“Alright, now that you’ve voiced those fears, we can start to work through those in each session. In the meantime, I want you to continue doing your homework every night, only this week, I want you to try laying in bed together.”
“No,” Florrie immediately said. “I’m sorry, but there is no way I’m ready to get in a bed with him.”
“Then lay down on the couch,” Dr. Sunshine said calmly. “Remember, this isn’t supposed to be sexual in any way. This is about finding comfort in each other. Now, you’ve already done the hardest part, which is holding each other again. Just think of this as another step toward your ultimate goal.”
I was ready to take on this next step, but as I looked over at Florrie, I knew that she would fight me every step of the way.
✯✯✯✯✯
I scrubbed a hand over my eyes as I yawned wide. The coffee was slowly trickling into the pot, not nearly fast enough for me this morning. I hadn’t slept for shit for the past two weeks. Every night, I held Florrie in my arms, told her all the things that I loved about her, and every night I was able to extend the length of time I held her. Sometimes it was just a few seconds, but last night, I had held her in my arms for a whole fucking ten minutes. She hadn’t tried to pull away and seemed to even be relaxing into my arms. It was the best and worst night of my life, because at the end, I had to leave her and go sleep in my own fucking bed. Except, I was hard and I needed her, but that wasn’t going to happen, not if we were just doing our exercises for therapy. I had to set the stage. I knew if I could just get her back in my arms, the rest would fall back into place.
The problem was, she didn’t trust me. I had taken what was special between us and thrown it all away, and I wasn’t sure that she would ever trust me not to do it again. But I had to try. I would do whatever it took to get her back in my arms.
She walked into the kitchen, stopping in the doorway when she saw me standing next to the counter in only my pajama bottoms. Yeah, I would use whatever I could to draw her attention. Her eyes slowly trailed up and down my body, and I waited for the pursing of her lips, but it didn’t come this time. Well, not as quickly anyway. That had to be a start.
I pulled a cup down from the cabinet and poured her a cup of coffee, handing it over to her. My fingers brushed against hers, but there was no shiver of anticipation. Damn. I walked over to the table and pulled out a chair for her, waiting for her to take a seat. She rolled her eyes at me, knowing that I was pulling out all the stops to get her to acknowledge my efforts in some way. Yeah, I knew that pulling out her chair wouldn’t repair our relationship, but it had to help, right? And when she sat down, I leaned down to kiss her cheek, lingering just slightly, then brushed my hand across her shoulders.
I sat down across from her and stared her down, determined to get her to actually talk to me today. “I was thinking we could go somewhere today.”
“I have to train,” she said abruptly.
“No, you don’t. Cap has us off work. The whole point is that we get our shit straightened out so that we can get back to work. That’s not going to happen if you keep running off to train every day and avoid me.”
“Fine, what do you suggest we do?”
“We could go for a walk.”
“Great,” she said sarcastically. “We can walk in awkward silence together.”
“Or, you could try talking to me.”
I knew she was reluctant to go with me, but she stood, drained her coffee and jerked her head for the door.
“Get dressed.”
I was back downstairs minutes later, tugging on my shoes and ready to hit the trails. There were plenty of places to go on a walk on the property that would give us some privacy. Once we were out of sight of any prying eyes, I slipped my hand around hers. She tried to pull away, but I held tight until she finally gave in.
“So, what do you want to talk about? Should we talk about how cold it is or the snow storm that we’re expecting?”
“It is getting cold, but that’s not really what I want to talk about. I was thinking we could talk about Reid.”
She stopped walking and jerked her hand out of mine. “I don’t want to talk about Reid.”
“I talked to the Fullers,” I continued, hoping I could draw her in a little. “I told them how much you missed Reid.”
She crossed her arms over her chest protectively and looked away. I knew she was hurting, hearing all this. I knew she didn’t want to talk about Reid, but I had a little surprise for her, and it would have been better if I thought I had any chance of getting her on a plane without a full out fight.
“Yeah, I’m sure they really cared.”
“They did.” She looked at me hesitantly, but I saw the hope in her eyes. “Believe it or not, Florrie, they only want what’s best for Reid. They said that Reid is adjusting well, but he misses us. They said that we could go out for a visit.”
She stopped and stared at me, hope flaring in her eyes. “They’ll
