There was no way in hell I was going to let her live alone for the first time in her entire life when she was so very clearly suffering from PTSD thanks to her decade-long relationship with the worst kind of human being.
And I say it’s been a year of pure torture, because for the first time in over two decades, I want a woman. I want this woman more than I want my next breath. And not just in the physical sense. From the moment I first saw her, the image of her had been branded on my mind, to the point I see her beautiful face every time I close my eyes, every time I blink. She’s a constant in my subconscious, never allowing me to fully concentrate a hundred percent on anything or anyone else, because there’s always this shadow of her perched in the corner of my mind. Which isn’t good, since I’m a well-respected psychologist.
I realize I’ve been sitting here a little longer than I should, as I see Astrid glancing at her watch and biting her lip, probably wondering what’s taking me so long to get out of my car. She knows I’m here. All sorts of bells and whistles go off inside the house when I open and close the gate, and she can see my car outside the window. But she believes I always have an appointment with a patient over the phone that I finish before I come inside, or that I’m wrapping up things with security cases with one of the guys. She doesn’t know I just sit and watch her for a little while, enjoying her relaxed expression, seeing the real Astrid, before I come in and she’s back to her usual tense and overly careful state.
I put in the code at the door and it unlocks, allowing me inside, and I barely have it closed before the locks reset and Scout is barreling into me. He may be a trained military police dog, but being retired, he now knows he’s free to just be a well-loved and spoiled pet. I stoop down and bury my hands and face in his thick gray, white, and black swirled fur, giving him a minute of my attention, all while I feel Astrid’s eyes on me from the kitchen. The open concept of my house allows me to peek up over Scout’s head just enough to catch the small smile on her pillowy lips before she spins away, opening a drawer quickly to act like she wasn’t just watching me.
I stand, strolling up to the huge island separating the kitchen from the living area, and sink onto one of the stools that surrounds it. “How was your day, goddess?” I ask her, the same thing I always ask her when I get home from work. And she replies the exact way she always does as well.
“It was good.” And there’s her little one-shoulder shrug, never meeting my eyes as she plates our dinner, then slides it across the island to me. She tugs the stool at the end of the counter around to sit on, keeping the five feet of white marble between us.
I groan in pleasure at the smell. “God, I love your spaghetti. Thank you for this.”
Words of affirmation. Right now, it’s the only Love Language she’s receptive to. I can see her physical response to the praise, a relaxing of her shoulders, the corners of her eyes no longer pinched.
I take a bite, moaning at the perfection. “How you get the absolute perfect amount of salt every time is beyond me, woman. So, so good. Mm.”
There we go. Her eyes finally lift, and I can hear her barely audible sigh of relief.
And it makes me want to murder that motherfucker for making her this way. Making her terrified that she’ll be punished if the food she didn’t have to cook in the first place isn’t exactly right.
But I can’t. It’s against our code. Life for a life. He might’ve ruined a decade of her life, but he didn’t end it. So therefore, I’m not allowed to choke the very spark from his body.
“What did you do today?” I ask, glancing around the first floor and seeing its usual immaculate state. Not even one of Scout’s dog toys are outside its beige basket with the black pawprint.
She wipes her mouth delicately with a napkin before replacing it on her lap. “I put together several makeup orders. There’s a sale going on, so there’s quite a few more than usual, if you wouldn’t mind taking them to the post office for me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” I remind her, watching her closely.
A tiny furrow of her brows. “Oh. Oh yeah. So… I can do it. No biggy.” She shakes her head.
“I’ll take you. You don’t have to go alone,” I tell her, and she nods, a look of relief in her eyes. The post office is right by my office, so I normally take her orders for her after she packages them all up. But since I don’t work on Saturdays, I use it as an opportunity to make her leave the house. Otherwise, she’d stay right here, a self-imposed prison. Hence why it wasn’t that hard to keep her from moving out and leaving me once Brandon was behind bars.