Gentle Knock - Chapter 47
Title: A Gentle Knock at the Door, Chapter 47
Author: zeppomarx
Characters: I know you know who the characters are by now: House, Wilson, Cuddy, etc.
Warnings and So On: NC-17 for concepts. H/W friendship (perhaps slash if you wear those kind of goggles)
Summary: For anyone who missed the lecture at the beginning of class: House is a physical and emotional mess, having been wrongly imprisoned and tortured and all sorts of nasty stuff. It's about what happens next, and how House deals with it. A sequel to Priority's Exigencies, which is a sequel to DIY Sheep's The Contract, which has spawned an incredible number of offshoots.
Timeline: Set nearly a year after the beginning of Exigencies.
Earlier chapters: Chapters 1-16 here. Chapters 18-43 here. Chapters 44-? here.
Comments: I like getting comments. Comments are good. If you're one of those people who reads but never says anything, I'd really like to encourage you to come out of the woodwork and write to me. It means a tremendous amount to the writer, who -- in my case -- has devoted half a year to this story, thus far. So please, come out wherever you are and post a comment.
Oh, Yeah, the Disclaimer: Don't you get tired of reading the same old same old here all the time? I know I do. It's pretty obvious I don't own this stuff, I'm not going to sell it and I'm just doing this for fun. There. I've said it. And I'm glad. Glad, do you hear me? Glaaad!
SUMMARY: House forces the issue, and discovers something surprising-about himself...
TEASER: It Hurts Too Much...
___________________________________________
A Gentle Knock at the Door
Chapter 47
Still expressionless when she returned from her physio session, Rainie stared at the television with a decided lack of interest.
Dinner came and went. He attempted his; she pushed hers away.
More television. Hours of television. Finally, House grabbed the remote and turned off the set. His action had virtually no effect on Rainie, who continued to stare vacantly in the direction of the blank set.
Make her angry, eh? What the hell.
“That’s it. I’ve had it,” he said after a moment. She turned her head in his direction without actually looking at him.
“Fine,” she said, her voice flat.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. He held her chin between his fingers and forced her to look at him. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I meant it. I’m not putting up with this bullshit anymore.”
Startled, she made eye contact briefly before looking away.
“Doesn’t matter to me either way,” she said, shrugging.
Ah. Got it. Or at least part of it.
“But it does, Rainie. It matters to you a lot-too much, in fact. I know what you’re doing.”
For a second, she looked at him again, this time emotion flooding over her. Then her face went slack.
“Oh, and pray tell, what would that be?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
“You’re running away, taking the coward’s way out.”
She drew in a short breath.
“So what?” she said, finally, her voice rising as she spoke. “It doesn’t hurt as much this way. So, tell me, what’s wrong with that?! So what if I am?!”
“Because…” he said quietly, allowing the dramatic pause to build until she had to look at him, “…if you give up, if you shut down, you let Thompson win. He wanted to destroy you and he couldn’t. But by destroying yourself, you’re letting him win. On top of that,” he added-might as well pile it on thick-“by giving up, you-you, Rainie Adler, not Thompson-are saying that Jeff and Evie died for nothing.”
That got her.
“Dammit, Greg, they did die for nothing! Thompson was insane and he killed them to get even with me, to get even with you. There was no meaning in it. And whether I live or die, there won’t ever be any meaning in it!”
“So what you’re saying is you’re actually angry with me-because if it wasn’t for Thompson wanting to get even with me, they’d be alive.”
She faltered. “N-no. Not angry with you. With Thompson. With me.”
“How can you say that?” he said, goading her on. “Be realistic! You ought to be angry with me. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be here! You’d be living your nice New York life with your husband and your baby. It’s all my fault. Why don’t you just say it? Come on, Rainie! Say it!”
“No!” she yelled. “You couldn’t help what happened. It’s not your fault! It’s not!”
“Then what makes you think it’s your fault? Why are you so angry with yourself?” He was yelling now. Well, at least she was interacting with him, making eye contact.
Her eyes were flashing, and she was facing him on the bed, close enough that she could feel his hot breath on her face as he bellowed at her.
“Dr. House? Is everything all right in here? Do you need any help?” In his right ear, House heard the impeccably bad timing of nurse Kate Marcus, who was standing a few paces into the room.
“It’s fine!” he said, not even glancing in the direction of her voice, keeping his eyes on Rainie. “Get the hell out of here!”
After a second, he heard the whoosh-thud of the door behind her.
“Answer my question, Rainie,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Why are you so angry with yourself?”
She was breathing heavily now and her eyes were locked on his. He hoped this was the right thing to do. At least it was better than having her stare vacantly at walls.
“Because… because, goddamn it, I brought this on my family, and I should have been able to save them! I did everything Thompson wanted. I forfeited my job, my life, my health, my sanity. And it wasn’t enough… it wasn’t enough to save them! I wasn’t good enough.”
She started to cry.
Her reality met his in a stunning moment.
“Dear god, neither was I,” he whispered under his breath, shaken.
Very hesitantly, he reached out toward her, fearful of rejection again. This time, she let him touch her arm. Cautiously, he moved closer.
“It’s not you. Believe me, it’s all Thompson. It’s not that you weren’t good enough. It’s that he was bad enough. Bad enough to kill them for no reason. Just as he killed Dr. Cameron. Don’t let him kill you, too. Don’t let that evil bastard win. Fight him, Rainie.”
She pulled back and looked away again, casting her eyes down.
“I… I’m so tired of fighting,” she said, as if even speaking the words was an effort. “I’m just so tired.”
“I know,” he said, more tenderly now. “So am I. I understand. I really do. There are moments I wish I could just die and be done with it. Done with the pain, done with the fear. Done with myself. Knowing that I’ll never have another pain-free moment the rest of my life. That breathing is an effort. That I’m constantly fighting the panic down, hiding it from everyone around me, just to make it through the day.”
She looked up at him abruptly, searching his face for something. For what?
“Know why I don’t just quit? Especially when we both know it would be a lot easier.”
She shook her head, and leaned in slightly.
“Because I refuse to give Thompson the satisfaction. Because the only way I know to beat the bastard is to stay alive and try to make my life mean something.”
For a moment, he thought he’d done it, gotten her out of this vacuum that had consumed her.
Then she turned her head away and pulled back again.
“What?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, which didn’t make any sense.
“No what?”
“No to this.” She leaned further away.
He wasn’t sure what she meant by “this.” He waited.
“Just can’t. It hurts too much.”
Oh, here we go again. She’d let herself get close to him, and getting close always meant getting hurt. In fact, he realized right at that moment that if she pulled back from him emotionally now, after he’d opened up to her, he would also get hurt. Really, seriously, wrenchingly hurt. The thought suddenly petrified him.
Tell her the truth, Jacey had said. Had she meant the truth about how he felt, or some other truth? He wasn’t sure.
“What brought this on?” he asked. “Was it what Pevey said to you?”
She nodded tentatively.
“Mm-hmm. Sort of.”
“Why sort of?”
“Doesn’t matter what brought it on. I can’t go on like this.”
She gestured at the two of them, at the beds pushed together. He found himself feeling increasingly anxious.
“This can’t be healthy. I’m relying on you too much. It’s not fair to you.”
Trying not to panic and not at all sure why he was feeling the way he was, he said, “Let me be the judge of what’s fair to me.”
“Fine,” she said. “But I can’t keep doing this.”
Somehow, it was glimmering through the fog. He took her shoulders and turned her toward him again.
“What’s really going on here? Don’t give me that ‘hurts too much’ crap. Of course it does. We’re both terrified of getting close to anyone and losing them, maybe for different reasons, but the result is the same. I get that. What is it that’s making you pull away? Pull away now?”
She refused to meet his gaze. Her eyes shifted around as she thought about whether to answer, and how. When she finally responded, her voice was low, and she seemed very uncomfortable.
“I guess it’s not that unusual.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
“What?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
If he had to put a name to it, he’d say she looked embarrassed. Now her voice was so quiet, he could barely hear her.
“It’s called transference, isn’t it? I guess it’s pretty common… for a patient to fall in love with her doctor.”
Oh.
Oh!
He was, quite simply, staggered.
How had he not seen this coming?
So she thought she was in love with him. In the past, women had claimed to be in love with him, or had pursued romantic entanglements. With the exception of Stacy, who was sharp and bracing in her love, he’d always recognized it and run like hell. Somehow, this time, he was… well, what was he?
Stunned? Definitely.
Flattered? Maybe.
Concerned? Absolutely.
It was probably just a reaction to his treating her with care after everything she’d been through, he thought. Although maybe there was something more.
He realized with a shock that he hadn’t just treated her with care. He’d actually cared. And had let her know he cared.
He could see why she was fearful. She was a smart woman and this was full of pitfalls. It wasn’t healthy, at least not now, not here, not like this. And yet he felt enormous tenderness and… affection… and… admiration… what else… love…? It couldn’t be, could it? It had been growing for weeks, but the man who could be so perceptive about other people had completely missed this in her. And in himself.
He became aware that if he was ever going to love someone again, it would almost definitely have to be Rainie Adler. And more to the point, that he already did love her. He just wasn’t sure in what way he loved her.
Thanks to their mutual experiences, from here forward she would be the only one who could really see past his physical damage, the only one who wouldn’t pity him any more than he pitied himself.
And here was the scary part: She was the only one-probably in his whole life-he’d ever, ever felt totally safe with, safe enough to let down virtually all of his defenses-the only one who could ever completely understand him as he was now.
Damn it! She was intelligent, she was witty, she was feisty and she was perceptive. Under the fear and the incredible physical frailty, she was just the kind of woman he would have been attracted to before… and the kind he would have zoomed like a high-speed train to get away from, to avoid her uncanny ability to pierce his façade.
But now…? Face it. His façade had already been pierced. He’d allowed her to see into his heart, shared things with her no one else knew. And somehow, she still liked him, still thought she was in love with him. It certainly wasn’t his physical appearance that appealed to her. Much to his great surprise, he found that-perhaps because of what had happened to the both of them and because of her incredible fragility-he wasn’t afraid of her, afraid of what she might do with that knowledge. He ought to be, but he wasn’t. This wasn’t good.
The timing couldn’t be worse. It couldn’t happen here, with the two of them essentially sharing a bed, with the entire world watching, in this fishbowl of a room, and with the whole medical ethics thing in the way.
But, yes, he loved her. Whatever that meant.
As his mind raced around the problem, Rainie sat defeated, her head drooping, her eyes opaque.
Once he finally got to the end of his thought process, he reached for her, but she pulled away. He reached out and turned her toward him once more, lifting her chin and making her look him in the eye.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I don’t know what this is, but you need to know…” Should he say it? No, he shouldn’t. He absolutely shouldn’t. Stop before it’s too late. Stop. Don’t do it. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t go there. Really. Don’t say it… “…it’s mutual.”
Her eyes opened, the soft light catching a glimmer of emotion.
“And you’re not the only one who is terrified.”
Hesitantly, he drew her closer to him. She resisted a little, but then, almost as if resigning herself, relaxed with a soft sigh.
Nestling her in the crook of his left arm, he caressed her face with his trembling right hand. The two of them, now observing each other intently, brought their faces closer. After a moment of examining one another, searching each other’s eyes, looking for-something… what?-they kissed, tentatively at first, then with a passion that astonished him, that left him winded, heart racing.
“I must be out of my mind,” he said when they finally stopped to breathe.
She nodded. “I know I am. So… what are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. But we can’t let this happen. We have to put the brakes on.”
She agreed. “Now you know why I pulled away, and why I felt so hopeless,” she said, a hint of that sense of defeat returning to her voice.
“Yeah. I get it now. This could be a disaster. I don’t think either of us knows if it’s a reaction to all the trauma or if it’s something that has legs. And the potential for hurting each other and ourselves is enormous.”
She nodded. “Now that it’s out in the open, now that we’ve acknowledged that we’re both feeling something, is it even possible to set it aside, and just go on as we were?” she asked, and then, answering her own question: “I think we’re going to have to try. Otherwise, we’ve just created a monster that’s going to burn down our castle.”
“You’re absolutely right. We have to try. If for no other reason than it’s unbelievably unethical of me to allow this to happen. So let’s take it a moment at a time, and keep communicating, no matter how it turns out.”
“Yes.”
“But first…” He held her close and kissed her one more time, a kiss that shook him so deeply he felt it reverberate throughout his body. Oh, lord, this is dangerous. “That’s going to have to last us a while.”
She nodded again.
You flaming jackass! he thought, suddenly furious with himself. What’s the matter with you? Kissing a patient? You’re certifiable. But then he thought of her lips on his, her body close to his, and he slowly realized how very much he craved not just physical affection but also a sense that he might still be desirable, despite everything, despite his battered body and shattered mind. And who else could accept him in this condition except someone who had been through the same levels of hell?
Not really comforted by that thought, he sighed heavily.
Once he got past his initial discomfort over what had just happened, he found himself thinking about Rainie and what the turn of events could mean to her. She was too delicate, her physical and emotional condition too precarious. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t risk letting her get hurt. He couldn’t let himself get emotionally involved. He had to be strong. He had to stop it. Now.
Neither of them slept much that night.
And neither did Wilson, who had watched everything undetected from the couch in the corner of the room.
NEXT: What Wilson Said...
Author: zeppomarx
Characters: I know you know who the characters are by now: House, Wilson, Cuddy, etc.
Warnings and So On: NC-17 for concepts. H/W friendship (perhaps slash if you wear those kind of goggles)
Summary: For anyone who missed the lecture at the beginning of class: House is a physical and emotional mess, having been wrongly imprisoned and tortured and all sorts of nasty stuff. It's about what happens next, and how House deals with it. A sequel to Priority's Exigencies, which is a sequel to DIY Sheep's The Contract, which has spawned an incredible number of offshoots.
Timeline: Set nearly a year after the beginning of Exigencies.
Earlier chapters: Chapters 1-16 here. Chapters 18-43 here. Chapters 44-? here.
Comments: I like getting comments. Comments are good. If you're one of those people who reads but never says anything, I'd really like to encourage you to come out of the woodwork and write to me. It means a tremendous amount to the writer, who -- in my case -- has devoted half a year to this story, thus far. So please, come out wherever you are and post a comment.
Oh, Yeah, the Disclaimer: Don't you get tired of reading the same old same old here all the time? I know I do. It's pretty obvious I don't own this stuff, I'm not going to sell it and I'm just doing this for fun. There. I've said it. And I'm glad. Glad, do you hear me? Glaaad!
SUMMARY: House forces the issue, and discovers something surprising-about himself...
TEASER: It Hurts Too Much...
___________________________________________
A Gentle Knock at the Door
Chapter 47
Still expressionless when she returned from her physio session, Rainie stared at the television with a decided lack of interest.
Dinner came and went. He attempted his; she pushed hers away.
More television. Hours of television. Finally, House grabbed the remote and turned off the set. His action had virtually no effect on Rainie, who continued to stare vacantly in the direction of the blank set.
Make her angry, eh? What the hell.
“That’s it. I’ve had it,” he said after a moment. She turned her head in his direction without actually looking at him.
“Fine,” she said, her voice flat.
He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her toward him. He held her chin between his fingers and forced her to look at him. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I meant it. I’m not putting up with this bullshit anymore.”
Startled, she made eye contact briefly before looking away.
“Doesn’t matter to me either way,” she said, shrugging.
Ah. Got it. Or at least part of it.
“But it does, Rainie. It matters to you a lot-too much, in fact. I know what you’re doing.”
For a second, she looked at him again, this time emotion flooding over her. Then her face went slack.
“Oh, and pray tell, what would that be?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
“You’re running away, taking the coward’s way out.”
She drew in a short breath.
“So what?” she said, finally, her voice rising as she spoke. “It doesn’t hurt as much this way. So, tell me, what’s wrong with that?! So what if I am?!”
“Because…” he said quietly, allowing the dramatic pause to build until she had to look at him, “…if you give up, if you shut down, you let Thompson win. He wanted to destroy you and he couldn’t. But by destroying yourself, you’re letting him win. On top of that,” he added-might as well pile it on thick-“by giving up, you-you, Rainie Adler, not Thompson-are saying that Jeff and Evie died for nothing.”
That got her.
“Dammit, Greg, they did die for nothing! Thompson was insane and he killed them to get even with me, to get even with you. There was no meaning in it. And whether I live or die, there won’t ever be any meaning in it!”
“So what you’re saying is you’re actually angry with me-because if it wasn’t for Thompson wanting to get even with me, they’d be alive.”
She faltered. “N-no. Not angry with you. With Thompson. With me.”
“How can you say that?” he said, goading her on. “Be realistic! You ought to be angry with me. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be here! You’d be living your nice New York life with your husband and your baby. It’s all my fault. Why don’t you just say it? Come on, Rainie! Say it!”
“No!” she yelled. “You couldn’t help what happened. It’s not your fault! It’s not!”
“Then what makes you think it’s your fault? Why are you so angry with yourself?” He was yelling now. Well, at least she was interacting with him, making eye contact.
Her eyes were flashing, and she was facing him on the bed, close enough that she could feel his hot breath on her face as he bellowed at her.
“Dr. House? Is everything all right in here? Do you need any help?” In his right ear, House heard the impeccably bad timing of nurse Kate Marcus, who was standing a few paces into the room.
“It’s fine!” he said, not even glancing in the direction of her voice, keeping his eyes on Rainie. “Get the hell out of here!”
After a second, he heard the whoosh-thud of the door behind her.
“Answer my question, Rainie,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Why are you so angry with yourself?”
She was breathing heavily now and her eyes were locked on his. He hoped this was the right thing to do. At least it was better than having her stare vacantly at walls.
“Because… because, goddamn it, I brought this on my family, and I should have been able to save them! I did everything Thompson wanted. I forfeited my job, my life, my health, my sanity. And it wasn’t enough… it wasn’t enough to save them! I wasn’t good enough.”
She started to cry.
Her reality met his in a stunning moment.
“Dear god, neither was I,” he whispered under his breath, shaken.
Very hesitantly, he reached out toward her, fearful of rejection again. This time, she let him touch her arm. Cautiously, he moved closer.
“It’s not you. Believe me, it’s all Thompson. It’s not that you weren’t good enough. It’s that he was bad enough. Bad enough to kill them for no reason. Just as he killed Dr. Cameron. Don’t let him kill you, too. Don’t let that evil bastard win. Fight him, Rainie.”
She pulled back and looked away again, casting her eyes down.
“I… I’m so tired of fighting,” she said, as if even speaking the words was an effort. “I’m just so tired.”
“I know,” he said, more tenderly now. “So am I. I understand. I really do. There are moments I wish I could just die and be done with it. Done with the pain, done with the fear. Done with myself. Knowing that I’ll never have another pain-free moment the rest of my life. That breathing is an effort. That I’m constantly fighting the panic down, hiding it from everyone around me, just to make it through the day.”
She looked up at him abruptly, searching his face for something. For what?
“Know why I don’t just quit? Especially when we both know it would be a lot easier.”
She shook her head, and leaned in slightly.
“Because I refuse to give Thompson the satisfaction. Because the only way I know to beat the bastard is to stay alive and try to make my life mean something.”
For a moment, he thought he’d done it, gotten her out of this vacuum that had consumed her.
Then she turned her head away and pulled back again.
“What?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, which didn’t make any sense.
“No what?”
“No to this.” She leaned further away.
He wasn’t sure what she meant by “this.” He waited.
“Just can’t. It hurts too much.”
Oh, here we go again. She’d let herself get close to him, and getting close always meant getting hurt. In fact, he realized right at that moment that if she pulled back from him emotionally now, after he’d opened up to her, he would also get hurt. Really, seriously, wrenchingly hurt. The thought suddenly petrified him.
Tell her the truth, Jacey had said. Had she meant the truth about how he felt, or some other truth? He wasn’t sure.
“What brought this on?” he asked. “Was it what Pevey said to you?”
She nodded tentatively.
“Mm-hmm. Sort of.”
“Why sort of?”
“Doesn’t matter what brought it on. I can’t go on like this.”
She gestured at the two of them, at the beds pushed together. He found himself feeling increasingly anxious.
“This can’t be healthy. I’m relying on you too much. It’s not fair to you.”
Trying not to panic and not at all sure why he was feeling the way he was, he said, “Let me be the judge of what’s fair to me.”
“Fine,” she said. “But I can’t keep doing this.”
Somehow, it was glimmering through the fog. He took her shoulders and turned her toward him again.
“What’s really going on here? Don’t give me that ‘hurts too much’ crap. Of course it does. We’re both terrified of getting close to anyone and losing them, maybe for different reasons, but the result is the same. I get that. What is it that’s making you pull away? Pull away now?”
She refused to meet his gaze. Her eyes shifted around as she thought about whether to answer, and how. When she finally responded, her voice was low, and she seemed very uncomfortable.
“I guess it’s not that unusual.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
“What?” he asked, genuinely baffled.
If he had to put a name to it, he’d say she looked embarrassed. Now her voice was so quiet, he could barely hear her.
“It’s called transference, isn’t it? I guess it’s pretty common… for a patient to fall in love with her doctor.”
Oh.
Oh!
He was, quite simply, staggered.
How had he not seen this coming?
So she thought she was in love with him. In the past, women had claimed to be in love with him, or had pursued romantic entanglements. With the exception of Stacy, who was sharp and bracing in her love, he’d always recognized it and run like hell. Somehow, this time, he was… well, what was he?
Stunned? Definitely.
Flattered? Maybe.
Concerned? Absolutely.
It was probably just a reaction to his treating her with care after everything she’d been through, he thought. Although maybe there was something more.
He realized with a shock that he hadn’t just treated her with care. He’d actually cared. And had let her know he cared.
He could see why she was fearful. She was a smart woman and this was full of pitfalls. It wasn’t healthy, at least not now, not here, not like this. And yet he felt enormous tenderness and… affection… and… admiration… what else… love…? It couldn’t be, could it? It had been growing for weeks, but the man who could be so perceptive about other people had completely missed this in her. And in himself.
He became aware that if he was ever going to love someone again, it would almost definitely have to be Rainie Adler. And more to the point, that he already did love her. He just wasn’t sure in what way he loved her.
Thanks to their mutual experiences, from here forward she would be the only one who could really see past his physical damage, the only one who wouldn’t pity him any more than he pitied himself.
And here was the scary part: She was the only one-probably in his whole life-he’d ever, ever felt totally safe with, safe enough to let down virtually all of his defenses-the only one who could ever completely understand him as he was now.
Damn it! She was intelligent, she was witty, she was feisty and she was perceptive. Under the fear and the incredible physical frailty, she was just the kind of woman he would have been attracted to before… and the kind he would have zoomed like a high-speed train to get away from, to avoid her uncanny ability to pierce his façade.
But now…? Face it. His façade had already been pierced. He’d allowed her to see into his heart, shared things with her no one else knew. And somehow, she still liked him, still thought she was in love with him. It certainly wasn’t his physical appearance that appealed to her. Much to his great surprise, he found that-perhaps because of what had happened to the both of them and because of her incredible fragility-he wasn’t afraid of her, afraid of what she might do with that knowledge. He ought to be, but he wasn’t. This wasn’t good.
The timing couldn’t be worse. It couldn’t happen here, with the two of them essentially sharing a bed, with the entire world watching, in this fishbowl of a room, and with the whole medical ethics thing in the way.
But, yes, he loved her. Whatever that meant.
As his mind raced around the problem, Rainie sat defeated, her head drooping, her eyes opaque.
Once he finally got to the end of his thought process, he reached for her, but she pulled away. He reached out and turned her toward him once more, lifting her chin and making her look him in the eye.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I don’t know what this is, but you need to know…” Should he say it? No, he shouldn’t. He absolutely shouldn’t. Stop before it’s too late. Stop. Don’t do it. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t go there. Really. Don’t say it… “…it’s mutual.”
Her eyes opened, the soft light catching a glimmer of emotion.
“And you’re not the only one who is terrified.”
Hesitantly, he drew her closer to him. She resisted a little, but then, almost as if resigning herself, relaxed with a soft sigh.
Nestling her in the crook of his left arm, he caressed her face with his trembling right hand. The two of them, now observing each other intently, brought their faces closer. After a moment of examining one another, searching each other’s eyes, looking for-something… what?-they kissed, tentatively at first, then with a passion that astonished him, that left him winded, heart racing.
“I must be out of my mind,” he said when they finally stopped to breathe.
She nodded. “I know I am. So… what are we going to do?”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. But we can’t let this happen. We have to put the brakes on.”
She agreed. “Now you know why I pulled away, and why I felt so hopeless,” she said, a hint of that sense of defeat returning to her voice.
“Yeah. I get it now. This could be a disaster. I don’t think either of us knows if it’s a reaction to all the trauma or if it’s something that has legs. And the potential for hurting each other and ourselves is enormous.”
She nodded. “Now that it’s out in the open, now that we’ve acknowledged that we’re both feeling something, is it even possible to set it aside, and just go on as we were?” she asked, and then, answering her own question: “I think we’re going to have to try. Otherwise, we’ve just created a monster that’s going to burn down our castle.”
“You’re absolutely right. We have to try. If for no other reason than it’s unbelievably unethical of me to allow this to happen. So let’s take it a moment at a time, and keep communicating, no matter how it turns out.”
“Yes.”
“But first…” He held her close and kissed her one more time, a kiss that shook him so deeply he felt it reverberate throughout his body. Oh, lord, this is dangerous. “That’s going to have to last us a while.”
She nodded again.
You flaming jackass! he thought, suddenly furious with himself. What’s the matter with you? Kissing a patient? You’re certifiable. But then he thought of her lips on his, her body close to his, and he slowly realized how very much he craved not just physical affection but also a sense that he might still be desirable, despite everything, despite his battered body and shattered mind. And who else could accept him in this condition except someone who had been through the same levels of hell?
Not really comforted by that thought, he sighed heavily.
Once he got past his initial discomfort over what had just happened, he found himself thinking about Rainie and what the turn of events could mean to her. She was too delicate, her physical and emotional condition too precarious. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t risk letting her get hurt. He couldn’t let himself get emotionally involved. He had to be strong. He had to stop it. Now.
Neither of them slept much that night.
And neither did Wilson, who had watched everything undetected from the couch in the corner of the room.
NEXT: What Wilson Said...