Page 230 of Deviant

What a waste of two lives that were always meant to find each other.

“Hey, hey, where did you go?” she asks worriedly, immediately sensing where my head is at. “No. No. Look at me, Elias” she coos, cupping my face in between her palms. “I’m here. You’re here. We are both here. Together. Always and forever.”

With my eyes closed I nod, not wanting to ruin today’s plans with my own trauma.

That’s the other thing no one explains to you. When you go through something like we did, it scars you. It scars you’re very soul. Too many times has my sweet wife had to remind me that we are alive and safe, at the most inopportune moments. Rowen’s trauma manifests in nightmares, screaming bloody murder, her body still shaking after I’ve managed to wake her up from it. Of course, once I’m able to settle her down, I fuck her long and hard for hours on end, making sure that all that negative energy is replaced with our love. I only relent after she’s too exhausted to even move, knowing that is the only way the nightmares don’t return.

We might give money to places like this, but we can never commit ourselves to them. Though we know we need it, therapy is just a luxury we can’t risk taking. I mean they’d lock us both up for good and throw away the key with half of the shit that keeps us up at night.

Still, there have been those who seemed to have worked around it.

“Mr. Scott. Mrs. Scott. I can take you out into the backyard lawn now,” Anton announces, alerting us to his presence.

“Are you good?” Roe whispers.

“As long as I have you, I’m always good.”

“Sweet talker,” she teases before kissing my lips again, just to ensure I’m okay.

“Is everything alright?” Anton asks concerned.

“Everything is perfect,” Rowen says a bit too exaggeratedly. “My husband suffers from low blood sugar. I was wondering while we peruse the lawn, is it possible they you could get him an orange juice?” She bats her eyelashes at him.

“No pulp,” I add.

“Well… I…” he stammers, since he’s the big man around here, and such errands are usually done by lower-level staff. But he’s savvy enough to realize if he wants my half a million dollars than he’s going to have to work for it. “Yes, alright,” he finally concedes “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you.” She pats his arm before hooking hers around mine and strolling into the lawn.

When we go outside, the view is absolutely breathtaking. Mountains as far as the eye can see, with a clear blue sky above us.

“This place is giving me ‘The Sound of Music’ vibes. You know when the nun is singing on the mountaintop? Yeah. That’s what this looks like,” Rowen says, completely in awe of her surroundings.

“None of what you just said rings a bell.”

“You’ve never seen ‘The Sound of Music’?”

“Does it have car chases and guns?”

“Kind of, though it’s mostly based on the Second World War in Austria. It’s a musical.”

“A musical with a nun? Pass.”

“You’re such a guy,” she teases.

“And you, dear wife, are stalling again.”

“Damn it,” she curses under her breath, hating that I know her so well.

“You can do this, baby. I got you, remember?” I reassure as we walk through the large lawn, watching people paint on canvases and scribble on notebooks.

She chews on her bottom lip before shaking her nerves away and scouring every face here.

It wasn’t always like this.

In the beginning, she wasn’t afraid to get her hopes up anytime we came to a place like this.

She would say,‘This is the one. I can feel it,’but her heart would break every time it wasn’t.

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