Rae looked over her glasses and smiled. “That’s a beautiful photo,” she said. “Your mom died?”
Solo nodded, assuming Rae had worked it out from the contact details. “2021. Breast cancer. Forty-nine.” She swallowed, the short, sharp sentences sticking in her throat like mini cactus balls. “I had to get out and start a family—Jesus.” That couldn’t be, could it?
“What’s wrong?” Rae paused, mid-writing.
“Did I just use Janie to start a family?” Solo got up from her chair and went to the window. She scanned the street, but there was still no sign of her wife. How long would it be before she couldn’t call Janie that anymore? She turned back to face Rae. “Is that why Janie says I’m so distant? Because it was never really about her, and only ever about her having the babies?” Solo stumbled at the horrific thought and had to rest her butt on the windowsill. “No wonder she’s left me.”
“Slow down, Hannah,” Rae said. “Tell me about when you first met Janie.”
Solo smiled widely, very much aware of it this time. “I was on leave, and I’d gone to blow off some steam in Vegas. I was at a club called Infinite.” She glanced at the ceiling again, instantly able to recall the layout of the club, the dark lighting, the pounding bass, and then…Janie came from behind and walked past her. She inhaled deeply, as if she could almost smell Fenty over the scent of the fruity candle in Rae’s office.
“Tell me what you’re seeing,” Rae said.
Solo sat in her chair again before describing the experience. A tingle ran through her whole body as she retold their meeting.
Rae smiled. “What you’re feeling now, does it seem real to you?”
Solo nodded and sighed deeply. “It was real. Itisreal.”
“And when you used to think of starting a family,” Rae said, “did you think about how you wanted to feel about the woman you’d do that with?”
Solo gave a short huff. “I wanted the real thing.” Just like she’d seen in all those Hallmark movies she loved and watched in secret for years, not that she was going to admit that to anyone, even her therapist. “And I got that with Janie. I love her. I love Janie.” She rubbed the heel of her hand on her forehead. “I feel like I’m being run over by a tank, doc. This therapy shit is brutal.”
Rae chuckled. “Indeed it is.”
“Why is my own brain fucking with me?” Solo pulled at both her ears. “If I don’t know what I’m feeling, how am I supposed to fix everything?”
“There’s a lot going on in your life right now, Hannah,” Rae said gently. “And there’s been a lot of changes happening too. You told me how the garage was your dream, and it’s been a whirlwind over the past two months since your team all came back into your life. All of that while you’re trying to raise not just one child but three. Then there are the problems in your relationship with Janie. And it seems like you may not have fully processed the grief over your mom’s passing. That’s a lot for anyone to parse out and make sense of.”
Solo dropped her head against the high-backed chair. “Jesus, doc, are you trying to tell me I’m going to be in therapy for the rest of my life?”
“I’m not going totellyou anything, Hannah,” Rae said. “You’re going to work out all the answers for yourself. That’s why therapy is so hard.”
Solo frowned. “But you’re going to help me, right?”
“I’m going to give you some tools to help yourself.”
Solo rolled her eyes. Why were therapists so expensive if the client had to do all the work?
“I know that must sound strange, and you might be wondering what you’re paying for,” Rae smiled as if she knew exactly what Solo was thinking, “but I promise you that the changes you’ll make and the realizations you’ll come to will be all the morepowerful because you’ll be the one in control of them.”
“Okay,” Solo said slowly. “But youaretelling me that it’s going to take some time to work everything through?”
“I am,” Rae said. “But I can’t say how long that will take. Iwillsay the more work you put in, the more results you’ll see. Lots of people go to therapy but not all of them are actually benefiting. Mainly because they’re not giving everything. They hold back because they’re afraid of what they might discover…about themselves and about their relationships.” She waved her finger between the two of them. “That’s why this relationship is paramount. You have to trust me. You have to believe that I can hold whatever you tell me, without judgment. If you’re too concerned with what I might think of something you want to share, you’ll end up keeping it to yourself, and we won’t be able to progress beyond it.” She smiled. “Does that make sense?”
“I guess,” Solo said, “but it makes me want to shit my pants too.”
Rae chuckled. “Our own demons can be frightening, Hannah, but I’m sure you’ll find the courage to face them.”
Solo sucked in a long breath. “I want my wife back, and I want to raise our family together. I don’t care how painful and scary it’s going to be, I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Good.” Rae motioned to her office door. “It doesn’t look like Janie’s going to make it today. Do you want to continue without her?”
Solo swallowed hard, the dual meaning striking her heart like a fifty-caliber bullet. She didn’t want tocontinuewithout Janie. She didn’t want to be a single mom to their girls. So if she had to cut herself open and lay herself out with the doc’s tools, then that was exactly what she’d do. “Let’s keep going,” she said.
“Excellent. Perhaps we could come back to what you said about your friendship with Gabe. You said you were her best friend, but there seemed to be some hesitancy.”
Solo held in a scoff and reminded herself Rae had to know her in order to help. “I look up to her. She took me under herwing when I joined the Army, and she made me part of her team. Woody and RB went to school together, then came into the service together in 2006, so they were already pretty tight. Lightning—sorry, Shay—joined in 2004, at the same time as Gabe, and they became friends when Lightning dragged Gabe out of the path of enemy fire in an ambush.”
