Page 27 of Rescuing Tobias

“White chocolate is my favorite, too. Usually anyway. Lately, I just don’t seem to have much of an appetite. It’s like I'm constantly nauseous,” she admitted.

“Stress affects every part of your system. It’s no wonder it’s hitting your appetite as well. And I don’t think they fed you much while they were keeping you so your body has learned to adjust.”

“When I was still there, I used to dream about all the food I was going to eat when I got home. If I got home. But now I'm here, honestly, the thought of going without doesn’t bother me. I try to eat so Becca and Connor don’t worry, but if I were on my own, I'm not sure I'd be even eating this much.”

“It’s okay for now to let other people be your motivation to keep going through the motions. You do what you have to do. And if you eat because you don’t want your friend to worry, then at least you ate. One day that will shift, and you’ll realize you're just eating because you're hungry and you want to.”

“Will it?” Isabella asked, somewhat desperately. “Because right now, everything seems to be such a chore. I want to live. I want to rebuild my life. I want to find out who I am now and what I want to do going forward, but it’s all so exhausting. I have all this … restless energy inside me, but I don’t know how to harness it. Everything feels so big.”

“I know the feeling,” Susanna said. “It’s overwhelming. Do you know what I started to do that helped?”

“What?”

“I broke it down into little pieces. When something seemed too big and I was getting overwhelmed, instead of looking at it in its entirety, I looked at how I could take it apart and just deal with one part at a time. It’s like if I set a whole three-course meal down before you right now, your stomach would start hurting, you'd wonder how you were going to get through it, start worrying about what others thought when you couldn’t do it all. In the end, all you'd do is make yourself sick, right?”

“Right.”

“But what if I just set out a small plate of salad? Or a sandwich? A little bowl of pasta, or maybe some chips and dip? That would be more manageable. You could handle that. You'd be able to do it without making yourself sick. That’s how you should be looking at your life right now. What little things can you do? What small tasks can you handle? That’s all you need to do right now, and, Isabella, just getting out of bed, showering, getting dressed, and functioning are all tasks you should be proud of.”

Focusing on little tasks was definitely something she could try. She’d been trying to figure out where she went from now, what she did about her aid agency, whether she set up overseas again or stayed here. She was trying to figure out what she wanted, and what other people expected from her, and it hadgotten to be too much, but maybe Susanna’s approach could work.

After all, she had no one counting on or relying on her for anything, so she had time to start out small and let things go wherever they went.

CHAPTER 9

April 15th

8:45 P.M.

Fighting off a wave of exhaustion,Tobias gritted his teeth and forced himself to take the stairs rather than the elevator to his floor.

Today marked one month since he’d said goodbye to Isabella and sent her off with her best friend. Despite those few texts she’d sent, he hadn't heard anything else from her. Those texts had stopped after a couple of days when he didn't respond, and he hoped that his silence hadn't been another burden for Isabella to carry.

He just couldn’t allow himself to contact her and maintain any sort of emotional distance. The woman’s strength and bravery in the face of unspeakable horrors had gotten to him, and he feared he was already hopelessly obsessed with her.

Each day he woke up determined to give her what he could.

Answers.

Closure.

Working from sunup to sundown, he and his team were doing everything they could. When he clocked out for the day, he spent a couple of hours at the gym working through his physical therapy routine. While he’d love to be able to say it was working and he was making progress, with his injury improving, and his pain levels evening out, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Each day he hurt worse.

Each day it seemed he was stiffer than he’d been the day before.

The simple answer was to pull back on his workouts, tone them down a little, only every time he determined that’s what he’d do as soon as he was in the gym he’d be filled with this need to work harder, push himself, conquer this problem.

Only it wasn't a conquerable problem.

If anything should convince him of that it was the steady pulsing of pain running up and down his spine as he took the stairs slower than he would have liked.

Even though he knew he wasn't going to win this fight, he had to keep trying, because finding a way to heal his back was the only way he could have a chance with Isabella. Maybe it wouldn't work out between them, they didn't know each other well, and they’d only shared that one night. Sure, she’d made a deep impression from the moment she ran out of that room, but that didn't mean they would wind up being compatible.

The only way to know was to give them a real shot, but he could only do that if he got his injury under control.

He wearily pushed open the door to his floor, ready to get home, heat one of the sad, frozen meals-for-one he kept in his freezer, take a shower, climb into bed, get what sleep he could, then get up early for another gym run, then work. The cycle seemed never-ending, and he was ready for a break in the case to shake things up.

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