Chapter 21
Evie
I’m sorting through Brandon and Gladys’ mail on Monday morning when someone bursts into the practice. The bell above the door scares the living daylights out of me, sending the mail flying across the front desk as I spin around, causing a strain in my lower back.
The twisting pain is quickly forgotten when a petite woman with striking red hair collapses onto the lobby couch. She lowers her mascara-streaked cheeks into her hands and sobs quietly to herself while I stand there in complete shock.
Comfort her.
Obeying the little voice, I approach her. She doesn’t notice me right away, even when I kneel in front of her. I grab the tissues on the coffee table and balance the box on her knee.
She looks up abruptly, snatching one up to blot at her cheeks. “Ugh! I’m sorry. I’m a total mess.” She lowers her head into the palm of her hand.
Don’t worry. That makes two of us.
She sways, mumbling under her breath as she threads her fingers through her silky curls, tugging roughly on the gorgeous ringlets—almost like she’s trying to pull them out.
“Are you a patient here?” I mentally slap myself. That was probably the least comforting thing I could have asked. I might as well have said, Hey, if you wanna cry here, you gotta have shoes on and be a paying customer!
She sniffles and nods, still rocking back and forth.
“Hey,” I whisper. Her frantic rocking pauses as she peeks at me through the curtain of her auburn hair. “What can I do to help?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I—I think I’m having a panic attack.”
I reach out. “May I touch you?”
Slowly, she takes my outstretched hand, her chest heaving as she struggles to control her breathing.
I lift her hand in front of her face. “This is a technique I use when I feel out of control.” Or when I want to self-harm .
. . I begin tracing her fingers. “You trace your pointer finger up and down the length of your fingers, breathing in on the upward motion and out on the downward motion. I do this as many times as it takes to calm down.” We do it together for several minutes.
Eventually, her breathing evens out, and the lines in her forehead disappear.
She sighs apologetically. “Where did you learn that?”
I look down. Brandon taught me many different methods of coping with the whirlwind of my emotions to prevent me from self-harming. Sometimes this technique works, other times it doesn’t. Either way, it’s been a long time since I’ve used a blade. I only have Brandon to thank for that.
“My therapist,” I finally say.
“Brandon?”
At first, I think she’s asking if Brandon is my therapist, but then someone touches my shoulder.
“Evie.” I glance up, realizing he’s here.
Brandon gives the woman a soft, comforting smile—one that meets the ultramarine color of his kind soulful eyes.
That warm, easy smile exudes confidence, strength, and comfort in a way that makes my insides melt and pool into hot sludge.
Ugh, I love this man.
The thought weighs me down with despair. Will I ever fall out of love with him?
No. Of course not. I have always loved him, and I will always love him.
My soul is tangled up with his—whether I like it or not.
If he comes to love someone else, well, that doesn’t matter, either.
I’ll always be wrapped up in him, wishing things were different. Wishing he loved me the way I love him.
“Gladys is with a patient right now, but I’m free,” he says. “Would you like to visit with me for a few minutes?”
She nods and stands. Brandon gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze before they head back to his office together. I watch him walk away, heart racing, the ghost of his touch imprinted on my skin.
If love is a battlefield, then unrequited love is a soggy, waterlogged trench, and I have foot rot. I wouldn’t be able to climb my way back out even if I knew how.
My back throbs as I clamber up off the floor and return to my desk, feeling close to tears.
I worry on my bottom lip while I sort through my emails, doing my best to ignore the constant ache in my lower back.
No matter what I’m doing—whether I’m sitting or standing, moving around or not—I’m in pain.
I should probably use this downtime to decorate the Christmas tree Brandon brought in over the weekend, but I lose track of time as I click around on my computer, seeing and achieving nothing.
It isn’t until Brandon is seeing the woman out sometime later that the sullen, half-zoned-out state I was wading in like water fades away.
I blink against the sunlight as the woman slips out the door.
“Evie?” Brandon prompts, noticing the lethargic look on my face. He steps into the space behind the counter—a pet peeve of mine—but I say nothing. I don’t have the energy to make him feel unwelcome right now. “Are you alright?”
I drop my chin into my hand. “Dandy as a lion.”
“You’re in pain,” he surmises quietly, crouching down next to my chair. His gaze bores into my cheek, willing me to open up as I stare vacantly at my computer screen. “You can talk to me. I’ll always listen. You know that, don’t you?”
I almost moan. Yes, and that’s precisely the problem, you dimwit! Stop being so darn lovely all the time. It’s killing me softly.
But for one brief second, I do consider confiding in him—because I ache to talk about this with someone as knowledgeable as him.
And it’s that gentle, inquiring tone of his that’s slowly doing me in.
It’s so familiar. So alluring. But he must know that.
He used it all the time back when he was buttering me up to get me into bed with him . . .
“Yes, I’m still in pain,” I admit. Yes, my heart is still broken. Yes, I’m still in love with you. Yes, I’m still trying to process what you did.
“When does it hurt the most?” he asks softly.
All the time, but mostly when I think about how much I trusted you. And how quickly I believed you when you told me you loved me. But perhaps what hurts the most? When I think about how easily you lied to me . . . and how easy it was for you to walk away from me. Like I didn’t even matter.
“When I move around,” I whisper. “And when I don’t.”
“So, all the time,” he concludes gently. His voice is so tender that I almost crack and confide that I need . . . help. With going to see a doctor, I mean.
But I can’t risk opening yet another window into my heart.
Disgruntled, I’m about to tell him to get lost when his hand slides across my lower back unexpectedly. I gasp and jump, tilting my face down to look at him. I’m taken off guard by the vulnerable look on his face. He’s gazing at me as if . . . as if he’s in just as much pain over this as I am.
My brain short-circuits, and my petulant facade glitches, then malfunctions completely. Without thinking, I spin in my chair and slide my arms around his neck, unable to resist him when he’s looking at me like that.
Like he . . . loves me.
Pulling us into a standing hug, Brandon drops his chin to my head.
Then he rubs the most soothing circles into my lower back, right where the pain is concentrated.
It feels so good that I could purr. I press my ear to his heart and listen to the rush of his blood in his veins, breathing in his comforting scent until I’m certain it has touched the very tips of my toes.
“I’ll make the doctor’s appointment for you,” he offers, his voice low in my ear.
“And we’ll figure it out together. Okay? ”
I nod against him, lost in the moment.
“And I’ll go with you,” he adds in a rush, like I might come to my senses and back out at any moment. But I’m in heaven, wrapped up in his arms. I’d agree to anything he asked of me right now. “Does that sound good?”
“Mmm.”
He chuckles, a comforting rumble in my ears. “Evie?”
“What?” I mumble into his tie.
“What’s gotten into you?” he wonders, smiling as he draws back to look at me.
His question brings me crashing back to reality, as if I’ve just plummeted thirty thousand feet from the sky.
I push him away, my ears burning as I retreat.
He catches me around the waist before I make it very far.
My breath hitches, my heart leaping into my throat as he pulls me flush against his chest. Immediately, I lift my hands, pushing against him, attempting to put space between us again.
But he holds me fast, and I stare at the colorful candy canes on his tie as his pulse hammers beneath my palms, torn about what I want.
“What can I do?” he pleads in a low, gravelly tone, knowing the moment is lost. He lifts my chin with his finger, forcing me to look into his eyes. “How can I make this better, Evie? How can I fix this?”
I get the sense he’s no longer talking about the pain in my lower back.
“You can’t make it better.” My nails dig into his shirt. “It’s unfixable.”
“It can’t be,” he laments, pressing his forehead against mine. “Please, Evie. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Tell me how to make it better, and I will. I promise.”
I know all too well his promises mean nothing.
Before I can even think of a response—or extract myself from his arms—the bell above the front door chimes, and someone strolls into the practice. At first, his or her identity is disguised behind a giant bouquet of richly colored poinsettias and red roses.
But when his smiling face emerges from behind the extravagant arrangement, I gasp.
Adam.