“I’mgladto hear she’s met our daughter. But you’ve had phone calls, Silva. Not real life. I want Aelin to know her, but with guardrails.”
His grandmother’s kitchen and his grandfather’s workshop had been his safe havens, and losing them in adolescence when he did had not only been the severing of the familial unit, but it had been the end of his emotional safety as well.And that’s not even getting into whatever happened to him in the Otherworld. You’re going to be in therapy together forever.
During the second appointment, Zola handed Tate a tablet and asked him to go into the adjoining room alone to fill out a survey and be as honest as he could. Silva filled Zola in on their relationship and why they were seeking therapy while he was gone, assuming it would be her turn next . . . but the moment never came. The tablet was placed in a desk drawer, and they had continued for the rest of the hour as normal.
“I don’t understand why he gets to go off and play on the tablet while I have to bare my soul,” she’d huffed to Dynah the following evening.
She hated that a tiny, insidious part of her brain was viewing their couples therapy as a race to see who was most at fault. Silvaknewthat wasn’t fair. The whole point of this was to fix what was broken, not to get a gold star for being the one who’d caused the least damage. At the very least, if they were never going to be fixed as a couple, they needed to learn to co-parent, because so far Tate had been showing up for Aelin with the same consistency and work ethic he’d shown in his businesses.Which is part of the problem.
Theotherpart of the problem, another one she knew was unfair, was how irritated she was over how good he was at this. Silva teared up, forced her way through thick emotionto talk about the way she felt and her insecurities. Tate was calm, well-spoken, more honest and insightful than she’d been expecting, and she couldn’t shake the ridiculous notion that he waswinningtherapy.
It was nice having Dynah next door. Dynah joined her and Aelin for dinner at least once a week, took walks with them in the evening, didn’t mind Aelin running into her little backyard to check on the chipmunk, and came over with her own basket and folded laundry with Silva on Thursday nights as they watched a sweeping historical drama, featuring a brooding naga lord and the working-class selkie he loved.
“Maybe she was giving him a personality test,” Dynah offered with a shrug.
Now it was their third appointment, and evidently, they were engaged in a dance to which neither of them knew the steps.
“If we want to put a label on this, it’s a differing attachment style,” Zola went on. “You have an anxious-avoidant dynamic. It’s very common. It’s almost a kinetic pull from one to the other. You described your early relationship as magnetic, and that’s not surprising to hear.”
Tate dropped his face into his hands. “Oh, I hate this already.”
The troll chuckled as Silva glared from the other side of the loveseat, wanting to kick him. She didn’t like how discomfited she was feeling in their newly rekindled relationship, and she didn’t know how to admit that quite yet, not being able to fully explain it to herself.
Everything was going well.
She had no reason to complain. And that, more than anything, she had decided, was a sign that everything was all wrong.
“I don’t know how it is that you don’t remember how to get back to somewhere you claim you were just five days ago,” she’d told him several weeks earlier, picking him up from the Plundered Pixie.
It had been the first week of the new month, the week Aelin was starting school, the first week Tate would be officially stepping back into Silva’s life as more than her missing lover, as more than the love of her life, as more than the long-absent piece of her heart.
He was coming back as Aelin’s father, and Silva still didn’t know how she felt about that.
Sheknewit was ridiculous.This is what you wanted. This is what you dreamed about. This is what you almost got yourself killed for.All of that was true, but in those intervening three years since Aelin’s birth, she’d learned a self-sufficiency she’d previously never needed to develop. All she had wanted was for Tate to come home. She’d never taken the time to think through what that would be like, though. They had beenfinewithout him . . . and now she needed to make room for him within the independence she’d carved out.
He would pick Aelin up from school and keep her until Silva got home. The rest of the week’s schedule was still a work in progress, but for those three days, they had a plan.
Tate gave her a scowl from the passenger’s seat.
“Well, it hasn’t been five days now,has it, dove?” He held up a hand, counting off on his long fingers. “Five days getting me fuckin’ head kicked in, andthenI was dead for a week. I spent a second week in that miserable hospital. Then I was home, completely feeble. Andnowit’s been a fourth week, so I think a month and then some is adequate enough not to remember whatever nonsense directions you gave me to Clagglehorn Crookery.”
Silva smiled grimly, shaking her head. He was still counting his time away from her in weeks.Weeks. She felt as though she’d aged a hundred years without him, five endless, aching years, half a decade, and he had the audacity to be counting inweeks.
Counting in weeks, and looking like a fresh-faced twenty-something as he did so.
She hadn’t realized it until his bruises were less fresh, then understanding he was serious about sleeping up on the Pixie’s roof, like a ridiculous gargoyle. Hadn’t realized until his injuries were less noticeably severe, when the impact of thosefive daysbeneath that oversized moon became clear, but he looked years younger, as if the unnatural moonlight in her Majesty’s forest had buffed his skin to a smooth sheen, giving him a supernatural lustre. She’d been even crankier afterward, staring at her own five-years-older reflection in the mirror.
She’d picked him up that morning, after he insisted he didn’t even know which direction to head in for the morning’s objective — to show him the way to Aelin’s school, how to get to her condo, where to find the community center, the grocery store, and any other Cambric Creek landmarks Silva thought it was important for him to know.
“The hospital, I didn’t even think of that. It’s in the other direction, back by the university.”
Tate nodded, adding the note in his phone. He had been tapping out notes to himself since he slid into her car, knees practically to his chin. Silva gave him a sidelong glance at one point, wanting to know what it was he was typing as they passed the winery on their way back into town.
Tate braced himself against the dashboard as they did so, throwing his hand out, holding his breath dramatically . . . and then exhaling in confusion as the car continued on, head cocked, eyebrows drawn together. He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t ask, rolling her eyes once more.
“You look tired, dove.”
Silva wrinkled her nose. “Gee, thanks. How charming.”
