Page 91 of The Ones We Fight For

No, it’s not possible, Walker chided himself. Idiot.

“You’re doing it on purpose,” he finally complained, staring at Talia’s lips as she sucked at the rim of her latte.

“I’m literally just drinking my coffee like I usually do.” Talia smirked. Yeah, she knew exactly what she was doing.

“When you drink things, you usually lean forward a little bit so I have a straight shot down your shirt, and you sound like you’re performing oral on your coffee?” All Walker got in response was a shrug accompanied by a faint dusting of pink in Talia’s cheeks. He sighed overdramatically, leaning back into the armrest of the couch as she breathed in the scent of her coffee again, closing her eyes. “For the love of God. Just send me to Guantanamo Bay to be tortured the normal way.” His eyes wandered back up to her face after spending an inappropriate amount of time in other places.

Talia gave him a cocky grin. “Typical male, acting as though everything I do is about him.”

“You’re wearing a ponytail.”

“And?”

“And, I like it. You know that.” Walker couldn’t help the stubborn smile from drifting onto his face. What he really wanted to do was wrap Talia’s hair around his hand like a bandage and guide her everywhere he wanted her to go. To his mouth. Backwards a little, so he could drag his tongue along her neck again and watch the rise of her chest. Pull her down and lay her on a bed of pillows, one under her hips so he could lift her legs over his shoulders at the perfect angle to—

“I do?” Talia’s voice played into a touch of innocence, but she was anything but. “Anyway, how’s therapy going?”

“Nice segue,” Walker barked out and took a sip of his coffee. “It’s going. I have another appointment today. My sixth. I wish it was going faster, so I could…” He flourished a hand in the air between them to encompass every possible ending to his sentence. Saying “so we can fuck like bunnies” outright would just lead into another flirty conversation, and he did not think he could handle that without losing his damn mind. “I still have zero clue what I’m doing. You?”

“I mean, I haven’t delved into all my dad stuff yet, mostly just my own anger, but we’re working up to it. We’re starting off with one of my many other issues first,” Talia said with false pride.

“And then you’ll get to the enigma that is Jeff Cohen not loving you the way everyone should?” Walker asked. He almost regretted saying it, but not enough to take it back. Talia’s dad was a poor excuse for a parent, man, human, and everything in between. How anyone could know Talia and not love her was asinine. How anyone could hurt her the way her father did when she was just a child made Walker grind his teeth just thinking about it.

“At some point.” Talia gave him a timid smile and reached out to touch his hand. She was clearly used to his anger when it came to her father by then.

“I’m serious, Tal,” Walker griped. “I’m two seconds from digging up his grave and ripping a corpse in half with my bare hands.”

“Well, he was cremated, Hercules, so that’d be a bit hard.” Her smile turned playful, and he rolled his eyes. “Or at least I think he was. I highly doubt he had a proper Jewish burial given that I sure as hell wasn’t going to give it to him.”

“You know what I mean. I hate him. I really do. It feels completely useless to hate someone who’s dead, but I do. He hurt my family and he hurt you, and you are my family. And it pisses me off that there’s not a single thing I can do about it.”

“You deserve it, too, you know?” Talia’s voice was soft and genuine, but Walker’s immediate impulse was to divert the attention off himself.

“To be cremated?”

“Walker.” It was her turn to roll her eyes. “I mean you deserve a parent who loves you, too. I know you had Cole and then Paisley, but it was never supposed to be their job to raise you. Your dad should have done that. I know he’s sick, but it’s not an excuse for what he did to you.”

“Do you think either one of us will ever grow into a fully functioning adult?” Walker joked again, still trying to steer the conversation away from himself.

“I think that the adults we think have it the most together are still out there wandering around, trying to figure it out just like we are,” Talia offered, her ponytail swaying over one shoulder. Walker’s eyes caught the motion for a moment before returning to her face.

“I guess the therapy is helping, at least with the panic attacks, I just—” He looked down at his feet. “I don’t know.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” Talia leaned toward him, and Walker scooted so he was flush to her side. She knew every time he needed comfort and that her touch gave it to him. He relaxed a little against her and thought about how natural it would feel to set his hand on her knee, not in an altogether sexual way, but in the way people do when they are so in tuned to someone that it feels like the only appropriate thing to do.

“It’s not like I thought going to therapy would bring Cole and Paisley back, but I thought it would help me get over it. It hasn’t.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Talia laced her hand in his and squeezed in solidarity, bridging the gap he had wanted to cross earlier. “The goal isn’t to get over it. The goal is to learn how to keep moving forward through the grief. You’re a little behind the starting line, trying to make up for lost time because you never allowed yourself to grieve. You skipped a step or two.”

“But what was I supposed to do? Someone had to—”

“Hey,” Talia interrupted calmly. “You did what you had to. I get it. My mom shut away the injured part of herself for years after she left my dad and only started to fix it when things felt like they were crumbling.”

“Really? But she was still good to you?” Walker flexed a perplexed brow.

“She was amazing. But she worked herself to the bone. You’re a lot like her.” Walker grimaced, and Talia gave a lighthearted roll of her eyes. “I mean that she would have sold both of her kidneys just to make sure I was okay. I loved her endlessly, but I didn’t need her to do that for me. Sometimes I wished she would’ve allowed herself to be sad instead of making sure that I wasn’t.”

“Wow, maybe you should be my therapist.” Walker pointed at Talia and she laughed, a sound he was sure could restore all his hope in life.

---