Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
TUCKER
“It’s good to see you again, Tucker.” Melissa gave me a characteristically soft smile as she motioned me into her office. The woman was just a smidgen of a thing with a thin frame and a slow cadence to her voice that screamed mental health professional. “How have you been?”
I settled myself into one of the armchairs across from the one she’d used during our previous session, taking my hat off and placing it in my lap. “I’ve been doing okay. How ’bout yourself?”
She sent me another gentle smile as she sat down. “I’ve been well, thank you for asking.”
There was a brief pause as Melissa pulled out her notepad and pen, probably one she expected me to fill with what we’d be discussing today, but I still wasn’t sure what to expect from these appointments.
It’d been three weeks since the dream of Raleigh that had caused me to spiral.
Even now, the visuals from it were still so clear in my head, it was hard for me to reconcile what happened, but the aftershocks of it had resulted in very real consequences in my life.
While Jackson had reassured me after we’d talked that he hadn’t been considering leaving, the fear of it had been palpable when I’d seen him so angry.
The thought of potentially losing him after everything else had been the real motivator for me finding a therapist sooner rather than later.
The idea had been floated around long before he’d ever arrived, but I’d been too damn stubborn—or maybe scared—to follow through.
I’d needed the push Jackson gave me to force me into taking that first step, which was how I found Melissa.
She was a licensed professional counselor with a specialty in grief counseling and LGBTQIA+ support, which meant if I chose to, I could continue to see her after working through the grief of losing Raleigh. Today was our second session.
“The last time we spoke, we talked about how you were struggling with moving forward after the death of your late husband. How are you feeling about that today?” she asked as she looked back up at me.
“I’m still working on it,” I admitted. “I understand why I need to do it, but sometimes it feels like the pain of moving on will be just as bad as the day I learned he died.”
“Grief is a complex emotion. Like we discussed before, it’s usually never a linear process for people. What matters is that you’re taking the time to work through the emotions as they come. You’re going to have highs and lows, and it’s all about riding the waves of them as they come.”
I nodded my head, glancing at my clasped hands resting on top of my hat. “See, I get that. But I barely survived losing him. That pain… It’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough to have to face it again.”
“You know you don’t have to do it alone, right?” Melissa’s words were kind, but there was a gently teasing lilt to her smile when I looked up at her.
“No, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who can work through these feelings. They’re mine, after all.” I huffed out an amused sound, deciding to tease her right back.
She gave a delicate chuckle but nodded her head. “You got me there. You have to do the work, but you don’t need to be alone when you do it. You have what sounded like a wonderful support system on the farm with your family, your employees, and your new partner.”
Partner.
Jackson felt like so much more than that, but the word still made something warm blossom inside me.
“I know that. It’s hard for me to lean on some of them though.
There’s a part of me that’s guilty I’ve let this go on for three years instead of getting help right away.
My family and friends encouraged me to, but… ”
“You weren’t ready.”
Chewing on the inside of my cheek, I nodded as I fought back against the emotion surging up my throat.
“I don’t know I ever would have been if I hadn’t met Jackson.
He’s made life feel livable again, and the future doesn’t feel like this place I’ll have to endure.
It’s somewhere I want to go if he’ll be there with me. ”
Melissa tilted her head, that signature smile on her lips. “That’s sweet. Was Jackson the one who convinced you to seek help for your grief?”
“Sort of,” I hedged. “He requested I do it after we’d had an argument over Raleigh.”
“Raleigh? Your late husband?”
“Yeah…” Rubbing at the back of my head, I sighed. “Maybe argument isn’t the right word? Disagreement?”
“I would say those are essentially the same thing,” Melissa said gently, but she quickly followed it up with, “Do you mind me asking what it was about Raleigh you two fought over?”
I shifted a little uncomfortably in my seat. “I, uh… had a dream about Raleigh when Jackson was in bed with me.”
“Oh. What kind of dream was it?”
“Raleigh… He told me I needed to let go of him.” I ran a hand over my jaw as I tried to work through the lingering sensations that still plagued me from that night.
“Jackson had been pushing me to stay over, but I hadn’t felt comfortable because it was the bed Raleigh and I shared.
But he really wanted it, so I let him, and that night I dreamed of Raleigh.
I kind of freaked out on Jackson when I woke up after.
It’d all just felt so real, though. I can still remember every detail of it like I’d really been there with him. ”
Melissa made a humming sound, and when I glanced at her, she was jotting something down on her notepad. She gave me a reassuring smile when she looked up. “Can we take a moment to talk about why letting Jackson sleep in your bed felt so uncomfortable?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “I mean, wouldn’t it be uncomfortable for anyone to sleep in a bed where their boyfriend’s late husband slept?”
“Maybe.” Melissa bobbed her head. “But that wasn’t the problem for Jackson, was it?”
“No,” I conceded, glancing back down at my hands.
“So, what was it about the bed that made you so reluctant to let Jackson in it?”
It took me a moment to answer as I let myself really consider the question.
“It belonged to Raleigh and me. It was one of the first things we bought when we got married, so no one other than he and I had ever slept on that mattress. Letting Jackson in it was, in a way, a form of letting Raleigh go. Because it wasn’t our bed anymore. It was my bed.”
“What an insightful response.” Melissa’s eyes somehow softened further around the corners as she looked at me. “I wonder if maybe for Jackson, it wasn’t just about staying over itself that was the issue, but rather what being allowed to share that space with you meant.”
Our session lasted another twenty minutes after that, and I couldn’t deny feeling a little lighter standing up from the chair than I did when I first walked in. Just as I was about to leave Melissa’s office, she placed a hand on my arm to stop me.
“I wanted to ask you something before you left,” she started, and I nodded to let her know to continue. “You mentioned that you felt the dream you had of Raleigh that night was more real than any other one you’d had before. Does that mean you’d dreamed of him before then?”
I nodded again.
“How do you feel about the dreams?”
Glancing down at the ground, I wondered if I should admit the truth before deciding there was no point in keeping it from her.
She was my therapist, after all. “They were really hard for me. I developed insomnia trying to avoid dreaming of him because all it did was make me miss him more and made the pain of losing him feel so close to the surface.”
Melissa made a sound like she wasn’t at all surprised by that answer. “It’s definitely not unheard of for someone to develop insomnia while grieving. It sounds like you had them often?”
Licking my dry lips, I nodded, a knot forming in my throat.
“Maybe Raleigh was trying to support you the only way he could. From the way you’ve described him, he certainly sounded like a loving husband.”
My eyes darted up to hers. “Excuse me?”
Melissa shrugged a shoulder casually. “There’s a school of thought that dreams from past loved ones are them visiting you. Some people are comforted by the idea that their loved one is checking in or coming back to spend time with them, but it sounds like you were struggling with these dreams?”
Heart pounding in my chest, I croaked out a shaky, “Yeah.”
“Does it make you feel better to think of them as Raleigh visiting you all this time?”
“I don’t know…” I managed to say around the burning in my throat, thinking back on all the visuals Nighttime had supplied me with. The happy memories I wished I’d still lived in and the future I’d never get because I knew Raleigh was dead. “Not all of them were good dreams.”
“Ah.” Melissa pressed her lips into a flat line. “Well, there are some people who believe that even though they’re visiting us, they have no control over how our dreams go. Like an actor who plays the part in the movie had no control over how the script was written.”
It felt like my world was tilting on its axis the more Melissa spoke, and maybe she saw it written on my face because she gave my arm a reassuring pat.
“Of course, this is only helpful if you believe it to be helpful. If the idea causes more distress, then forget I said anything. No one knows for sure why we dream of our late loved ones, so take it all with a grain of salt.”
“Let’s just say I do believe it,” I started after taking a shaky breath. “What would it mean if I wasn’t having those dreams anymore?”
Her eyes got soft around the edges again as she tilted her head to the side slightly, a sad smile on her face. “I’d say Raleigh knows you’re in good hands now.”
On the drive back to the farm, my mind felt like it was racing a mile a minute as I tried to sort through what this new information might mean. Of course, Melissa had said it was just a theory—no one knew for sure why we dreamed of our past loved ones.
But it felt right. Like something deep down inside me knew there had always been more to the torture sessions Nighttime inflicted on me. But then, if it had been Raleigh coming to visit me… Who was Nighttime?
You’ve held onto me so tightly that it’s twisted and distorted our time together. You have to let me go.
Was Raleigh actually… Nighttime? Had all those dreams been Raleigh’s attempt to comfort and support me through his death? Had they been him wanting to be with me and not some twisted figment of my imagination sent to bury the knife deeper?
My chest ached as I thought about every heartbroken expression I’d seen on Raleigh’s face—ones I’d brushed aside as Nighttime’s desire to draw as much blood as possible from me.
Maybe the dreams were still just a fantasy created by my subconscious as a way to force me to process my grief, but it didn’t feel like that.
Letting out the choked sob I’d been holding back, I pulled over to the side of the road, the tears blurring my vision too much for me to safely drive any further.
Fumbling around in my pocket, I managed to pull out my phone after I got my truck parked and called the one person I knew would get me through this.
“Hey, baby. How’d your session go?” Jackson’s drawl came after a few rings and it was a balm to my sore soul.
“I need you,” I murmured, knowing the tremble in my voice would make him worry but unable to hold it back.
“Where are you?” Like I knew it would, Jackson’s voice took on a serious note that made everything in me sing. He didn’t need to know why, only that he was needed, and he would drop anything to be there.
“Parked on the side of highway 90. Just past the city limits.”
“I’ll come get you. Let me go find Granger and he can drive—”
“No, no,” I interjected, closing my eyes to take in the reassurance that flooded through me at his words. “I just… needed to hear your voice. I’ll be okay to drive in a minute. Will you meet me at my house?”
There was a long pause on the other line where I wondered if Jackson had already hung up to round up the cavalry, but then he spoke. “Yeah, baby. I can meet you at the cabin. What else do you need?”
“Just talk to me.”
So he did. He told me about his day starting from when he fed in the main barn—letting me know how particularly ungrateful Poe had been to be given just his usual grain instead of a strip of alfalfa—all the way till he’d picked up my call.
I’d pulled back out onto the highway with his slow cadence filtering through the cab and feeling strung together by the echoes of his voice, but strong enough to make my way to where he was.
Because I knew he was waiting for me. Every bit of his story was full of so much detail I felt like I’d been right there with him the whole day, and by the end of it I was almost back to farm.
“How much longer do you have?” he asked.
“I’m pulling up to the driveway now.”
“Hurry up.”
I let out a soft chuckle, relieved and a little in awe I was able to so soon after feeling so thoroughly torn open earlier, but not needing to be told twice.
When I pulled up by my place, I found him sitting on the back porch steps, phone up to his ear.
The sight of him alone had relief flood through me, so strongly it nearly made me breathless.
Before I knew it, I was out of the truck and making my way toward him, somehow knowing the only place I’d finally feel put back together again was in his arms.
Jackson stood the moment I’d parked and was already halfway to me by the time I’d shut my door. He pulled me into him with an intensity that might’ve looked like we’d been separated for much longer than the eight hours it’d been, but I could have cried with the rightness of being back in his arms.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” he whispered into the crook of my neck.
“Later,” I grunted, rubbing my nose along the shell of his ear and loving how he tugged me against him just a little bit tighter for it. “Will you stay with me?”
“Always.”