With her mouth once again pressed chastely to mine, I caught the shit eating grin on Trip’s face as he picked up Bruce into his arms and grabbed Kendall’s hand as they started to walk away from the plane. I’d hated that my wife had been kept away from me for an extra few hours, while he’d stopped in Florida to pick them both up, but as I looked at my friend and his small family unit, I finally understood just how much they meant to him.
Maybe you’re not dead inside after all.
Without saying a word to her or even thinking about what I was doing, I inhaled her again like a man on death row trying to store away the very scent of life itself and with my angel now in my arms where she belonged, I walked us as one back to the car.
* * *
Bee
‘I must say, Barbara… the Mediterranean air suits you. You look so well,’ Mrs. Davison commented.
I cast my eyes around the large office the three of us were confined in. The decoration was light in colour and the furniture was wooden, but a soft silver in colour. Subsequently, the atmosphere of the well thought out space was light and relaxing. However, with it being my first visit to her office, I was struggling. I knew just how much was riding on my therapy sessions with her working. In order for me to share Nico’s life with him, I realised how much I needed to understand my own compulsions in order to control them.
Feeling my hands starting to wring together, I decided to curb my own fidgeting by crossing my right leg over my left as I tried hard to relax.
Nico placed his hand onto my lap and gently took hold of one of my hands in his own. I looked up from my lap and turned my head sideways to look at him.
‘We’ve got this, angel,’ he whispered to me and squeezed my hand at the same time. I stared deep into his eyes, absorbing the strength he was willing to offer me and managed to give him a small smile in return.
‘Can I offer either of you a water?’ Mrs. Davison interrupted our silence.
‘Yes please.’
‘Not for me thanks,’ Nico replied.
A cold, purple glass was handed to me as she walked around the side of my chair and took her place in front of us both. Without picking anything up to refer to, she started speaking and I couldn’t believe how brilliant either her memory was or how in tune she felt with her patients.
‘How is Crete?’
‘Wonderful,’ I replied immediately feeling a smile stretch over my face.
‘And I can see married life agrees with you both.’
‘It does,’ Nico put in, and raising my hand to his mouth he kissed the back of it.
‘And the photography, Barbara?’
‘I’m really enjoying it. I love taking the pictures and… well it sounds silly, but giving birth to those beautiful pictures in my dark room is compelling.’
‘That’s not at all silly.’ She smiled over to me. ‘It’s wonderful to see you looking so well and talking about something with so much passion. You see, most addicts who want to recover, just need the situation they’re in to change. Yours has definitely done that, Barbara and I am so very optimistic about your future.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now that’s the pleasantries over with … Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. How have you been feeling about coming back here today?’
‘Nervous, anxious… you know.’
‘I do, but I like to hear it in your words.’ She smiled back at me.
‘Well, here… this place… it’s where I think the catalyst of all my troubles is situated,’ I offered.
‘I agree, Barbara, but it is also where you met your husband.’ She held her hands out in front of her, with her palms facing upwards as she gesticulated the balance that life needed.
‘Yes,’ I agreed and although I didn’t feel thirsty, I placed the glass to my lips to take a sip of the cool water inside.
‘Coming back here today meant you were reunited earlier than normal, is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘And surely that was good?’ I watched her ask the question and glance at our entwined hands at the same time.
‘I was looking forward to that part.’
‘Then that is a huge positive, because life is about balance,’ she answered and smiling at us both she leant back further into her black, ergonomic leather seat.
‘Okay, so far in our previous meetings we have covered how you have used gambling as a crutch.’
I nodded at her.
‘The breakdown of your parents’ marriage and the forced distance between you and Brody left you unsure of who you were… you were stumbling in life and feeling almost deserted by the decisions they made. Do you agree with me, Barbara?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then losing your mom when you felt like she chose her addictions over staying with you, left you feeling out of control.’
‘Exactly that,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Everyone made their choices, even my brother Brody when he refused to leave England and stayed with our dad. But as the youngest child, I was just bundled along with their decisions… I hated it… and for a time I hated all of them.’
‘Go on,’ she gently encouraged.
Tears were falling silently down my cheeks as I recalled hitting the back window of the car my mom drove us away in. I’d screamed and shouted at Brody to stop her and to save me. I could see him in my mind’s eye standing there, holding my dad’s hand as neither of them moved to stop the car. Of course, I understood now that as a small boy who wasn’t much older than I was, he couldn’t do anything to help, but we had pinkie sworn to always be together, and he had let me go. My dad had tried everything to get her to stay, but once she had started the engine, resigned to the inevitable, his feet had remained firmly fixed to the spot. He’d watched with his eyes focussed on me the whole time, as we had driven away from the house that we had all lived in. I’d watched in return from that small back window as pain overtook his features and saw the very second his heart had broken in two. The pain of loss inside me was so acute that I could still feel it nearly thirty years on, as if it had happened only yesterday. I continued by revealing that occasionally now, when I shared a memory with Nico, I would sometimes find myself smiling at a happy recollection instead of feeling only the pain connected to it.
‘That’s amazing… It’s a great step forward.’ She took a sharp inhale of breath and I knew she wanted to force me forward once again. ‘Then after your mom passed you lived with your aunty?’
‘Yes… I wanted to go back to my dad… but by then he had cancer and couldn’t look after Brody as well as me.’
‘So, once again you felt you had no control.’
‘Mmm hmm,’ I offered.
‘Then your dad died.’
Unsure of why we were having to go over what we had already aired before, I nodded at her, unable to answer her with actual words at first. ‘I didn’t even get to see him before he passed… Once again, a decision that was made for me with my best interests in mind, obviously.’ I couldn’t help the air of sarcasm that laced through my tone.
‘Barbara, you are so much stronger than you realise. You have lived through the loss of so much and yet here you are… living and taking control of your life.’
‘Me?’ I questioned.
‘Yes… you.’
I could feel the stroke of Nico’s thumb on the back of my hand, as he let me know he was right there with me.
‘I can hear what you’re telling me, Mrs. Davison, but I’m not sure how you’ve come to that conclusion… I chose addiction, even after what I’d seen with my mom… I chose to gamble.’
‘You did. I believe originally when you started to gamble that it gave you the element of control in your life that you’d been searching for.’
I slumped back in the chair I was sitting on and began to think. The astute woman wasn’t far from the truth. The cold calculated way I could, in the beginning, count on the roll of the dice and each turn of the cards in front of me, was calming. I had a mathematica
l brain and I loved the control I had over whatever table I sat down at. Initially, I had respect from the others there. I could walk away when it wasn’t going well, or stay and gamble some more in a place where people respected and listened to the decisions I made. Until it started to go wrong and the compulsion to try to control it once again meant I could no longer trust my own decisions. Because the decisions I was making were borne from desperation and not from clear thinking. Then it dawned on me that my parents had been in the same position as me. Making decisions that they were forced to make and then struggling with the fall-out.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘I think I can understand what you’re saying.’
‘But?’ she gently questioned, smiling over at me.
‘So, how do I control it now?’
‘You control it by trying to forgive the people in your life who hurt you and by understanding what compels you towards using it as your crutch. You control it by changing your situation, and you’ve most certainly done that.’ She smiled at me and looked over at Nico.
‘I’ve had rehab before, I’m not sure they used the same method as you, but…’ I hesitated.
‘I know, we’ve spoken about it previously… but this time is different. This time you want to have a different life. You are now in control of your own future and it’s a future that has love in it and that is the very best sort of future.’
I looked down at my lap to watch Nico’s thumb as it caressed my hand. Not once had he faltered in offering me the support I needed even when she’d mentioned the L word.
‘Now, our time is up. I look forward to seeing you both in two weeks’ time, and I think it should be back here in Vegas again. Because as much as I have loved visiting Crete this is where your ghosts are, and they need to be exorcised.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed.
‘I want to leave you both with a couple of things if I may?’
I could see Nico nodding out of the corner of my eye and comprehended that she was actually in some way treating us both and not just my addictions.
‘Firstly, at some point over the next couple of days, I want you to walk through one of Nico’s casinos with your hand in his and out of ten measure the compulsion you think you still have to gamble, against how it used to completely dominate your life.’ She looked over the top of her glasses at me and smiled as my mouth fell open in horror. ‘And secondly, I want you both to understand and to recognise that we are in charge of our own lives. We are not our parents because although we may look like them, we are not created in their exact image. As children and with our dependency on the adults around us, we are made to believe certain things about who we are. But once we gain our independence, only then do we actually become who we were meant to be. There are other ways forward and we carve out those other paths by fighting for what we really want… Thank you both for coming. I look forward to seeing you in two weeks’ time.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Bee
The limo was silent as we swept through the busy streets of Vegas. It was as though we were both caught up inside our own heads as we digested everything Mrs. Davison had just told us. But not once had our connection been severed. I looked down to the cream leather seat to see my small hand inside Nico’s much larger one and even now his thumb was still gently caressing my hand as he offered me reassurance.
‘Do you think I should get this over with and walk through the casino now?’
His head turned to face me. He lifted his other hand up and with his fingers now touching the side of my face to direct my eyes to his, he answered. ‘I think that there’s no time like the present to get things aired and then we can hopefully move on.’
‘Move on?’ I questioned.
I watched him blink slowly as if he was trying to clear something from his mind, but he couldn’t voice what it was. So, helping him out once again, as I had on the day of our wedding when he’d struggled, I spoke.
‘Yes, let’s do it now and then as you say we can move on,’ I agreed.
Almost on automatic pilot he listened to me, then reached over to the side of him and pressed one of the controls on the aluminium panel next to his seat. The privacy glass came down and the driver and Franco, who was also sitting up front, were revealed to us.
‘Pull up at the front of the casino,’ he directed.
I watched as Franco began to talk into the small microphone he always wore and then they both disappeared from view as the glass raised again.
Nico looked out of the window and then straight back at me.
‘We’ll be there in under a minute… are you sure about this?’ he questioned.
I nodded back at him resolutely, ‘Yes, it needs to be done.’
He pursed his lips and after taking in the expression on my face, he nodded back.
It suddenly felt like the car’s air conditioning temperature was turned down way too low. As awareness and panic began to charge through me, my skin was suddenly covered in goose bumps. Involuntarily, I shivered and felt Nico strengthen his grip on my hand in reaction.
‘If we can do this, Bee, together I believe we can conquer anything.’
‘I’ll never forget how you’ve taken every step with me, thank you,’ I whispered over to him.
His other hand cupped my face and his lips came down gently onto mine. Every single stimuli in the whole of my body ignited at the kiss he offered me, but I recognised that the kiss we were sharing was about so much more than our sexual chemistry. In that brief possession of his flesh on mine, he was sharing everything he was with me and I returned it with equal fervour.
The car slowed and eventually came to a standstill. The door was opened by security, and Nico helped me to climb out of the car. Then without so much as a glance in my direction, he began to lead me into the bright lights of the casino. Swallowing down my fears and apprehension, I walked closer to him and held onto his forearm with my other hand as I leant further into him for reassurance and guidance.
Nico’s main casino covered the whole of the ground floor of one of his family’s hotels and I knew it would take us a while to walk from one side to the other. Initially, I looked down to the floor, unable to tear my eyes away from the wooden walkway to look at the various tables and machines we were passing, but feeling the strength surging through his body and into mine, I slowly began to lift up my head.
The place was bright, loud and filled as ever with people from all walks of life. I watched a croupier deal blackjack, and on another table, I saw the cubes of resin being thrown quickly to the other end. The sound of them hitting the side and falling to the baize ricocheted around my head. Handles on the slot machines were being pulled everywhere around me. For anyone not facing the demons I was, I’m sure they would be able to block out most of the sounds, but as someone battling the addiction of gambling, I heard every single one of them.
I could feel myself beginning to tremble the further we walked, and it seemed Nico could too. He changed his hold on me, releasing my hand he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me in tightly to his side. I inhaled his fresh ocean smelling cologne and allowed my mind to wander back to Crete, to the sound of the waves and the click of the shutters on my cameras. Suddenly, I comprehended that we were still making our way through his casino, but I could no longer hear the sounds of the gambling around me.
After about ten minutes, we reached the centre and at the juncture where several paths crossed Nico stopped, turned around to face me and pulled me tightly into his arms. He stared down at me with eyes so full of mixed emotions, for a second my heart stopped beating as I waited for him to find the words he wanted to say.
‘Angel,’ he released on a deep, breathy exhale. ‘Have I told you how proud I am to be your husband?’
I could feel dozens of people staring at us and understood what a sight we must have looked. Nico in his suit, me looking like I’d just stepped away from a swimming pool and both of us surrounded by several good-looking men in s
uits.
I shook my head at him in answer.
‘Well, I am,’ he replied.
‘Thank you.’ I peered up at him through my fringe, feeling just a little bit shy at his show of affection in public, but loving it at the same time.
‘Can you accept that this…’ he let go of me with one hand and waved it around us both as he gesticulated the casino we were stood in, ‘this will always be part of me?’ he finished.
‘We’re doing this together aren’t we, Nico?’ He nodded back at me. ‘So, yes, I can,’ I replied.
‘Buona.’ His Italian accent had crept back in with his choice of words. ‘Then you accept me for what I am?’
‘I do. I mean, have you taken a good look at yourself recently?... It’s hardly a hardship,’ I joked with him, trying to lift the fraught moment.
The look on his face was so serious, I didn’t think I’d ever seen his jaw set so square and ridged. When he made no reply, I tried again.
‘Nico, I accept you, warts and all, like you’ve accepted me.’ I tried again to convince him.
His hold on me strengthened and for a minute his eyes left mine as he tipped his head back and stared at the ornate ceiling above us. I could feel he was bracing himself, but for what I had no idea.
‘Nico, you’re beginning to scare me.’
His head angled forward and his eyes found mine. ‘Unfortunately, my angel, I need to…’
‘You need to… you need to what?’ I was shaking my head at him.
‘When my mamma died, Cade and I promised each other…’ He inhaled deeply in order to carry on. Staring up and into his eyes I saw the pain beginning to fill them and prepared myself. I had no idea what was coming next, but knew deep inside that I would accept anything, as long as he wasn’t leaving me. ‘We promised that there would be no more secrets in our family... you have to understand, secrets are dangerous things especially in an una famiglia, like mine.’
Brash Boss Page 19