nodded. “I see. So, you think that Derek never thought that if he had been faster, he wouldn’t have been shot and could have saved your client? Or Hunter didn’t beat himself up for not hearing the man sneak up on him?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was sure that they had thought that many times.
“It’s sometimes easier to blame ourselves than to look at a situation and say there’s nothing I could have done.”
“But there was something I could have done. I was trained and I froze. I could have fought back a half a dozen times and I was so…terrified.”
Dr. Penwarden set down his paper and pen on the table and leaned forward. “Did you ever know anyone during your military days that froze when they were in battle?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you think that happened to them?”
“It was war,” I said dumbly.
“It was, but yours was just a different kind of war. Extreme circumstances can make the best of any warriors freeze up. Your teammates had already been taken out. A woman’s life was at stake and you were her last remaining hope. That’s a lot of pressure for anyone, and sometimes our brains can’t work through all that under all the stress.”
“But, then how can I be sure that it won’t happen again?”
“You can’t. Life doesn’t work like that. All you can do is your best under the circumstances.”
“That’s not very reassuring for my teammates.”
“Nothing in life ever works out the way we want.”
“What about the nightmares? How do I stop those?”
“Ask yourself, what is it that wakes you up at night?”
“Reliving that moment. Every time I dream, it’s about that night and what happened.”
“And what is the overwhelming feeling that comes with that dream?”
“Fear,” I said, confused by the question. “Isn’t that what a nightmare usually is?”
“Think back to your dreams, what are you afraid of in the dream?”
“I’m afraid of what’s happening to me. I’m so paralyzed by fear that I can’t move. It’s like it’s happening to me all over again.”
“So, take back that control that you lost.”
“Dr. Penwarden, can we just cut to the chase here? I’m not very good at reading other people’s minds about psychobabble. Just lay it out for me.”
He smiled and sat back in his chair. “What you fear is fear itself. Let me ask you this, have you made any mistakes on the job since that night?”
“One,” I said, looking down at my hands. “Someone pulled a knife on me and I was suddenly back there in the cabin that night.”
“So, you’ve had no problem doing your job except the one time that you were faced with something that was very similar to what happened that night.”
“Okay?”
“Sure, you’re having nightmares because what happened was horrible, but the root cause of your dreams is the fear that you won’t be able to defend yourself again in a similar situation.”
“My teammate has been working with me, attacking me with a knife,” I said hesitantly.
“And, how did that go?”
“The first time I completely lost it. Then, we took it too far and I had a breakdown or something. We stay away from that trigger and stick with the knife. Since then, I’ve been getting better at breaking the trance I fall into. But I’m still a mess afterwards.”
“That’s good,” he smiled. “Keep working on that. You need to work through your control issues. You need to work through the fact that you may be put in similar situations that are difficul
t to control. Once you feel like you’ve gained back your confidence, you’ll start to heal.”
“That’s it?” I asked suspiciously.
“Well, it’s a lot of work and it’s definitely a kind of therapy, but it’s doable. You just have to believe in yourself again. And if you feel that you need to come talk through something, my door is always open.”
✯✯✯✯✯
“Come on, Lola. You can do this,” Knight shouted at me.
Sweat was pouring down my face and my heart was racing out of control. I could do this. I could get past this. I gripped onto his wrist holding the knife and shoved his arm away as I twisted out from under his arm, wrenching the knife away from him in the process.
I was panting hard and my whole body was shaking, but I had done it again. I had fought my demons and come out on the other side. Hunter raced over to me and swooped me up in his arms, wrapping me in a tight bear hug. For the first time, I truly let myself feel what had happened. Not the fear and the pain, but the relief that I was going to get past this. I was going to come out on top. My breath seized in my chest as I broke down in Hunter’s arms. I was crying uncontrollably and I could feel Hunter stiffen and pull away.
“Hey, you did it. Why are you crying?”
“I did it,” I cried. “I…” My cries interrupted my thoughts and Hunter pulled me tight to him again.
“It’s okay, Lola. We all knew you could do it,” he whispered. I stayed in the comfort of Hunter’s arms for another few minutes as my body came down from the rush. When I pulled back, everyone was in the room, the entire Reed Security company at my back, looking at me like I had just overcome some incredible feat. And I had. Today, I didn’t freeze. Today, I won against my demons.
“So, are you ready to get back in the field?” Cap asked.
I nodded, still feeling the lump in my throat.
“Good. I have a job for the three of you. The rest of the teams want a break. That is, unless you want to continue with security installs?”
“Hell no!” Hunter shouted. “She’s ready. We’re ready. Give us the job and we’ll be there by the end of the day.”
Lola: A Reed Security Romance (Reed Security Series Book 8) Page 9