“Thanks.” He managed to keep the impatience from his tone. “How can I help her?”

  Dr. Taylor paused, then spoke slowly. “By doing something extremely difficult, Rory. That’s why I’m calling.”

  “Okay.” He held the phone tighter. There must have been something in his tone, because he was aware of Thomas, coming to stand in the doorway of the living room, which meant Marcus wasn’t far away. They were giving him space, but staying close.

  “Daralyn has asked to be checked into my treatment facility in Raleigh. She’d like to stay there for a few weeks to undergo some concentrated therapy, particularly regarding the issues that came up tonight. After hearing the details, from her and from my call with Sheriff Wright, I have agreed.”

  “Is there something I should have done? Could have done differently? Can I fix this?”

  “No,” Dr. Taylor said, not unkindly. “I told you recently that, the better things were going, the more likely it was that Daralyn would run up against some of her deeper issues. Do you remember?”

  “Yeah. I remember.”

  “She’s still on your mother’s health insurance as her dependent, so it will be covered,” Dr. Taylor continued, as if that was a sufficient answer to what was burning a hole through Rory’s gut. “While she’s there, we recommend that she not communicate directly with any of her family or friends. It’s part of the program, reducing any outside distractions. She’s certainly allowed to reach out if she wishes to do so, but we ask relatives and friends not to initiate contact, to avoid influencing or putting any pressures on the patient while they’re undergoing the therapy.”

  “Okay.” It wasn’t okay. Not at all. But he didn’t know what else to say. Daralyn had gone into the bedroom while he and Dr. Taylor were talking. Now she’d come back into the kitchen. She’d changed out of her dress and into jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail. While she was on the phone, she’d still had his coat around her shoulders. It was gone now, probably lying neatly on the bed. She looked tired, sad. Beaten.

  She was carrying a suitcase.

  Alarm stabbed his gut. “She’s going tonight?”

  “Yes. I’ve called her a cab. She’ll stay in my guest room and I’ll take her to the treatment center in the morning. Normally I’d tell her to wait until daylight and pick her up then, but in her current frame of mind, I feel better taking action now, having her under my direct supervision. She’s in a very precarious place in her head, Rory.”

  He swallowed. “I can help.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Taylor’s voice firmed. “By stepping out of the way and letting this happen. I know it’s very, very hard to hear that. You’re going to have to trust me on this. Let her go.”

  “For a few weeks.”

  “For as long as she needs.”

  That sounded as ominous as it felt. And it felt like being rammed in the gut with a bowling ball.

  “Rory, you and your family already knew Daralyn lacks some key skills for operating independently in the world. Tonight highlighted a very important one. We’ve all been able to work around it as she’s undergone sessions with me for resolving that and her other issues. But being an equal partner in a long term, healthy relationship requires the ability to express her desires, doesn’t it? Until she has that skill, won’t some part of you wonder if she’s with you primarily because she doesn’t have to do that?”

  His temper flared. “It’s not like that with us, and you know it, Doc.”

  Just like his upper body being much more sensitive after his accident, falling in love with her had enhanced his awareness of her in every nerve ending, with every brain cell. All of them attuned to her, and the way she responded to him. He knew she wanted to be with him.

  Dr. Taylor’s voice softened. “You’re right. I can’t speak to what’s true between the two of you. But Daralyn is my patient and my priority. She is very lost right now, and it’s a hazardous labyrinth. Let me do my job, Rory.”

  Thomas had closed the distance between them, was standing within arm’s reach. Maybe he could feel the volatility emanating from Rory as he stared through one pane of glass at the slim woman standing behind another. Her face was blank, but he could feel her pain.

  “If you tell her not to go, she won’t, Rory,” Dr. Taylor said. The urgent note in her voice was something he wanted to ignore, but couldn’t. “You know she won’t. I am asking you not to do that to her. If you love her, let her go.”

  He cut the connection, held the phone in a tight fist. Then he hurled it across the darkened room, hard enough it hit a picture on the far wall. It knocked it off its hook and broke the glass, sending pieces scattering across the wood floor. “No,” he said. “Fucking hell, no.”

  He went to the door, ripped it open and thumped out onto the porch. It took so damn long to get around to the ramp, and another two corners to get back on the drive between the house and the cottage.

  The taxi was pulling in. It was Teller Williams, who ran an evening cab service when he wasn’t working at the Walmart. He gave Rory an affable wave Rory didn’t return as Daralyn stepped out onto her porch, holding the suitcase.

  She stopped when she saw Rory. Froze, really. He lifted his casters up, wheeled over the gravel to her, let them come down with another solid thump a few inches from the patio edge.

  She met his gaze, then shifted hers to his shoulder. Her hazel eyes were full of brilliant pain, fear, longing. And a numbness. She wet her lips. “I’m sorry,” she said, and all those things were in her voice, too.

  He wanted to tell her she hadn’t let him down, that she’d done nothing wrong. He wanted to tell her if she got in that cab, he’d go dead all over. Like he would have if the tractor had rolled over a place far higher on his spine, severing feeling below the neck completely. Leaving only the agony of what was happening in his heart. He needed her. God, he needed her so much.

  If you tell her not to go, she won’t.

  So many times since they’d started down this road, he’d told himself if the road to her happiness led away from him, he’d let her go. He loved her that much.

  But saying something and actually doing it, well that was the bitch of it, wasn’t it? It was the difference between some asshole telling his girl he’d die for her, and actually dying for her. Which was what this felt like.

  Plus, in his thoughts of noble self-sacrifice about letting her go, he’d imagined her happiness looking like happiness. Not like her struggling just to keep her head above water, and him withdrawing to let her drown.

  The taxi’s lights were on him. She held his gaze, and he extended a hand. She put down the suitcase and came to him. Quietly, no emotion in her face. Nothing. Her hand was cold, as always. She was standing on the edge of a cliff, her heels off the back edge, just waiting to see if he was going to push. She still wore his bracelet. That was something.

  He tugged her hand, bringing her down to him, and threaded his fingers through her ponytail as it fell forward over her shoulder. He curled it over his knuckles. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll be here for anything you need. Go do what you have to do.”

  Wariness entered her gaze. Her lips parted. “Rory…”

  “Go,” he said harshly.

  She drew back, startled. “Doesn’t mean I’m not pissed about it,” he said. “But I support you a hundred percent. Get your ass in that cab, now. And go.”

  Tears spilled out of her eyes, but before he broke and lunged for her, which probably would have had him sprawled on the gravel, she retrieved her suitcase, dashed to the vehicle. Teller had emerged to help her. She ducked into the cab while he put the suitcase in the trunk. Then he was back behind the wheel and they were leaving, the car backing up.

  Rory turned toward the cottage, looked through the window at her kitchen table. One chair. She kept the other pushed to a corner now, because of how often the two of them were together there.

  He didn’t turn away from the sight as the cab reached the road. She might have expected him to look toward her, but he was only so strong, honestly. He shifted his gaze to the chimes she’d hung over her patio as the wind moved them. He heard the car drive away, recede with that soft rush of noise, the hum of an engine.

  Only then did he move. He went to the road, watched the taillights recede. From the shadow in the back, he thought she might have looked back, seen him there. Then the car disappeared over a hill, out of sight.

  He started to move. He didn’t have his push gloves to protect his hands, and this wasn’t a chair designed for miles of road travel, but he didn’t care. He started to push faster, and faster, up the hills, headed down, taking the curves without care for his speed, not even feeling the burn in his hands on the rims when he did have to slow enough to keep from toppling. His breath started to sob in his throat, squeeze out of his lungs. His shoulders and back were on fire. He didn’t care.

  He followed the roads by muscle memory. His mind’s eye was full of her. The various versions of her shy smile, her resolve as she woke up and faced a world every day that terrified her. She’d let him help with that, had let him stand with her. Seemingly overnight, it became the role he wanted for his entire life.

  He inhaled her scent with every gasping breath. He heard her voice, the little erratic breaths she made when he pushed her to climax. The way she’d fallen to her knees before him in the cafeteria, as if she was throwing herself on his mercy.

  Her bowed head, the slump of her spine, had said she thought she’d done the unforgiveable. But what worried him more was thinking she’d lost hope that she could ever overcome the fear, the shape of the person she’d been forced to be. It might pose the greatest obstacle to their relationship, but he had no doubt it posed the greatest danger to her soul. To her survival.

  Was the treatment center an effort to change that? Or her way of giving up? Disappearing into a structured world, which, while safer and better than her childhood by a long shot, might just be a different version of a world with no choices to make.

  He usually did the steep grade on Lichen Road at the front end of his workout. He had no idea how far he’d gone when he reached it, and it didn’t slow him down. Not until halfway up the incline, when dizziness swamped him.

  He snarled, made himself reach the crest. But his hand slipped off one rim, jerking the chair to the right. The wheel hit a rough spot on the pavement and the chair veered off onto the shoulder. The impact pitched him out of the seat, and he hit the slope, the clumps of weeds. His legs landed in the drainage ditch with a splash, since the last rains had left a shallow amount of water. With how his luck was running, there’d be a nest of copperheads hanging out there, just waiting for something to bite.

  He heard a screech of brakes. Staring up at the sky, his chest heaving, he noticed it was a dark night, no moon and overcast. None of the rural roads outside of town had streetlights.

  And yet he’d had enough light to navigate. That was when he realized he’d had a vehicle following him for some time, lighting his way. Thomas was jogging toward him, silhouetted by the headlights of his Nova.

  He crouched next to Rory, his concerned eyes all over his brother under the flashlight Marcus held. But Rory gave Thomas credit. He spoke as casually as if they were in their mom’s kitchen. “Hey, little brother. Can I give you a lift home?”

  “Yeah.” But Daralyn wouldn’t be there. Which made the word home mean a lot less.

  As Marcus righted his chair, Thomas helped Rory sit up. Rory wouldn’t say he buried his face in his older brother’s shoulder for a long moment, or that Thomas wrapped his arms around him, held him tight. He wouldn’t say that it might have been the only thing that gave him the strength to get up one more time. Keep going.

  That was okay. Thomas wouldn’t be saying it either. The truth really didn’t need words. Words usually just fucked it up.

  So life went on, as it did. Thomas came and helped out at the store. Rory knew that he and Marcus were delaying their return to New York. Thomas said the loft was a better place to work on his newest project, and coincidentally it gave him the opportunity to pitch in, since Rory was down an employee. Rory let it pass, though if his brother and Marcus didn’t leave soon, he’d give them the necessary nudge to do so. They had a busy life and other demands on their time, and they couldn’t put them off indefinitely, no matter what Thomas claimed.

  Rory was fine. He couldn’t seem to make anyone believe that, though.

  His mother stopped by daily. Sometimes twice. She’d make dinner for him. Good stuff, his favorites. It all tasted like sawdust. He’d come home and pick at it, say the right things, make conversation, watch a little TV with her, then return to the store, work on fuck-all until past bedtime.

  She was talking to Dr. Taylor daily, getting updates on Daralyn. Which was pretty much the same thing, every day.

  Daralyn was working through an intensive program she and Dr. Taylor were developing and adjusting, day by day. Sometimes it was two steps forward and five steps back. She had good days and bad days. She missed them.

  Since he could imagine what those backwards days looked like, Rory stopped asking for the updates, figuring his mother would tell him if the broken record changed.

  When he exhausted himself, he went home to bed. Once or twice he went to Daralyn’s place and slept on her bed. He didn’t like being at her place without her, though. This was her space, that she’d filled with the things she’d allowed herself to enjoy, to express herself. When he was there alone, it felt too much like the house of a deceased relative, someone he wasn’t expecting to come back.

  She’d had one of Elaine’s cookbooks sitting on the counter, and when he opened it up at a bookmarked page, he’d found a recipe for chicken-fried steak. The bookmark was a post-it note in Daralyn’s handwriting.

  Make this for Rory’s birthday. Elaine says it’s his favorite.

  He didn’t return to the cottage after that.

  He reminded himself to shower, do his skin checks, do his workouts, his PT and training with Red. He did those things mainly to keep his family and friends from worrying about him.

  They tried to get him to talk about it. He found himself realizing—and perversely admiring—how often Daralyn managed a conversation, avoiding unwelcome attention on things she didn’t want to discuss. He wasn’t as good at that, sometimes so abruptly forcing the subject toward more casual topics he earned a startled look from whichever friend or family member was trying to open him up.

  They didn’t have a can opener big enough. No one did, not even himself. The only person who might wasn’t here.

  He didn’t want to think about what he was thinking about. He just wanted to keep moving so he didn’t have to think at all. They didn’t need to worry. He could take care of himself, be an adult. He’d had his wallowing period after his accident. He wouldn’t become that person again. He wouldn’t do that to his family.

  But he had nothing to give to anyone right now, because it was taking everything he had to take care of himself. Be that adult, trying not to burn his world down because the woman he loved had put herself out of his reach, beyond where he could help her.

  She was trying to figure things out. But she’d shut him out, and it was hard not to take that personally. Also impossible not to keep replaying that moment in the cafeteria, when he was sure he’d failed her somehow. Dr. Taylor had said he hadn’t, but she couldn’t replace his gut.

  Daralyn had been an animal in a cage. That was how Dr. Taylor had described her. Born there, no memory of anything but confinement. She’d lived at the whim of two men who never considered her care a priority, except for how it served their purposes. She’d lived and survived without hope. When she’d finally been taken from them, a light had started to burn in her previously lifeless gaze, proof that miracles existed. Hope had found a way in, and life’s possibilities had fueled it, made that light burn brighter.

  In the cafeteria, that light had sputtered. In the driveway, before she left in the cab, he hadn’t seen even a flicker of it in her. Something had taken hope away from her.

  He was her Dom. Her person. The man who loved her. He should have been able to prevent that. Kept the light burning.

  Dr. Taylor said the solution had to come from her. He knew that. Told himself, over and over, this might be the best thing for her. He needed to be supportive. He passed on encouraging messages for Dr. Taylor to share with Daralyn, if she thought they’d be helpful. They felt like empty greeting card sayings that made him cringe just to recall them.

  Getting up every day was getting harder, but he did it. When she needed him again, he was going to be there. But every day that passed without her return, without any kind of message from her, made the voice in his head get louder. It said what she needed might not end up being him. He might have just been a waystation, after all.

  He wanted the very best for her. He wanted her to be happy. But if that meant a life that didn’t involve him being with her, the pain of accepting that might just be the stroke that finished him off.

  “Mom doesn’t know what to do.”

  Thomas had spent the morning in the store, but he came home to eat lunch with Marcus. Marcus had made them a robust portabella salad, plenty of chopped ingredients. Thomas scattered a handful of pumpkin seeds over his dressing as he spoke. “He’s running the store, taking care of himself, handling customers, but he’s a robot. Completely shut down. Just gives me this cold stare if I try to get him to talk about it. Says, ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’”

  Marcus lifted a shoulder, made a noncommittal noise. Thomas shot him a look. “That’s pretty much been your response since she went to Raleigh.”

  “Just being supportive. Letting you talk it out.”

  Thomas leaned back in his chair, eyed his husband. Marcus was studiously slicing up the fresh tomato that Thomas had brought back from the store’s produce stand. “You are many things, but laconic isn’t usually one of them. Care to enlighten me on why you don’t seem as worried about him as the rest of us?”