Page 19 of Color of Love

“She was my high school sweetheart. When I was getting ready to move away for college, she told me she was pregnant, so I didn’t leave and we got married. But she’d been lying to me. She just didn’t want me to leave her. I had no decent skills or education, so I joined the military. Katie grew more and more depressed from her guilt, and it was hard for me to be around her, to constantly placate her when I had this pit of resentment burning away in me. I didn’t know how to help her or myself, so I ignored the situation. As soon as I came back from one tour, I signed up for another. For years we carried out this routine. Then one day I got the call that she’d killed herself.”

They sat in silence, the breeze ruffling the trees, birds singing and the sound of branches knocking together.

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” she said.

He wanted to roll his eyes at her words but the sincerity in her voice stopped him. He looked down at her sitting next to him. She didn’t say anything else, and he was grateful she didn’t push him or ask more questions. He felt like he was at his limit, completely drained.

“Let’s head back,” she said.

They drove back in silence, him staring out the window, wondering how a trip into the woods had ended this way. She had broken him but had been his savior too.

“What was that, what did you do with me?” he asked, not facing her.

“It’s called the ‘then and now’ technique. It’s used to help break PTSD sufferers out of a flashback by getting them to focus on what they can see both past and present to help identify that they’re no longer in the past,” she explained. They lapsed back into silence.

“Thank you,” he said quietly after a moment, and when she didn’t respond, again he was grateful for that. When they pulled up outside her office, they got out and stood facing each other on the sidewalk.

“I want you to try to use that technique the next time you’re triggered and let me know what happens. Consider it homework from our school field trip.” She flashed a smile at him, but he didn’t respond. After another beat of silence, she sighed.

“Do you have any friends, Blake?” she asked gently. The way she was looking at him stirred something inside him, it wasn’t quite pity, but he still felt embarrassment flaming his cheeks. He didn’t have friends and he liked it that way, kind of. If he didn’t get close to anyone, he never got hurt.

“I’d like you to work on developing some relationships. I want you to explore getting to know people, putting yourself out there and meeting new people. Some people might like to be alone, but it doesn’t help you heal if there’s no support network in place for you.” She stared at him in that way that made him feel like she was seeing him, really seeing him. He needed to get out of here, now.

“See you next week, Justine,” he said, and turned and walked away, but not before he caught the soft smile she gave him. Damn, she was tearing him up inside.

*

Justine sat down behind her desk, her mind whirring from her session with Blake. She had gotten him to open up and she couldn’t believe it. She was thrilled, from a professional perspective and a personal one. She had only meant to see if getting him out of her office would work, if being somewhere less formal would help him relax. She hadn’t counted on finding one of his triggers, let alone tackling it together and helping him. Then he’d gifted her with information about himself, insight into his past and some of his other issues.

She quickly wrote up her notes before she forgot them. She found it interesting that he opted to tell her about his wife rather than his military flashback. From what she could gather he was harboring severe issues with guilt and failure, both with what happened on his last tour and with his wife. And she bet that was linked to the incident with that suicidal woman too.

That would be a big focus for them moving forward. She needed him to take her through each incident so she could establish what had happened and how his feelings of guilt had formed, and how she could retrain his thoughts.

She was excited: it had been four weeks but they had a breakthrough. She typed up her notes and emailed them to his superior back in Anderson County as she was required to do each week. This time she actually had some detail to share with him and he would be able to see there had been developments.

She sat back in her chair, thinking. She had known Blake would kick up a fuss about going somewhere, that was precisely why she’d done it. She needed to break the pattern they had fallen into. She had watched him as he stood in the forest, taking deep breaths, letting himself relax. His features had softened, and he’d appeared younger, almost boyish and carefree. She flushed in embarrassment when she thought of the personal details she’d revealed to him. But she had needed it to be something important, it would do no good sharing basic information with him, it didn’t create vulnerability and it didn’t create trust.

When he’d gone into his trauma, it pained her, hearing him blame himself for something that hadn’t been his fault. She’d managed to reach him and pull him back and as they’d stood close together, hearts pounding, breaths heaving, she’d shocked herself when she had nearly kissed him. Nearly begged him to take her in his strong arms and show her true pleasure for the first time.

When she had felt his arousal press against her, she’d almost groaned and thrown herself at him. That was the last thing he needed when he was so vulnerable and raw. She knew he wasn’t actually aroused; it was just a physical reaction to all the adrenaline that had been coursing through him. It had been sweet that he tried to hide it, not wanting to make her feel awkward. She shoved her thoughts away, reminding herself that she was meant to be helping her client, not lusting after him.

She made it through the rest of the day, mainly thinking about what she would uncover through Blake’s next sessions.

---