Sweet Seduction Shield(92)

But I couldn't stop it. I couldn't turn the need to count her breaths off. So, I compromised. I allowed myself a count of one hundred. If she missed a beat, sped up or slowed down, within that time, I would start at the beginning.

Daisy was three years old when I stopped rigorously counting, trusting her to sleep through the night when I put her down.

Instead I sang her a song, and while I sang the song and watched her fall asleep, I'd just peek at her respirations, just a glimpse, a small rate check I told myself, and that would be enough.

I still sing Daisy Bell to her each night. I still glance at her chest to make sure it rises and falls. But I haven't actually consciously counted her respiration rate for the past five days.

Since Ryan Pierce walked into my world and turned it upside down in more ways than one.

I let a long breath of air out and pulled back to look up at his face. Tenderness and concern stared back at me.

I swallowed past a dry throat and said, "I have issues." No judgement, just a soft nod of his head, an encouragement to go on. "I'm obsessive," I admitted, he smiled. Yeah, he'd obviously got that one. "Compulsive with the obsessions," I added. "I count things. Counting helps. Your respiratory rate is fourteen breaths per minute right now."

His eyebrows rose up his face.

"Your pulse was sitting at fifty-five beats per minute, but it's just gone up."

A soft breath of air got pushed through his lips. He blinked.

"I'm telling you this so you understand what I am. What I have become since that night. What I need in order to get through the day."

"OK," he said quietly, as though he wasn't quite sure what to say to all of that. Then, "So, is that why you shut me out? Because you needed to count?"

I frowned and let a burst of air out through my nose, scrunching up my face while I was at it.

"Not consciously. And it's not just counting. I clean too. Obsessively."

"I had noticed that," he replied gently, his hand lifting the cloth off the bench and then putting it back down.

"I have routines, certain paths I take to walk to work, certain paths I have to avoid."

"Uh-hah."

"I don't handle change well."

"You're doing all right," he murmured.

I shook my head. "No, I'm not." Another frown. "Or at least I wasn't."

"You weren't?"

I shook my head again. "That's beside the point. I guess, what I'm trying to tell you is..." I hesitated. Having never really put any of this into words, it was harder than I had anticipated.

"That you're a little fucked in the head and don't handle surprises well," he offered, the words light, but his gaze intense. "Hell, Marie. We're all like that to a certain extent."

"Not like me."

"No," he agreed. "Perhaps not to the same level, but you've got to know I have quirks too, babe."

I blinked at him. He wasn't getting it.

"I have to be the one to step up to the plate and help out. I can't say no to someone in true need. I'll forgo sleep in order to see them to safety. I'm constantly checking that the Women's Refuge has everything it needs, twice a month, sometimes more. And when my trust doesn't earn much money, I supplement the donation with funds from my pay-cheque."

Silence.

"I married once and it was a disaster," I rushed to say, the words tumbling out after his own admission, as though him opening up to that degree cracked my shield, unlocked my flood gates, and made it all pour out. "I became OCD straight after. I've improved, but those first few months, hell that first year, was hard. Too hard. I can't go back there again. I can't. I just can't do that to Daisy. If she saw me now, how I was back then, she'd think I was crazy. I can't be a crazy mother. It's not fair. She's already got a dead criminal father, she can't have the stigma of an institutionalised mother as well."

Ryan just looked at me, really looked at me. I couldn't tell what he was thinking and after that horrendous verbal explosion I'm not sure I wanted to know. I shuffled slightly on my feet and his hands came up, cupping my cheeks, thumbs rubbing softly over my jaw.

"I won't let you."

My mouth fell open. He didn't dismiss my concerns. He didn't brush them aside. He acknowledged them, and then gave me the only thing he could, that I would be willing to accept.

I won't let you. I won't let you go back there. I won't let you let Daisy down.

"So," he said softly, still rubbing his thumbs across my jaw, still cupping my cheeks. "It's not the time, is it? It's the act."

I nodded. I was shit scared of marrying again and having my world fall apart when it went wrong.

"OK," he whispered. "I'm not giving up." What? "I still want to call you my wife. I want to be Daisy's father."