"Is that Bry?" she asked as she closed the door and led me down a narrow hall that had my chest getting tight.
"Yeah."
I put my hand on my belly and took a few deep breaths as she let me into her office. There was a white desk situated almost in a corner, out of the way, with the main focal point being the four places she had to sit in the center around a low coffee table. There was an old-fashioned gray tufted couch, an armchair, an accent chair with no arms, and a papasan chair. A lot of thought went into that set-up and I found myself going toward the papasan, slipping out of my shoes and letting it surround me, needing to feel a bit protected. I imagined the couch was for laying down and the accent chair was for people who didn't like feeling trapped.
Taking her cue from me, she sat in the armchair and gave me a smile. "I'm going to be honest here. I wasn't sure I would ever see this day."
I wasn't offended by that.
I wasn't sure I would ever see this day either.
"Yeah, me either," I admitted.
"You alright anxiety-wise? Need anything?" she asked, her eyes dipping to where my hand was still on my belly for a second before moving up.
"No. I'm alright for now."
"So. You're here," she said, giving me a smile. "Did you want to talk about that 'lot you had going on' you mentioned?"
"Sure," I said, taking another deep breath.
Then I launched into it. From the night of the alarm ringing and being carried out of the building fireman-style to getting robbed and beat, heavily editing out the details. I knew about the patient-client thing, but I wasn't exactly sure how it would stretch. I talked a lot about Ryan and our strange, but utterly perfect and unprecedented romance. I told her that I had visited my uncle, met Ryan's sisters-in-law, and a neighbor of Ryan's, meaning Ross Ward, but not giving names.
"You have been busy," she observed when I finished, shaking her head a little like it hadn't completely sunk in yet. "I'm really proud of you, Dusty," she said, the weight in her words showing how much she meant it.
"Turns out you were right all these years," I said with a wry smile. "All I needed to do was do something."
"We both know it's not always that easy," she said with a soft smile of her own. "Had I known that a fireman hold out of the building would have done the trick, I might have sent one there two years ago," she added, making me laugh. I liked that quality of hers. She was a professional, but she was also just a person. She joked around and made comments that were perhaps not exactly appropriate, but humanized her to me so much more. "This Ryan thing. It sounds serious."
"It is," I admitted, feeling the butterflies in my belly, the conversation still fresh in my mind from three nights before when he came home from work, dropped down on the couch, hauled me into his lap, and had the talk.
The relationship talk.
And he had instigated it.
I don't think I had ever had the relationship talk with a willing man before in my life.
It was yet another wonderful thing about Ryan. He wasn't scared of anything. Not even commitment. He made that abundantly clear to me when he informed me that, so long as I agreed, I was his and he was mine and that was that.
So, yeah, that was that.
I still got the warm and fuzzies when I thought about it. Which was often. Because... come on! If you had someone like Ryan Mallick, you obsessed over the sheer luck that brought you two together.
Forty minutes later, I was leaving Amy's office with a promise to try to continue my exposure therapy and she even penciled me in for another in-person session later that week. Hopeful. She was hopeful.
As we walked down the street and dipped into the diner, so was I.
Ryan - 11 months
It wasn't always linear; healing often isn't.
The first week, she went nuts. She went to therapy twice, went out to lunch with Bry, grabbed coffee with me, and even braved her apartment to clean it out and move more things into my our apartment.
Then the following Friday, we tried to head to Famiglia for dinner, something she was excited for, had spent hours dolling herself up for. She was beside me in the car trying to figure out what was her favorite thing on the menu, of which she had extensively tried in the past obviously. She had decided on the chicken alfredo when we finally parked and climbed out.
But two feet in, she froze. Her hand went to her throat. Her eyes went huge. Her breathing stopped. We paused, seeing if she could breathe through it, force herself to deal with the symptoms. In the end, the anxiety won out.
We went home and ordered it to be delivered while she sat and obsessed about 'failing'.
But the next time we went, it was fine.
That was just how it was, especially those first few months. You never really knew if it was going to be a good or bad outing but, after me reassuring her a couple dozen times about it, she started to believe that it didn't matter to me. And it didn't. I wasn't the kind of person who liked going out all the time anyway so when she just couldn't force herself to go through with it a time or two, it genuinely wasn't a hardship for me to head back home instead.
It never became 'not a problem'. There was no real 'cure' for her anxiety and agoraphobia. But she got better at managing. It got to the point where she never said she "couldn't" go to a certain place, but that she had issues there a lot and would try. Sometimes trying was enough, sometimes it wasn't.
But every day, week, month brought with it progress.
That had always been all I wanted for her.
After about six months, she finally agreed to letting her lease lapse and sold, tossed, or moved the rest of her stuff in with me. Without that rent to pay every month. Actually, without any bills but things like her cell, health insurance, and various subscription services, she was doing alright with just her money coming in from her stories.
It was a bit too soon to convince her that she wouldn't have to worry about money anymore anyway, that I was at the point where I knew I was eventually going to have her popping out a bunch of my kids and she would be staying home to take care of them anyway so she didn't need to worry about work unless she wanted to.
Actually, on her birthday, Fee and Hunt showed up at our door with all three hellions who proceeded to drive Rocky crazy for an hour. Fee brought her about a year's supply of clothes. And Hunt made her something that had her running to him and throwing her arms around him.
See, Hunt, aside from doing tattoos, also made furniture.
And having had a heads up about her birthday, had set to making her an elaborate writing desk to work on. The leg had been knocked loose on her old one and because it was that fake wood shit, couldn't be fixed and we hadn't gotten around to a furniture store. Mainly because I kept putting it off because I knew Hunter would make one ten times better than anything we could find in a store anyway.
Eventually, I got her to my parents' for Sunday dinner where she spent the beginning of the evening holed up with the kids, them being more of a comfort zone thing for her. Then she worked herself up to joining the rest of us and after about an hour, my mother not-so-discreetly asked me to help her with something in the kitchen.
I had given Dusty a squeeze and followed my mother who immediately turned around and informed me that I better get my woman a ring.
So, I had a ring in my pocket.
And it was one year to the day that the carbon monoxide alarms rang, an event that had brought us together in the first place.
I was out in the hall, having just knocked.
She wouldn't check the peephole because she was expecting Bry.
And she was expecting Bry because he was in on it with me since I had not only asked her uncle, but him for permission when I finally got my shit together.
"Coming!" she called, sounding distracted. "I just have to get these cookies, damnit!" she hissed and I felt myself smile. She didn't curse often, but when she did it, it was with real flourish.
It was another minute before the door pulled open and I found her whole front covered in powdered sugar. There was a smear of it over her cheek as well.
And I knew just what kind of cookies she was making.
"Oh," she said, brows drawing together when she saw me.
I watched her as I lowered down by her feet, seeing her lips part, her gorgeous green eyes going wide with understanding.
"I thought about setting off an alarm," I admitted, making her lips turn up, "you know, for authenticity purposes," I added, reaching into my pocket for the ring- one that Fee and Lea had helped me pick out because 'men knew nothing about this kind of thing'. It was a simple halo diamond on a platinum band. Really, it did suit her perfectly.
"Ryan..." she said, her voice airy, but somehow heavy at the same time.
"Marry me," I said simply, reaching for her hand that was visibly shaking and sliding my ring on her finger.
Eight months later, she did.
After weeks of debating, she eventually thought it was best to just have a small family thing. So she, Fee, and Lea transformed my parents' backyard. We had a Justice of the Peace, family, Bry, and Lo from Hailstorm and that was it. And that was more than enough.
Dusty- 2 years
"It's such a crapshoot," Fee told me, climbing in the bed with me and pulling the blanket back from the baby's face. I was musing on what his eyes and hair would look like seeing as the eyes were a very dark blue that neither of us had and the doctors said were likely to change and he was almost bald. "I have two with green eyes and one with blue. The hair is different too."