Page 38 of As Long As You'll Have Me
“Then I won’t use that term again.” He lifts up three fingers pressed together, the rest of his hand in a fist. “Scout’s honor.”
I try to bite back my smile. “Were you even a Boy Scout?”
He laughs from deep in his belly and the vibration of it fills the room. “God no, Carter and I were the ones making fun of the Boy Scouts, which in hindsight, is hilarious seeing as how I pretty much became a professional Boy Scout once I joined the Marines.”
This is the most open he’s been with me during our time together about his past. It’s nice hearing him talk about his life growing up and his family.
“Carter is your foster brother?” I ask, mostly to confirm and hopefully get him to keep talking. He moves to take a seat on my couch while I grab my pen and paper. Crossing my legs underneath me, I settle myself into my oversized armchair across from him.
“Yep. He came to live with Ivy and me when I was young. I never knew I wanted a brother until he became mine.”
“And you two got along well?”
“We were thick as thieves. Looking back on it, I don’t know how Ivy managed to keep us in line. We were wild, a couple of rowdy boys, you know. Then Cooper came into the mix and the three of us were…” he pauses and I can see how he becomes lost in a memory for a moment. “Let’s just say we definitely weren’t Boy Scouts.”
The two of us laugh in unison.
“Cooper, he’s thepolice officer?”
“That’s right. Good memory.” He smiles.
“I do my best to keep tabs on my clients and the important people in their lives.” I shrug with a smirk.
“Speaking of keeping tabs, how’s that bunny of yours looking?” My pen pauses on the pad of paper I’m using to jot down notes. I flit my eyes up and look at him through my lashes.
“I’d rather talk about whatever was on your mind when you texted me this weekend.”
“I’d rather talk about those cute strawberry pajamas you were wearing,” he tosses back. “Maybe I should call you strawberry shortcake instead of doc.”
“Maybe you should call me ‘Hanna’ since that’s my name,” I reply evenly. I lick my lips and don’t miss how his eyes fall to my mouth as I do.
Leaning back against the couch, he looks at me with a coy expression. The air between us grows thick as he works to come up with some sort of remark but words seem to fail him.
“I like your glasses,” he says, finally breaking the silence between us. Instinctively, my hand comes to the side of them and presses them up on the bridge of my nose.
“Thanks, they help me see better.”
“See your dashing clients who come to see you every day?”
I laugh. “You think you’re dashing?”
“I don’t know, do you?”
His question hangs in the air like a giant warning sign screaming ‘Mayday! Mayday! Abort mission! Abort mission!’ But the truth is, I do think he’s dashing. As much as I shouldn’t, I find him interesting and cute in a way that should be outlawed. But I can’t tell him that, I can’t even tell myself that.
“I think I’m your therapist and this is so wildly off track from what we should be talking about,” I say, swallowing hard. He narrows his eyes at me for a second before taking a deep breath, which I match.
“I texted you because I needed a distraction.”
“A distraction from what?” I pose, thankful that we’ve moved on from talking about how I feel about him.
“Just a bad dream I’d had. Nothing major.” He shrugs it off but even with his attempted aloofness, I can still tell that this isn’t ‘nothing major’ to him.
“A dream about what?” I ask. He holds my gaze for a beat before answering.
“I—” he hesitates, eyes dropping to his lap. He squirms where he’s sitting before looking back at me. “It was just a bad dream. That’s all.”
Never one to push my clients to talk about something they’re not ready to discuss, I simply nod. “You know, I have another patient struggling with nightmares. Something I suggested he do is write them down in a note or journal when they happen. Sometimes it helps us process things better when we write them down on paper and look at them with our own eyes.”
