26. Chapter 26
Chapter 26
Arlo
A week and a half.
That’s how long it’s been since Rina kicked me out of her house. I can’t even blame her; I deserved a hell of a lot worse. That’s not to say I’ve just left her alone. I’ve done the exact opposite, actually. Trading sleep for naps so I can park my ass in front of her house at night and keep watch. Leaving Audrey in charge of our office while I go Sherlock Holmes on the texts Rina’s sent me from the stalker.
I haven’t gotten anywhere, though, and it’s pissing me off.
This can’t be a case of wait and see. I need to be proactive.
Today, however, I’m on my way to Rosedale and feel more anxiety over it than I want. It’s time to get results of my scans and possibly another round of shots, depending on those results. Overall, I’m feeling better, but the pain isn’t completely gone.
As I walk into the medical center, all I can think is how much I wish Rina was here with me. Her presence calms me, and I could use that right now. It’s not that I think anything bad is going to come back from the scan; it’s just that I’ve rarely had good news at the doctor’s, and that fear is a hard habit to break.
It takes them no time to call me back before I’m waiting in a room, nervous as hell .
“Good afternoon, Arlo. How are you today?” Dr. Vincent asks as he walks in.
“Doing okay. How are you?”
“Really good, especially after seeing these results.”
My heart rate rises. Logically, I know that’s a good thing, but it doesn’t stop the anxiety from hitting me full force. Now, I wish more than ever that Rina was here with me.
“It looks like things are progressing the way we want them to. The inflammation has gone down a lot, and the pressure on the areas surrounding your fusions looks like it’s slowly healing, right along the timeline I would expect. So, I think we should stay the course, do a total of six months of treatment and reassess, but if things improve the way they are, we should be able to be done with the injections for a while. So, three more treatments after today?”
I nod, a little dazed that everything is working the way it should.
“It’s a lot to take in. I apologize. How are you feeling about all of this?” he asks, sensing my anxiety.
“Honestly, I feel great about it, but it’s just hard to believe. This has been such a long-ass process it’s strange that things are finally working, you know?”
“Totally understand that. I’m glad you took a chance and came in, though. You aren’t always forced to stay in pain, and now you can see the results of coming in.” He’s not condescending; he’s just saying exactly how my thought process went. Getting out of this mindset that you’re forced to deal with pain is hard to shift from, but I’m glad I did.
“I appreciate you working with me,” I tell him. This has changed my life more than I thought it would, and I’ll forever be grateful to Dr. Vincent because of it .
“Anytime. Now, injection today. I’ll have the nurse come in and do all the good blood draws and such, and then we’ll pull the stem cells and inject them again. You should be out of here in an hour if we’re lucky. Any other questions for me?”
“None that I can think of.” I’m still a little shell-shocked things are this easy.
“Alright, well, I’ll send the nurse in, and I’ll see you in a little bit.”
The rest of the appointment goes as it usually does, and before I know it, I’m walking back out to my truck.
As I climb in, my phone pings with a text, so I pull it out and see it’s from Oakley.
Oakley:
Rina texted me. She got another message from the stalker.
He forwards her message, and it stabs me in the chest. She texted Oakley, not me.
Me:
Any new leads? I’ve got nothing, but I’ll buckle down today when I get back and see if I can figure out where the messages are coming from at least. I have a therapy appointment in a few, but after that, I’m on it.
Oakley:
I’m already at your office, trying to look stuff up.
Me:
And you just happen to know the login to my computer?
Oakley:
… Arlo … it’s not hard to figure out…
I curse under my breath. Of course, all my passwords have Rina in them, and I’m sure it wasn’t hard to narrow down from there. Stupid ex-U.S. Marshal. He’s too good at his damn job.
Me:
We don’t talk about it … ever. Did you find anything?
Oakley:
The phone number pings in Rosedale, but that’s all I’ve got. That doesn’t really narrow things down all that much.
Me:
It’s more than we had. Can you write all of that down and leave it on my desk? I’ll stop by after therapy and see what I can connect, if anything.
Oakley:
Sounds good. Sorry I didn’t get more information, but I promised I’d take Willow out tonight and I can’t cancel.
Me:
No worries. I’ll keep you updated if I find anything.
The drive home is long, and my thoughts bounce between the progress with my back, my therapy session, and all things Rina. I know I need to give her time, but fuck if it’s not the hardest thing I’ve done in a long while. I’d do therapy every single day over not talking to Rina again.
The problem is, she has every right to never speak to me again. I beyond messed up, and not only was it a shock to her system, but she had just started to trust me again and I blew that all to hell too. I seem to be good at doing that.
I have to remember things won’t change in an instant. I’m working toward being the best man for Rina, but that doesn’t guarantee I get her in the end. It doesn’t make this journey any less important; it just adds a certain level of stress to my shoulders. A need to figure out how to make things right has definitely taken over my brain power over the last week, but now that the stalker has reached out again, that needs to shift too.
Never has Bluebell Falls been as busy and crime-riddled as it has in the last few months. I don’t know what the fuck is happening, but I will end it. This doesn’t happen on my watch. Tennison was a special case, not something many people see in their lifetime, let alone in their town, so I don’t put that on my shoulders.
This shit with Rina, though? One hundred percent my responsibility. No one should feel unsafe here. Hell, we haven’t had a break-in since I took over as sheriff, and the fact that it happened to Rina kills me on a level I don’t know how to move on from. I guess that’s why it’s a good thing I go to therapy now.
I finally get home, get my laptop set up, and dial my therapist.
“Good afternoon, Arlo. How’s it going today? ”
“Hey, Doc. It’s going.” Dr. Ames pulls zero punches, and my very generic answer doesn’t go unnoticed.
“You want to talk about it?”
I sigh, knowing it’s better to just get it off my chest than keep it bottled up. “I just got home from the back doctor and things are going well there, so that’s positive. But when I was leaving, I got a text about some shit happening in town that I need to put an end to.” I keep it vague, knowing I’ll eventually get all the information out, even if he drags it out of me.
“Put an end to how? Violently?” He’s more curious than accusing.
If it comes to that. “No, nothing like that. There’s a stalker bothering one of the women here, and I don’t like how it’s escalating.”
“That’s a hard one to deal with, no doubt. You said someone had told you about this? Do you have help finally?”
I chuckle. “Kind of. It’s more of an as needed basis.”
“Well, that’s still good progress. Takes a little of load off your shoulders.”
“That’s true. It’s Oakley,” I decide to tell him, although I’m not sure why. It’s not like he’ll share deep, dark secrets from their therapy sessions, but I also want him to see how seriously I’m taking things and that Oakley has played a large part in helping me do that.
“Ah, that makes sense. He’s a good guy, smart as hell.”
“Bluebell Falls is lucky he decided to hide away and then stay. He’s been a tremendous help, and he doesn’t even realize it.”
“Do you feel as though you don’t contribute enough to the town?”
“No, why do you ask?” A knee-jerk reaction, no doubt.
“I’ve never heard you talk about your job the way you just talked about Oakley helping out. He’s not even a full employee, and yet you don’t give yourself the same curtesy. ”
I hum, thinking about his words.
“He caught Tennison—well technically, Willow did, but Oakley did a large bulk of the work. I just got Lennox out when we busted in. I didn’t stay and help out. I didn’t prevent Lennox from being taken.”
“You feel you failed.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Remind me of what the doctor told you about Lennox and how fast you got him to the hospital.”
I know where he’s going with this, and I understand his point, but it doesn’t lessen the useless feeling in my chest.
“He said if I had gotten him there ten minutes later, he would have lost too much blood. If I waited for an ambulance, he would have died.” The words are still so hard to say. I don’t even think most of the Huttons know that, but I do, and it doesn’t bring me any comfort to what happened.
“And why does that mean anything less than what Oakley and Willow did?”
“In theory, it doesn’t.”
“But it does to you. Why?”
“Because I was supposed to do more, be better.”
“With the Tennison case or your career?” he asks, so very astutely.
“Hit the nail on the head, Doc.”
“What made you want to come to therapy? Don’t give me a canned answer. Really think about your reasons.”
I do as told, and I decide it’s time to stop hiding behind whatever life I thought I should have and face the one I do.
“Rina. There’s a lot that we’ve already talked about, us getting married young and everything that I did after her parents died. After the Tennison case, I ran into her in a quiet room at the hospital. I was looking for a place to wallow, to feel like the failure I was, and instead I found Rina breaking down. I just reacted, needed to be her comfort, and I didn’t think about the consequences. We started hanging out.” I cough into my hand, not wanting to say what hanging out actually looked like. “And I realized she’s always been it for me. It didn’t matter if she took me back or if she forgave me. What mattered was that I was the man she always thought I was. I never really took a hard look at what the injury cost me and how it made me feel. I just shoved it all down. Just like I did with everything else in my life, and she deserves better than that.”
“ You deserve better than that too, Arlo.”
I nod, knowing he’s right but still having a hard time getting over that feeling of failure.
“I’m trying. With this stalker shit, it’s bringing up all the usual insecurities, and the fact it’s Rina getting stalked has me acting like a damn fool around her.”
“Rina is the one getting stalked?”
“Yeah. He trashed her workshop about a week ago. He’s getting bold, and I don’t like it. I’m scared I won’t be able to catch him before he does something really drastic, though.”
“I understand that. Even when you feel you’ve worked through a lot of your issues, that doesn’t mean these doubts will just magically disappear. It’s about finding coping mechanisms and leaning on people you trust to help you when you need them. Asking Oakley for help is a huge step for you,” he observes.
“I know, but what if it’s not enough?”
“I don’t think for a minute you’d let anything happen to Rina. You may be working through how to move forward with your life after everything you’ve been through, but even I can see with what limited information you’ve told me that you’d protect her with your life. If you think about it, it’s not so far off from your mission statement in the Marines,” he contemplates.
I sit back on my couch and think about his words. Are my doubt and hesitation because it’s Rina? Or do I feel this way because my injury dashed my dream of being career military? If I’m truthful with myself, which is the goal after all, I’d say it probably goes all the way back to my injury and not fulfilling my commitment to the Marines. If I go back further, not keeping my word, my vows, to Rina is probably the start of all this.
“How do I move past the doubt?” I ask softly.
“The short answer is you don’t, really. The long answer is you learn to take things one step at a time and focus on the facts. You don’t focus on the what-ifs or the possibility of something happening. You throw all your focus into what steps you need to take to accomplish what you need to. Lists are a great tool to stay on task. It’s simple but effective.”
“A list?” I ask skeptically.
“Look, it doesn’t work for everything. It’s more a tool to start using so your brain starts looking at things that way, so you’re able to catastrophize less.”
“Makes sense,” I grumble.
“Listen, we’re closing in on our session, but I want you to make a list every time your mind starts to wander when you have a task. It can be anything, checking your email, making the rounds through town. Just start the habit. If you need another session before our next one, you know you can always call me and I’ll fit you in, okay? ”
“Will do. Thanks, Doc. I’ll see you next time.” I shut my laptop, slumping back into my couch.
He always gives me a lot to think about, but for some reason, today feels more overwhelming than usual. Leaning forward, I grab the pen and paper I usually have out during therapy so I can write things down.
Opening a new page, I start a list before going back to the office.
Find the stalker.
I leave it blank before turning the page and starting another one.
Make things right with Rina.