Epilogue #2
After we’d reconciled, Blair told me she had started seeing a therapist. She was embarrassed to tell me because she thought it made her seem weak that she couldn’t overcome the obstacles in her life on her own.
I did my best to reassure her that it was perfectly normal to feel that way, and it was also perfectly normal to ask for help.
We were only human, and we couldn't do everything on our own.
I thought it had really been helping. If there was a storm, she would come and find me, wanting me to hold her until it was over.
If I was not there, she’d call me and we’d talk about whatever she wanted to talk about.
Sometimes I had her count to one hundred or describe something she saw, smelled, heard, and tasted, if anything.
I’d heard about the five-senses method on a podcast about PTSD, and it seemed to work.
Six months ago, she’d started taking driving lessons and had been doing really well. Sometimes we went on the back roads, which I knew were typically quiet. Sometimes we went in residential areas, or to parks where the speed limit was low, and sometimes we stayed in large parking lots.
She experienced her first storm while driving, and I was terrified.
Not only did her parents die in a car accident during a storm, but I almost died in one.
I expected her to never want to learn to drive, so I was shocked when she mentioned it after one of the hottest shower sex nights of my life.
It was the first, and most definitely not the last, time I used the strap in the shower.
Whoever invented rain showerheads deserved a raise.
I was prepared for her to stop the car abruptly, maybe to even crash into something, but I wasn’t prepared for what actually happened.
At the first boom of thunder, she jumped slightly, and I could see her breathing start to quicken. Instead of doing any of those things, she calmly pulled over to the side of the road and started describing her surroundings using her senses as I rubbed her leg.
“I can smell the vanilla from the air freshener. I can see the little pellets of rain starting to form on the windows. I can hear the faint lyrics of the song playing in the car. I can touch the leather of the seats.” She turned to me and pulled me in for a passionate kiss.
In that moment, nothing else mattered. Not her PTSD. Not the storm. Not the fact that we were already late for our dinner reservation. None of it mattered as I held Blair in my arms and could feel her panic slipping away as her breathing regulated.
“And I can taste the love of my life on my lips.” She grinned as she wiped her lipstick off the side of my mouth with her thumb.
She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, putting the car in drive, and signaling she was merging back onto the road.
The storm continued but she remained calm.
She flinched at every thunder boom or lightning strike, but she never lost control.
She took calming breaths and reached for my hand, which was never far away.
Saying I was proud of Blair didn’t even begin to describe the feeling I had.
She had come a long way from our first meeting; we both had.
Snide comments, backhanded compliments, and heated tension were a thing of the past. Replaced with flirtatious comments, genuine compliments, and still heated but now sexual tension, but only temporarily.
If I wasn’t driving, working, or sleeping, some part of my body was on her. I had to touch her at all times to remind myself she was real. She was here, and she loved me just as much as I loved her.
Blair and I walked over to the couch opposite Cara and Penelope. Penelope frowned as Milo’s loyalty shifted when his mother sat down, curling herself into my arms.
“Are you comfortable there, sweetheart?” I asked jokingly. She knew I didn’t want her to be anywhere else.
She looked up at me and smiled, pulling my shirt so I brought my face to hers, placing a soft kiss on her delicate lips. “When I’m with you? Always.”
“Okay, you two, we know you’re a fan of public exposure, but how about we focus on the store for today?” Mackenzie’s grin turned evil, and I flipped her off as Blair buried her head in my chest, embarrassed.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Fallon, you couldn’t have married someone with a little more class?”
Fallon was sitting on Mackenzie’s lap on the couch next to Penelope. “Why marry someone with class when you can marry someone with ass?”
“Exactly, my baby gets it.” Mackenzie smacked Fallon’s ass, causing a groan to slip out of my mouth.
“You two make me sick.” The insult died off as soon as my smile broke free.
“Talk about class. Did you forget our wedding? Your closeted—”
“Alright, alright. Thank you, Mackenzie. I get your point.” I rolled my eyes even as my chest warmed when all my friends were gathered together. I loved my chosen family.
But as I sat with all the people closest to me, at the re-opening of my store that I’d worked so hard for, I couldn’t believe I had waited so long to let people in.
The feeling of loving wholeheartedly and being loved just as intensely was a feeling that didn’t compare to anything else in the universe.
I had been blinded by the comfortability of Skylar and keeping my guard up with everyone around me that I couldn’t see what, or rather who was right there all along… Blair freaking Sterling.