“His name is Jeremy,” he told her. “He is everything that’s good about the world wrapped up in a person.”
Laurel watched him closely for a moment before she nodded. “I’m glad you’ve met someone you think so highly of,” she said. “Does he feel the same way about you?”
Harrison remembered the expression on Jeremy’s face when he’d declared finishing the wall didn’t have to be the end of their time together. The man had been radiant. “So far, so good.”
“Then why the sudden panic?” she asked.
“It’s not panic,” he insisted.
“Isn’t it?” Laurel pinned him with the stare that had always demanded he rethink his last words. “When you walked in here you were letting anxiety do your talking for you. Don’t try to deny it.”
Harrison sat forward once more, determined to make her understand. “I’m telling you, I can’t have a relapse, Laurel.”
“And I’m telling you, adding more rules to your ever-growing list is not going to stop that from happening.” She clasped her hands together as she spoke. “The anxiety you’re feeling? The fear of losing what you’ve found? That’s the real danger here.”
“So, what do I do?” he asked, throwing his hands in the air. “There has to be something I can do.”
“Let’s sidestep for a moment.”
The moment the words left her mouth Harrison fell back into his chair with a groan. “Not this again.” Laurel always wanted to sidestep when he became hyper-focused. It never boded well for whatever goal he was determined to reach at the time.
“Tell me something,” she began, “why is it so important you don’t relapse?”
Harrison balked at the question. “Why do I want to stay healthy? Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding you. We both worked incredibly hard to get you to a place where you were able to work with your diagnosis instead of fighting against it. Since then, your episodes have decreased in frequency and severity. Now suddenly you want to default to some kind of ‘put a lid on it and hope it goes away’ approach? I want to know why.” She stared down her nose at him and damned if he didn’t feel like a fourteen-year-old kid again.
Harrison sighed. He should have known he’d never manage to escape this room without spilling his guts. “Jeremy’s ex-boyfriend had a traumatic childhood and because of that he hurt Jeremy—badly. So, Jeremy would prefer not to get involved with anyone who has a similar background.” He cleared his throat before he added the clincher. “Damaged people aren’t good for him.”
Laurel didn’t react to his confession, not visibly anyway. “You’re telling me Jeremy doesn’t know about any of this?” She gestured to the room they were in. “About your mother, the struggles you’ve gone through, the challenges you face on a daily basis?”
“Of course not. We’ve known each other less than a month,” he told her. “So, no, I haven’t used ‘My mother tried to kill me’ as a conversation starter. Being a mental case isn’t my most attractive feature.”
“Oh, sarcasm. I must have hit a nerve,” Laurel said, throwing his own tone back at him. “You’re concerned when Jeremy finds out who you really are, you’ll lose him.”
Harrison glanced down at his clasped hands and saw white knuckles. “He wouldn’t be the first to walk away from the freak show.”
“Language, dear.”
The gentle reprimand made his gaze return to Laurel. He rolled his eyes at the expectant look on her face. “He wouldn’t be the first to walk away from the high-functioning survivor with the manageable mental illness.”
That garnered him a smile. “Much better.”
Dropping his head between his shoulders, Harrison pushed his fingers through his short hair. “If I tell him what happened to me, it will ruin everything.”
“It will ruin everything?” she questioned. “It might ruin something? It could ruin nothing?” She lifted her eyebrows at him. “So many possibilities.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he conceded. “I get the point.”
“You should know better than to catastrophize in my office,” she said with a light chuckle, before turning serious once more. “I’m not suggesting you should dump your life story on him all at once. But it is possible to share parts of yourself, a little bit at a time, and see what happens.” She paused to let him think on that for a moment before adding, “If he doesn’t know all the different parts of you, what kind of relationship can the two of you possibly have anyway?”
“The kind where I don’t hurt him?” he suggested.
Laurel frowned, tutting as she slowly shook her head. “You’re hiding from him, Harrison. That will hurt both of you in the end.” She leaned forward in her chair. “All right then, what’s the worst thing that could happen here?”
“I tell him everything, and I lose him.”
“It is one of the many possibilities,” she said with a nod. “What would happen next?”
He rested his clasped hands against his mouth as he sat forward over his knees. “It would hurt like hell.”
“But you and hurt are old friends. You would survive the hurt and move forward. You always do.” She straightened in her chair to look him dead in the eye. “What’s the best thing that could happen?”
He could fall in love with me, the way I’m falling in love with him.Harrison didn’t voice the thought. It was too surreal, too incredible. But it was there, like sunshine in his mind.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” There was a level of awe in Laurel’s voice he’d never heard before. Not in all the years he’d known her.
“What?” he asked.
“Harrison,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “You have a beautiful smile.”
