Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 68831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68831 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
I grabbed his hand. “I’m glad you didn’t give up on me. I’m glad we didn’t turn into just a fling.”
It still felt almost wrong to say that. With all that had happened, I still struggled to feel as if we deserved a happy ending. It was something I discussed with my psychiatrist, something both of us were working to forget. But this trip, this moment … we were moving in the right direction. He kissed my hand and smiled at me.
“There was never a chance of that. Not with us.”
I lifted my glass in a toast. “To flings becoming more.”
He smirked. “To flings becoming love.”
Our flutes gently clinked together.
Beside us, a glacier slowly came into view, the white mountain dwarfing the boat. I nodded to it. “It makes me feel so small.”
“Yeah.” He watched it go by, and a moment of silence fell.
I toyed with my napkin, folding it in half before looking up. “I think you should go back to work.”
He tilted his head at me as if confused. “I am—”
“No.” I shook my head. “You’re not. You’re working a little but you’re not running everything.” I met his eyes. “And I think it’s driving you crazy.”
He sighed. “I told you I’d work less. Delegate more. The new CEO is doing fine. He—”
“He’s not you.” I’d seen the dark shadow that passed over Dario when he read the CEO’s weekly report. It would put him in a funk the entire afternoon. I’d listened in as he’d go behind the man’s back, get updates from middle managers, and quietly put out fires he couldn’t help but get involved in. I’d felt the restlessness in him in the evenings, his workout regime become almost fanatical in its energy-burning attempts.
“I told you I would protect you. Support you. Actually be in a relationship with you.” He lifted one shoulder. “How much of a relationship can we be in if I work all the time?”
“You worked all the time when we met. You worked all the time and had Gwen.” I hated to say her name, hated to bring her up, but we couldn’t pretend like she never existed. Not when her foundation was rebuilding schools in Vegas, her name popping up on libraries, her grants helping small businesses everywhere. She deserved to have a place in our history and our presence. Still, his face tightened at her name, his pain still present at her absence.
I reached across the table and picked up his hand. “I don’t need you constantly. I just need stolen moments. I need to have you next to me at some point in the night. I need you to be happy and I don’t want to be the only thing in your life that makes you that way.”
His fingers tightened on mine. “I don’t want to lose you.”
I smiled. “You’ll never lose me. Plus, starting next week, I’m going to be busy with school.”
“Oh, God.” He groaned. “Just promise, once you learn all the secrets of the human brain, you won’t psychoanalyze me.”
I made a face. “Are you kidding? You’re going to be my pin cushion. Everything up there?” I reached up and drummed my fingertips on his forehead. “It’s gold.”
I had decided, after thrice-weekly sessions with the most expensive shrink Dario could find, that I want to be a psychiatrist. One like Dr. Anders. The woman was incredible, and if I’d had her as a teenage girl, after my rape? I may have become an entirely different woman. Not that I wasn’t happy with the way my life had turned out. But she was a master at helping me see the big picture, at understanding my feelings and motivations, and at healing the pain that I still carried from that night.
Together, we’d been working through my guilt over Gwen, and I’d felt so much better after our first few weeks, I’d practically tied Dario to her chair and forced him to speak to her.
He was less enthusiastic than me at the concept of therapy. But he kept seeing her. And over the last two months, I’d seen the impact of her sessions in his own gradual peace.
I wanted to be her. I wanted to help people. Heal people. I wanted to work with abused and raped teenagers, trauma victims, and families of alcoholics. I wanted to make a difference, and the idea and possibility of that filled me with such purpose, such happiness, that I had all but somersaulted into my advisor’s office with the paperwork to change my major.
He shifted, his gaze on the glacier, and I didn’t need six years of med school to know that he was itching to take my directive and go back to work.
“Just do it.” I nudged him with my foot. “When we get back, demote or fire that CEO, and take the reins back. It’s what you were born to do.”