Page 66 of Anything for You
A smile grew and faded in a heartbeat.
“Don’t get too excited.” Then her hand settled on my arm. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I don’t need anything. It won’t change anything.”
And that was the first time she lied to me. “Of course it will. Now you’ve gotten a glimpse of what it can be like. A little taste of PTSD, and that was small.”
Her brow tented. “Do you still have other symptoms? Is your therapist concerned?”
“I’m—” I slumped and covered my face for a moment before exhaling. “I’m grumpy and tired. I’m always in a bad mood after something like this. So evaluating how I’m doing right now probably isn’t smart.”
She nodded. “Makes sense and I completely get that. Do you know what might’ve triggered the nightmare? Or does it happen randomly?”
Steeling myself for all the ways this could go wrong, I explained. “I got out of my usual routine last week. After you were better, I was catching up on farm stuff and did a bad job sleeping.”
Her mouth opened wide, her eyes round. “This is because of me? You took such good care of me, and this is what you got out of it?”
“No, no, Dove. I messed up. I worked too much, expected too much of myself the last few days. It’s happened before when I’ve managed my time poorly, and this is the reality of my life. It happens?—”
“Please don’t pretend you doing so much for me didn’t have something to do with it.”
I turned her chin so she’d look at me. “I’d have a nightmare every night for the rest of my life if it meant I got to take care of you, okay? This wasn’t your fault, and it isnotan excuse for you to turn down help in the future.”
She reared back, almost as if struck. “Yeah? Well, you having a nightmare isn’t a reason to push me away.”
My mouth dropped open like I might respond, but no words came.
“Yeah, I can feel it. I feel you in your head, figuring out how to convince me this means you’re too broken. Well, bad news, Dorian. I’m a nurse. My business is healing. And I’m not here to fix you, but I’m sure as hell not scared of your broken pieces.”
“What happens when my broken pieces cause you pain? Hurt you? Make your life harder?” I asked, voice scraped raw with the agony of saying something like that out loud when I already felt naked.
She stood from the stool and turned to face me, cupping my face in her hands. “Someone once told me, ‘Every bit of you is beautiful and worthy of love.’”
I swallowed down gravel, heart aching.
Her eyes shone with tears, but she held them at bay as she spoke again. “If there is one man in all this world I am certain won’t hurt me on purpose, it is you. In the months that I’ve been living here, you’ve made my life better, easier, and fuller simply by existing next to me, not to mention all the practical things you’ve done to make it better.”
“But—”
Her palm pressed against my lips, physically silencing me along with her, “Shhh.”
I blinked back, fairly shocked.
“I need you to hear me. I am not perfect, Dorian. I have piles of baggage. Heaps of it. And you may recall the physical embodiment of said baggage literally got you beat up not even a week ago.”
Fair, though she was still not fully understanding my concern.
“If you don’t want to be together, or if this has turned into more than you want, or you are realizing you’re not quite ready, all of those are valid concerns. But if your primary worry right now is that your nightmare last night issomehow a harbinger of bad things, or that you having a history with mental health concerns is something that disqualifies you from being with me, you must hear me.”
She paused, holding my gaze.
“I am not scared. I don’t know everything about what this means, but last night didn’t scare me away.Youare worth staying for, and there is nothing I want more than to be here for you, if you want me to.”
She pressed a quick, hot kiss to my lips, then stepped back. “I know this has been a lot so I’m going to give you some space to think. I’ll be home all day, and when you’re ready, if you’re ready, please come find me so we can figure out what’s best. But I promise you it is not listening to all those what-ifs running around in your head, just like I’m going to shut the ones in my head down, too, okay?”
I nodded. She let Bear in as she left, and I stayed sitting there at the bar, mind churning, long after she’d gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Dove
