“That’s a hard one to deal with, no doubt. You said someone had told you about this? Do you have help finally?”
I chuckle. “Kind of. It’s more of an as needed basis.”
“Well, that’s still good progress. Takes a little of load off your shoulders.”
“That’s true. It’s Oakley,” I decide to tell him, although I’m not sure why. It’s not like he’ll share deep, dark secrets from their therapy sessions, but I also want him to see how seriously I’m taking things and that Oakley has played a large part in helping me do that.
“Ah, that makes sense. He’s a good guy, smart as hell.”
“Bluebell Falls is lucky he decided to hide away and then stay. He’s been a tremendous help, and he doesn’t even realize it.”
“Do you feel as though you don’t contribute enough to the town?”
“No, why do you ask?” A knee-jerk reaction, no doubt.
“I’ve never heard you talk about your job the way you just talked about Oakley helping out. He’s not even a full employee, and yet you don’t give yourself the same curtesy.”
I hum, thinking about his words.
“He caught Tennison—well technically, Willow did, but Oakley did a large bulk of the work. I just got Lennox out when we busted in. I didn’t stay and help out. I didn’t prevent Lennox from being taken.”
“You feel you failed.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Remind me of what the doctor told you about Lennox and how fast you got him to the hospital.”
I know where he’s going with this, and I understand his point, but it doesn’t lessen the useless feeling in my chest.
“He said if I had gotten him there ten minutes later, he would have lost too much blood. If I waited for an ambulance, he would have died.” The words are still so hard to say. I don’t even think most of the Huttons know that, but I do, and it doesn’t bring me any comfort to what happened.
“And why does that mean anything less than what Oakley and Willow did?”
“In theory, it doesn’t.”
“But it does to you. Why?”
“Because I was supposed to do more, be better.”
“With the Tennison case or your career?” he asks, so very astutely.
“Hit the nail on the head, Doc.”
“What made you want to come to therapy? Don’t give me a canned answer. Really think about your reasons.”
I do as told, and I decide it’s time to stop hiding behind whatever life I thought I should have and face the one I do.
“Rina. There’s a lot that we’ve already talked about, us getting married young and everything that I did after her parents died. After the Tennisoncase, I ran into her in a quiet room at the hospital. I was looking for a place to wallow, to feel like the failure I was, and instead I found Rina breaking down. I just reacted, needed to be her comfort, and I didn’t think about the consequences. We started hanging out.” I cough into my hand, not wanting to say what hanging out actually looked like. “And I realized she’s always been it for me. It didn’t matter if she took me back or if she forgave me. What mattered was that I was the man she always thought I was. I never really took a hard look at what the injury cost me and how it made me feel. I just shoved it all down. Just like I did with everything else in my life, and she deserves better than that.”
“Youdeserve better than that too, Arlo.”
I nod, knowing he’s right but still having a hard time getting over that feeling of failure.
“I’m trying. With this stalker shit, it’s bringing up all the usual insecurities, and the fact it’s Rina getting stalked has me acting like a damn fool around her.”
“Rina is the one getting stalked?”
“Yeah. He trashed her workshop about a week ago. He’s getting bold, and I don’t like it. I’m scared I won’t be able to catch him before he does something really drastic, though.”
