Chapter 5
FIVE
Kinsley
“Kinsley, it’s been a long time since you requested an emergency appointment,” Dr. Julia Benedict says with her warm smile that makes it easy to open up to her. “What brings you in?”
She sits across from me, dressed in a long, flowy floral skirt and a white blouse, with her legs curled under her and her latest knitting project in her lap.
After months of my mom begging me to see a therapist, I met with Julia. I had planned to see her, tell my mom I hated it, and continue to grieve the way I wanted.
But Julia shocked me when we bonded over our favorite romance novels, and then instead of her forcing me to talk, she handed me a piece of paper and coloring pencils and told me to draw whatever came to mind.
I spent the next year coloring more than speaking during our sessions, but eventually, they led to us talking, and now, I can’t imagine not speaking to her.
Usually, our appointments are every two weeks, but after what happened this morning, I texted, asking if she had anything available.
“A guy asked me out today.” I chuckle humorlessly. “God, that sounds so inconsequential when I say it out loud.”
“Yet it was important enough to make you pick up the phone and text me. So, tell me what happened.”
I take a deep breath and then tell her, “His name is Shane, and he’s the paramedic who treated me for the food allergy.” She already knows about that incident since I saw her a couple of days after. “He came into the shop to see how I was doing and then asked me out.”
“And how did it make you feel when he showed up?” she asks with a soft smile.
“For a moment, when he was nervously trying to ask me out, my brain allowed me to pretend everything was simple. Like I was just a woman, standing in front of a man who was interested in her and wanted to take her out on a date.
“But then the question finally slid off his lips, and the memory of Brandon asking me out for the first time hit me like a ton of bricks,” I choke out, tears filling my lids. “I hate this. I hate that I can’t be normal.”
“You know how I feel about that word,” Julia chides playfully. “The expectation to be normal isn’t one that is achievable since one can’t accurately define it. What’s considered normal to one person is different for another.”
“I know,” I mumble, having heard her say this on more than one occasion.
“You mentioned when he asked you out, he reminded you of Brandon,” she says. “Are there similarities between the two?”
I think for a moment about Brandon. He was broody and mysterious, the ultimate tatted-up bad boy with a rough exterior who didn’t give a shit about what anyone thought of him besides me. He always had a soft spot for me. We had flirted for years, the chemistry between us sizzling, and when he asked me out, he was sure I would say yes. At that point, it was just a formality.
But Shane’s nothing like Brandon—at least not from what I’ve seen. He’s got this sweet sexiness to him, like he should be posing for a charity calendar in his uniform while holding a kitten he just saved. It’s clear, based on the way his shirt stretched across his chest, he’s in shape, and for a split second, I fantasized about him wearing that uniform in the bedroom as he reminded me what it felt like to be intimate with a man again.
As he stood in front of me and Scott, he was unsure of what I would say, yet he still took his shot. And when I turned him down and the look of defeat filled his features, I wanted to take back my answer and agree to go out with him just so that boyish grin would once again make an appearance.
But I couldn’t do it.
“No,” I tell her. “They’re actually nothing alike from what I can tell. But it wasn’t really about his looks or personality. It was the thought of getting to know another man—of possibly falling in love, having children, and creating a life with someone who wasn’t Brandon—and the memory of my daughter, who’d never gotten a chance to live, that filled me with guilt and made me turn him down.”
“Wow,” Julia says with a smirk that tells me she’s about to go all therapist on me. “You just created an entire fake future with a man before you even agreed to one date. For all you know, he was just looking to get laid.”
I bark out a laugh and shake my head. “He seems too sweet for that.”
“You don’t know that because you don’t know him. What if he was only looking for something casual? Would you have said yes then?”
God, that’s so hard because the truth is, I miss being intimate with someone, but the thought of being intimate with anyone but Brandon feels wrong.
“I don’t know,” I admit truthfully. “But it doesn’t matter because I said no and he left.”
“It still matters,” Julia says, “because this is part of you moving forward. I want you to think about what you see your future looking like. I know I asked you to do this before, but that was over a year ago. And a year ago, had a man asked you out, you wouldn’t have even considered it.”
“I said no,” I remind her.
“But you still considered it. We as therapists like to call that progress.” She winks, and I groan. “Speaking of which, you should check out the book I’m reading. You might find it … enlightening.”
She holds up the paperback, and my heart clenches at the couple on the cover. I used to love reading romance. It was my mom’s and my thing. We could talk about the books we’d read for hours while checking out all the bookstores in our area. We attended book signings to meet our favorite authors, and my mom has an entire library of signed paperbacks we’ve collected over the years.
The day I lost Brandon and our daughter, I lost my desire to read romance. The first time I picked up a romance book to try to escape, I bawled my eyes out, unable to handle reading about someone else getting their happily ever after, knowing I would never get mine.
“It’s so good,” she says. “They’re roommates but can’t stand each other.”
“Ugh,” I groan. “You know I love a good enemies-to-lovers romance.”
“Here,” she says, handing it to me. “I have it on my Kindle.”
I take it from her and eye it, wondering if maybe it’s time for me to give romance books another shot. I won’t be going out with Shane, but maybe I could live vicariously through a woman who isn’t as fucked up as I am.
My thoughts go to the black box my mom left in my Valentine’s Day basket. Maybe it’s time I put it to use.
* * *
“Kinsley, your ten o’clock appointment is here,” Scott says, poking his head into my room.
“I’ll be out in a sec,” I tell him as I finish prepping my station.
Yesterday, I didn’t have an appointment for this morning, so I didn’t plan to come in until noon, but last night, when Scott sent out our daily schedule reminders, one had popped up.
Which was fine with me since the last place I wanted to be was at home, staring at the romance book I couldn’t bring myself to read.
After my appointment with Julia, I went for a run to the health club, and when I passed by the fire station, I couldn’t help but wonder if Shane was in there and what he was doing.
So, when I got home, I grabbed the book, hoping to get him off my mind. But instead, three pages in, when I found out the hero was a firefighter—damn Julia for leaving out that crucial detail—I closed the book and refused to open it again, staring at it until I finally fell asleep. And then I ignored it on my nightstand as I got ready for work this morning.
Work is the best distraction, so while I’d usually be annoyed that Scott sprang a last-minute appointment on me, this morning, I’m looking forward to it.
Once my station is ready, I silence my phone and stow it away in my drawer and then head out to the waiting room to meet my client. Scott didn’t leave any info about them, not even their name, which is very unlike him, so I have no idea what I’m working with.
Only when I step out of my room, my eyes lock with Shane, who’s standing in the waiting room, dressed in a navy-blue shirt that reads Station One across his chest with a matching ball cap tucked low on his forehead.
What is it about a man sporting a ball cap that makes a woman swoon?
He’s got on a pair of dark blue jeans that mold to his thighs perfectly, and on his feet are a pair of Nikes.
As if he can sense me checking him out, his head pops up from his phone, and his brown eyes lock with mine.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, my question coming out blunter than I intended.
“He’s your ten o’clock,” Scott says.
My gaze swings over to him, and from the smirk he’s trying and failing to stifle, he knows exactly what he did.
“Have you ever been inked before?” I ask Shane, who shakes his head.
“And what are you planning to get today?”
“Umm …” He glances from Scott to me and then says, “I was thinking something small, like maybe …”
“Stop right there.” I hold up my hand to emphasize my words and then look at Scott. “Did you make this appointment?”
“Yeah, but …”
“No buts,” I hiss. “You know my rule. If it’s not meaningful, I don’t tattoo it. Did you even ask him what he was getting when you made the appointment?”
“He didn’t make it,” my dad says, stepping out from his station. “I did.”
“Seriously?” I glare.
“It’s not his fault,” Shane says, stepping toward me. “You said you wouldn’t talk to me unless I was getting inked or saving your life in an ambulance, so I made an appointment to get inked.”
“You what?” I choke out, shocked by his admission. “A tattoo is permanent,” I point out. “You were seriously going to let me put something permanent on your body just so you could talk to me for a few minutes?”
Shane shrugs, a small tilt of his lips quirking at the corners. “I figured it would be worth it, if I could use that time to convince you to go on a date with me.”
Oh my God. This guy.
“I already said I’m unavailable.”
“Which isn’t the truth,” my traitorous dad points out, raising a brow and daring me to argue.
“It’s not happening,” I say to Shane. “I appreciate the effort, but I’m not going out with you. And I’m definitely not tattooing something meaningless on your body. Come back when you have something worth tattooing … and don’t even think about getting it off Google or Pinterest.”
I glance at Scott. “Don’t make appointments without asking them what they’re getting!” I point to the wall where a sign hangs, saying, If you’d like to book an appointment with Kinsley, please make sure your piece is meaningful. She has the right to refuse to ink anyone. “You know my rule.”
And then I look at my dad. “And you … find something better to do than play matchmaker. I’m. Not. Available.”
Without waiting for any of them to respond, I stomp back down the hallway and straight to my room, where I slam the door and then lean against it, trying like hell to ignore the fact that Shane is getting under my skin. I can’t stop thinking about him. And I’d be lying if I said that him concocting this plan with my dad and being willing to get a tattoo, just to spend time with me, isn’t clenching the hell out of my broken and battered heart and reminding me that it still works.
* * *
I spend the rest of the day in my station, working on client after client, and once my last one leaves, I clean up quickly so I can try to leave without facing my dad. I feel bad that I yelled at him earlier, but he shouldn’t have done what he did. And I’m not in the mood to discuss it.
But as I’m stepping out of my room, he steps out of his. Our eyes lock, and a small smile graces his features, and instead of being angry, tears fill my eyes.
“C’mere, Mini Q,” he says, using the nickname he dubbed me with when I was little because I reminded him so much of my mom—Quinn.
He opens his arms, and I fall into them, burying my head into his chest as I cry while he holds me close. He moves us into his station and sits us on his couch that he has positioned in the corner.
“Shh, it’s okay,” he murmurs, rubbing my back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did. I just … fuck , I hate to see you like this.”
“I know,” I mutter through my cries. “It’s just so hard.” A choked sob pushes past the lump of emotion clogging my throat, and I cry harder. “I’m so sick of feeling like this, Dad. My heart hurts so much.”
I cry in my dad’s arms for several minutes, until the tears feel like they can’t fall anymore, and then we sit in silence for a little while after that.
No words need to be spoken. There’s nothing anyone can do or say that will bring my husband and baby back. Death is permanent, and the only thing I can do is try to move forward without them.
“I wanted to say yes,” I whisper.
“What?” He pulls back slightly to meet my eyes.
“When he asked me out, I … I wanted to say yes.”
But I couldn’t.
I felt too much guilt.
I was too terrified.
My dad nods in understanding, then pulls me back into his arms. “You’ll get there, Kins. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing. Take it one day at a time.”