Page 54 of Anything for You
It still felt like I might wake up and find I’d crafted the whole day in my mind. It’d been too perfect, and yet it’d been real. The dream of touching her, kissing her, laughing with her… It’d been so free and right. It was real and replete with the sensation of longing and anticipation, yet satisfaction, too. I never imagined laying bare my desire for her would be so completely welcome and returned.
Talk about coexisting feelings.
I’d been practicing a kind of brutal honesty with myself for a while. By brutal, I didn’t mean cruel or purposefully abrupt. The effort and brutality came in the promisethat I would be truthful even if it hurt, but that I’d also give myself grace enough to handle it.
This ideology had grown out of a need for reality checks, as my therapist had called them. I’d tended to spiral into depressive negativity and often jumped to the worst possible conclusions. Rebuilding my habits surrounding these thoughts had been some of the hardest work in my life.
When your brain is telling you there is nothing worth living for, that no one will miss you, that no one cares if you’re gone, that everyone who does love you will ultimately be better off… This is where the reality-checking began. Well that, and quality therapy, and for me, the help of medication.
The further out from the deepest depression I’d experienced, the more grateful I was to have the distance. It was never a guarantee I wouldn’t struggle so deeply again, but I knew the signs, and part of such brutal honesty was interrogating whether thereweresigns I was starting to struggle.
Lately, there had been none. Not a one. I’d had to reality-check the idea that Dove might like me more than once because it’d been so long since I’d wanted a woman’s attention, let alone believed she might actually be giving it to me with the same level of interest I had for her. My therapist had challenged me, pushed me pretty hard, actually, when I said I had feelings for her but knew she didn’t for me. Dr. Corrigan had asked, “How do you know?”
This was always how it started—this cycle of reality-checking an idea that usually resulted in me discovering I’d jumped to one conclusion or another.
Did I know Dove didn’t want me? No, not for certain. She was just so light and lovely and social and fun. Could she possibly want someone who struggled with crowds andsometimes even agoraphobia outside his own space, who had a history like I did, and who hadn’t been in a relationship for years?
Dove seemed too good to be true on one hand, but she was blessedly willing to show her imperfections and dash that thought. She was completely untouchable for a man who had literally not touched a woman beyond a handshake in years, and yet…
And yet our kiss had awoken a part of me I’d wondered about. Had my desire for sex disappeared altogether? Had it been the effects of depression, or medication? Had it been the result of the PTSD I’d battled with? Yes, I’d been celibate by choice, but it honestly hadn’t been a struggle. It had been the path of least resistance on several levels.
Dove had woken me up in so many ways. She’d drawn out a protective drive, she’d given me an outlet for caring for someone, and she’d certainly set fire to the idea that I wouldn’t ever feel attraction or desire again.
Could she want me? The astounding reality, based on her notes and her excitement over spending time together, was yes. It’d taken me a few days to wrap my head around that, and every step of the way I’d caveated the idea she could be interested in more than friendship with a giant asterisk ready to remind me that if she didn’t, it was fine, and hopefully we’d still be friends.
Her simply asking what we were doing had disarmed all the fears and hedging I might’ve been attempting to build up in my head. Yes, I’d struggled with whether I could be good for her knowing I’d likely never be done with depression and it would never be done with me. But one of many things I liked and admired about her was that she would tell me the truth.
Just as I was reliving the kiss and the remarkablerestraint I’d shown, I heard a rough bark and shouts in the driveway and sprinted to the front hallway. Dove had just gotten home, and the odds this didn’t have to do with her were very slim.
Flinging open the door, I found Bear standing with his fur bunched and teeth bared, a low growl issued to a man in jeans and a black T-shirt slowly backing away from him and Dove.
My heart sank, pulse hammering at my neck. Some small part of me said I should go back inside, should shut myself away from this stranger on my property. But the man in me, the one who wouldn’t stand for anyone to be intimidated or harmed? He said to go handle it.
So I did.
“There was always going to come a time when you’d come back, Dovey. You have to admit that to yourself,” the man said, backing up another step.
Dove’s hand held on to Bear’s collar lightly, not pulling at the neck, but clutching it for safety.
“I’m not a part of that world anymore. It’s way past time you accept it,” she said, voice trembling, but strong.
I rushed down the stairs. “What’s this?” I said, murmuring, “Easy, buddy,” to Bear as I passed him to stand next to Dove.
Her frightened, aggrieved gaze met mine. “Dorian, this is my brother, Hawk.”
“This your boyfriend? Landlord? What is he? You’re screwing him for rent or something, aren’t you?”
Dove gasped and covered her mouth, and I didn’t even think when I charged forward. Two men jumped out of the back cab of the truck idling a few feet behind him.
“You will not speak to her that way.” I continued towardhim, intent on taking him by the collar and leading him back to his car.
His friends had other plans. One swung a baseball bat at my ribs right as Hawk knocked a fist to my face. I turned and grasped the metal bat, ripping it away from the man holding it suddenly enough he stumbled forward and tripped, but I took the punch to the cheekbone.
Ow.
“Stop! Hawk! What are you doing? I’m calling the police right now,” Dove yelled, panic in her voice just over my shoulder.
Bear bumped against my leg as I tossed the bat in the back of the truck. “Get off my property and never come back.”
