Chapter 34 Phoenix #2
“June not only adopted me, but took it upon herself to homeschool me when I was too scared to go back to school. Believe it or not, I was so embarrassed by my life. By everything that had happened. I remember begging her to keep it a secret from the public. Not many people around here even know she adopted me. I stayed within those four walls for seven years, healing. June saved my life. She’s the reason I’m everything that I am. ”
“I had no idea.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Like I said, not many do. I didn’t go to public school, and let me tell you, that was a blessing for me. I was pretty screwed up for a while, and therapy got me through it.”
“Why haven’t you stayed with June the last few days? Through everything that’s happened?”
“I visited her one night, telling her I was having flashbacks and couldn’t sleep.
But I didn’t tell her the real reason, because I didn’t want her to worry about me.
The woman has been through enough because of me.
I didn’t want to burden her, or for her to feel obligated to take care of me again.
Surely, you of all people, can understand that. ”
I nodded. “You got me there. The guilt of being a burden. Yeah, I get that.”
She sighed. “Anyway, I was homeschooled until I left for college at seventeen.” She grinned. “I had a full semester of advanced classes under my belt at that point.”
“I don’t doubt that. Is all this why you studied psychology?”
She nodded. “I started studying psychology around age ten, when I realized how beneficial it was. I became obsessed. For the first time in my life, I felt like I understood what was going on in my brain. Why I was the way I was. It was an epiphany of sorts.”
I’d had the same epiphany recently, thanks to her. Little did I know the why’s of it, or the heavy meaning behind why she explained my injury to me in the way she did. It was because that was how she adapted through her pain; and now, me, too.
She continued, “I remember reading an article about how severe trauma to young children can literally change their brain. Their physiology. It’s called Adverse Childhood Experiences.
Because children have trouble verbalizing their emotions, bad experiences play on loop in their heads over and over.
Think about that; the same horror show replaying in your head over and over.
That kind of stress releases harmful chemicals into the brain and can result in a lack of growth in the part of their brain that controls impulses and determines good from bad. ”
“The Prefrontal Cortex.”
Her eyes lit up. “Bingo. Sounds familiar, huh?”
“Thanks to you, yes.”
Yes, we were much more similar creatures than I’d realized, and that was the first moment that my physical attraction to Rose was second only to my respect for her. She came out of her circumstance.
I could come out of mine.
She squeezed my hand. “You’ve told me that you feel like you don’t know who you are.
I hope you know now that I truly understand that feeling.
Because I don’t either, Phoenix.” Her eyes filled with tears again.
“I have no clue who I am. Where I came from. When I fill out medical forms, I know nothing of my past. Only that my grandparents were Italian. That’s it. ”
Still kneeling at her knees, I stroked her palm with my thumb while, shockingly, fighting my own tears. I understood this woman. So much.
I blinked hard, shocked to feel the sting of tears building behind my eyes. That wasn’t something I did. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even feel half the time, at least not like this. But here I was, cracked wide open in front of this woman who somehow—without even trying—made me feel seen.
Understood.
Maybe even whole.
“Oh, Phoenix,” she blurted out, then dropped her head into her hands and began to sob.
It gutted me.
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into my chest, letting her collapse against me.
She went limp, like she'd been holding herself up for too long and couldn’t anymore.
I leaned us both back against the couch, one arm tight around her, the other cradling the back of her head as if holding her together would somehow piece me back together too.
She cried. Long, hard, heaving sobs that soaked through my shirt.
And I let her. I held her like I’d wanted someone to hold me after I woke up alone in that sterile hospital room.
Like I wished someone had held me when I lost who I used to be.
And the more I held her, the more I knew—I’d never let anything happen to her. Not while I was breathing.
I pressed a kiss to the top of her head and breathed her in. Her shampoo. Her skin. That faint trace of vanilla and honey that seemed to linger in every room she entered. It was the scent of home. Of something I hadn’t realized I was missing until I found it in her.
My beautiful Rose Flower.
After a few minutes, she pulled away, wiping at her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She laughed—quiet, embarrassed. “Geez. I’m supposed to be your therapist.”
I cupped her face and kissed her forehead, my lips lingering longer than necessary. “Don’t worry. My bag of crazy still runs circles around yours.”
She let out another laugh—real this time, if still a little wet around the edges. “I’ll give you that.”
She reached for her coffee, took a sip, and leaned back against the couch. I stayed close, settling beside her, my hand finding her thigh like it belonged there—because it did.
“Now that you know all that, I want to make sure you understand something else. Through my schooling, I learned that everything ‘weird’ about me has to do with my childhood. My OCD, my perfectionism, my uptight, condescending nature—as you’d call it.
” She slipped me a side-eye smirk, then focused back on the fire.
“But the biggest side effect has been my need for control. I never had control growing up, so I grip onto it now like some elusive gift that might escape me one day. I have to have the routine, the mundane. I want the white picket fence, a family. I want normal. I’ve spent my life trying to control everything, keeping everything in its place, trying to make decisions based on facts instead of my heart.
” She looked up at me. “That’s why I dated Josh Davis, Phoenix. That’s why I said yes to his proposal.”
“Because he’s perfect on paper. He’s your white picket fence.”
“Exactly. He had everything. He served his country, had a solid education, solid family, solid future. Turns out he was also a solid jerk.”
“Is that why you left him?”
A moment passed.
Her hand drifted to mine, those dark eyes locking onto mine.
“No. I left him, Phoenix, because he didn’t give me butterflies.”
Without saying a word, I reached for her. My hands framed her face with a tenderness I didn’t know I still possessed, and I kissed her.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Like I had all the time in the world to memorize the taste of her, the heat of her mouth, the shape of her lips. I kissed her like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth. Like everything broken inside of me could somehow be healed by this single, quiet moment.
Because with her—it could be.
Her hands slid onto my shirt, her breath catching as our foreheads touched. And for the first time since the explosion, since I woke up in that damn hospital not knowing who I was or what my life would become—I felt whole.
She didn’t just make me feel again. She made me want.
To be better. To deserve her.
To stay.
This wasn’t just a kiss. It was a promise. A surrender. A beginning.
My Rose Flower.
Mine.
A bright light flickered behind my closed eyes. I jerked back, scanning the room. More lights, moving across the walls in waves.
Headlights.
She slowly opened her eyes, then froze when they met mine.
“What’s wrong?”
“You expecting someone?”
“No.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
I pulled the SIG from my ankle holster as I stood.
“Stay here.”
Skirting the wall, I jogged to the front window, where a red Rolls Royce was pulling up the driveway.