Page 179 of Sins of Arrogance

It doesn’t last long and the ten­sion in Mick’s body tells me he never loses full aware­ness of our sur­round­ings. But he still does it.

And that causes an­other kathump in my chest.

The closer we get to the main restau­rant area, the louder it gets. Un­til we’re stand­ing in front of a pretty woman giv­ing Mick a warm smile.

She wel­comes us to the restau­rant and she turns her head enough to en­com­pass me with her smile as well.

I smile back, but it’s forced.

Not be­cause she’s not lovely. I’m sure she is, but the mu­sic and voices in loud con­ver­sa­tion to com­pen­sate for the vol­ume of it cre­ate a wall of sound that presses against me like a phys­i­cal force.

Mick pulls me closer and leans down. “Okay?”

I want to say yes. He’s made a real ef­fort to bring me some­place spe­cial, but I have an in­ex­pli­ca­ble urge to cry. I don’t un­der­stand this.

No, I don’t go places like this. Even the bar we went to for Róise’s birth­day wasn’t as loud as this, with sound echo­ing all around me. The club for her party was louder, but still not like this.

This ca­coph­ony is out­side my nor­mal ex­pe­ri­ence, but that doesn’t mean it should be this over­whelm­ing to me.

“It’s loud,” I say.

The host­ess isn’t smil­ing now. She’s look­ing at me with con­cern. “Are you al­right?”

Do I look that bad?

“Would you like to get our food to go and eat some­where more quiet?” Mick asks.

I sag against him and nod. Mick tells the host­ess what we want to do, and she gets us menus to look at be­fore call­ing a waiter over to take our or­der.

By the time I’ve picked out my food, I’m prac­ti­cally crawl­ing out of my skin. Leav­ing one of his men to get our food when it’s ready, Mick leads me back out­side.

As soon as we are back on the side­walk, my en­tire body shud­ders in re­lief.

“I would un­der­stand Fi hav­ing this re­ac­tion,” I say to Mick as we start walk­ing. “But I’m not prone to anx­i­ety.”

“Or you are not put in sit­u­a­tions that trig­ger it for you,” Mick replies.

That’s some­thing I’m def­i­nitely bring­ing up in my next ther­apy ses­sion.

“The acous­tics in there am­pli­fied ev­ery­thing,” I say, try­ing to ex­plain it both to my­self and my hus­band.

Mick nods. “When I train my men on in­ter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques, they have to learn that ev­ery­one has a dif­fer­ent level of pain tol­er­ance.”

“Uh. Okay.” Where is this go­ing?

“What barely reg­is­ters for one per­son might break some­one else. Cir­cum­stances mat­ter too. Pain in­flicted in an en­vi­ron­ment that causes men­tal dis­tress is more acute.”

I get the anal­ogy he’s try­ing to make. “But I wasn’t dis­tressed.”

I’m not dis­tressed. Am I? This is what I’ve wanted for my whole mar­riage. For Mick to take time to spend with me like a nor­mal cou­ple.

“But you were ex­cited. Height­ened emo­tion of any kind can in­crease our re­ac­tion to stim­uli.”

And I don’t like loud noises. I’ve never equated that with anx­i­ety, or any­thing like that. Only, given a choice, I al­ways go for the qui­eter al­ter­na­tive.

The al­ter­na­tive where sound is mea­sured and pleas­ant, not a roar of noise as­sault­ing my eardrums.

And while I have to deal with crowds in my role as my fa­ther’s daugh­ter and Mick’s wife, I don’t like them. I never make a big deal about it be­cause pro­tect­ing Fiona is al­ways more im­por­tant than my low-level dis­com­fort.