We Shouldn't (The Raven Brothers Book 2) Page 11

  “Being fucked up? Apparently, not well as my family had an intervention.” I couldn’t figure out why I was saying all this, and yet, I couldn’t stop myself either.

  “You can afford private therapy,” another man said.

  I nodded. “I can and did, but she sent me here. Money or not, only other vets know what it’s like to fight, to be terrified of dying, to be in such pain you wish you were dead, and to come home to a world that you don’t quite fit in anymore.”

  The rest of the group nodded.

  “That’s what it’s like,” one of the other men said. “It’s like you’re a puzzle piece whose shape changed and when you get home, you don’t click. Not with your family, not with society. Does it get better, Dan?”

  An older gentleman that probably served in Vietnam seesawed his head. “It’s not as bad. My family reshaped themselves some, to use your puzzle analogy. They accept that they have to let me know when they enter a room behind me. Let me sit facing the door at restaurants. Can’t go to firework celebrations.” He shrugged. “You know.”

  Everyone nodded, including myself. When we were done, I wanted to make a quick exit, but a few of the men stopped me, welcoming me into the group. The young man, thanked me for sharing that I had a similar experience.

  “What do you do?” I asked him.

  “I play video games.” He gave a sheepish smile. “I can’t find work.”

  “Are you good at it?”

  “Now I am.”

  “So you’re observant and can react?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “I might have a job for you,” I said, thinking of all the surveillance tape I had to go through to find the thief at the club and restaurant.

  The kid’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

  “Yep. You need to be on time and on the ball, and the job might be boring.”

  “That’s okay, I’m used to being bored.”

  I laughed and pulled my card out of my pocket. “Come see me tomorrow. We’ll go over it all then.”

  He looked up at me like I was a fucking God, which I hated, and at the same time, it made me feel good. Not good in that he thought I was a God, but that I was giving this kid something that made him happy.

  “How’d it go?” Grace asked when I reached the street. She was waiting like she’d been there the whole time.

  “I’m not ready to give you the satisfaction of saying you were right,” I said with a wink.

  She smiled, and like a balm, it soothed my battered soul. “I believe in you, Hunter.”

  Her belief was misplaced, but I kept that to myself. She’d figure it out soon enough.

  16

  Grace

  Monday – Tuesday

  I was torn on how to feel. I wanted to walk away from Hunter…well, I didn’t want to but knew I needed to. That didn’t happen. But I did get him to a veteran’s group, and it appeared to go well. Because I wasn’t his therapist anymore, I didn’t ask him any probing questions about it. I didn’t need to though because there was a calm about him that I hadn’t seen before.

  The other difficulty was that I’d agreed to see him socially as friends. While this wasn’t bad per se, since I’d been his therapist and slept with him while being his therapist, in my mind, a clean break was the safest thing I could do to protect my career. The problem was, I didn’t want a clean break. Seeing Hunter’s small, yet, notable changes and growth made me so proud of him. And yes, he was hot and compelling and addicting. I couldn’t indulge that part, which I supposed made me a glutton for punishment.

  The next day, I headed up to his office just after lunch to let him know of the plans I’d made for us as part of our platonic relationship deal. His secretary, Yvonne, told me he was with someone as she scrutinized me. She had that look of a woman who felt like another woman was encroaching on her man. I wondered if Hunter had ever been with her and then scoffed at myself. Of course, he had. Hunter was a hound dog, or at least had been. He’d told me yesterday that he hadn’t been with another woman since meeting me. I wondered if that would last. I hoped so. Hunter deserved a real, loving relationship with a woman, not one-night stands to keep the horrors of war from entering his dreams.

  “I’ll just wait, if that’s alright,” I told Yvonne.

  “Sure.” She nodded toward a sitting area. “Did you and Hunter have fun yesterday?”

  “He was just walking me out,” I said. It wasn’t my place to tell her what Hunter had been doing. If he wanted her to know, he’d tell her.

  The door opened and a young man, who couldn’t be much older than twenty walked out with Hunter behind him. When Hunter saw me, he smiled, and my heart did cartwheels in my chest. I really needed to get control of my emotions around him.

  “Hi,” he said. “Give me a minute, will you?”

  I nodded. “Yes, of course.”

  “Yvonne, this is Jacob. He’s going to work with me on a project. I need you to arrange for a place for him in one of the empty offices up here and get him fully set up with computers. Here’s a list of what we need. I need it by tomorrow morning.”

  Yvonne took the list. “I’ll have it ready even if I have to stay late to do it.”

  Oh, gag, I thought at her obvious attempt to lure Hunter into an after hours romp. What a cliché; the boss and the secretary.

  “Have HR email him paperwork too, please.”

  “I’ll do that now,” she said. At least she was efficient.

  “Jacob, fill out the paperwork and bring it with you tomorrow. No paperwork, no job,” Hunter explained.

  “I’ll do it as soon as I get home, Thank you so much Mr. Raven.”

  “Glad to do it,” Hunter said shaking his hand. “I’ll see you later.” Then he turned to me. “I’ll see you now, Ms. Reynolds.”

  I followed him into his office and watched as he went to his desk. His shoulders were relaxed, and his expression was missing its usual scowl.

  “Want water or coffee or something?” he asked me.

  “No. Who was that young man?”

  Hunter sat in his chair and motioned for me to sit in the one in front of his desk. “Jacob. I met him yesterday.”

  Similar to AA, members of counseling groups generally kept mum about who was in attendance. But I knew what he meant. Jacob had been in the veteran’s group. And now, he’d hired him.

  “You gave him a job?”

  “I did.”

  I smiled as I remembered Sara telling me how Hunter was more likely to engage in something if it meant he’d be helping someone else rather than himself.

  “You’ll be going to group again?” I asked, hopeful that he would.

  He nodded. “I’ll try it out again.”

  Relieved, I handed him a piece of paper. “Meet me here after work.”

  “What is it?” he looked at the paper where I’d written down an address and a type of clothing to wear.

  “Trust me on this.”

  I saw a little bit of tension and wondered what that was about. “Are you alright?”

  “I don’t like walking into the unknown,” he said.

  That gave me pause. Was I triggering something from his time in the military?

  “It will provide you peace and calm.”

  His eyes turned wicked. “A hotel where we’ll fuck all night?”

  I rolled my eyes at him while all my girly parts flared to life. “No.”

  He frowned. “War was hell, Doc, but not being able to touch you is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

  I grinned. “Self-control. Good.” I stood. “See you at six?”

  He nodded as he rose from his desk to walk me out. “I’ll be there.”

  At six in the evening, I stood outside the building waiting for Hunter. He emerged from the dark car wearing black sweatpants and a white t-shirt pulled tight over his chest. My mouth watered to lick his pecs.

  “Down, girl,” I said to myself.

  He smirked at me like he knew my dirty thoughts.
“Yoga?” he asked looking at the sign on the building marking the yoga studio.

  I nodded.

  “At bootcamp we got strong, but not necessarily flexible.”

  “Don’t worry. Yoga is a do-what-you-can exercise,” I explained.

  “I thought we’d go running. Didn’t you say you run?”

  “We can do that another time.” I ushered him into the studio. I wasn’t his therapist anymore, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t direct him to activities that would help his healing, such as the group last night and yoga today. I stopped him just before we entered the room where the yoga class was taught. “I like that you’re much more agreeable now.”

  He grinned. “I keep hoping I’ll get laid.”

  I smirked. “Good thing yoga can strengthen your hands.”

  He laughed. It was a glorious sight.

  “The point is, Hunter, I want to thank you for trusting me.”

  His eyes narrowed a little bit, and I realized that he probably wasn’t aware, until now, that he was following along with me without resistance. Not wanting him to linger on that too long, I walked into the class. It was a small beginner class designed specifically for vets.

  I took off my oversized sweatshirt. Underneath, I had on a lycra exercise top and yoga pants. Hunter’s gaze raked over me, and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t like the sensual gleam in his eyes.

  I grabbed two mats and set us up on the other side of the room. Then I sat and waited for the instructor and other participants to arrive.

  “Why are we here?” Hunter asked sitting next to me as a woman with noticeable shrapnel scars entered.

  “Yoga is excellent in helping veterans,” I said.

  He frowned. “If touching my toes could fix me, I’d have been better a long time ago.” He impressed me by extending his legs and, indeed, he was able to touch his toes.

  “It’s not the stretching alone. It’s the breathing. Veterans like you live in a constant state of fight or flight, which wreaks havoc on your body and nervous system. Breathing is a way to calm it down.”

  “I breathe every day,” he quipped.

  “Not like this you don’t. It can also help you reconnect with your body.”

  He arched a brow.

  “Often, to avoid the feelings, people will disassociate from their body. Not like an out of body experience but blocking off feeling connected to it. This will help you reconnect. It’s about mind-body wholeness.” I reached over and set my hand on his arm. “It could lead to flashbacks—”

  He tensed. “Fuck—”

  “But everyone here is in the same boat, Hunter. They’re all veterans of war.” By then, several men and women, some with visible injuries from war and others without, were in the class. Some were spouses or friends of the vets, like I was to Hunter.

  I saw the tension escalate in him and wondered if I should have withheld that last piece of information. I didn’t want him to worry about it, and yet, it felt dishonest not to prepare him that his emotions could be let loose.

  He lay back and scrapped his hands over his face. I leaned over him, and he set his hand on my ass.

  “You can do this, Hunter.”

  “Will you move in front of me, so I can see how you do it?”

  When his hand squeezed my butt, I knew he had ulterior motives, but I figured I liked watching him, and if he liked watching me and it helped him calm down, what was the harm?

  “Sure.” I moved my mat so I was in front of him. I stood on it and turned my head to look at him over my shoulder. “Okay?”

  His gaze dropped to my ass. “Very nice.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned forward as the instructor started the class.

  Somehow, we got through the class, and I even convinced him to return to it with me. By the following Tuesday, he’d been to two more VA groups and was now entering the yoga class again. He said he was only coming because he liked watching me move. I didn’t doubt it, but he had taken the class, and in particular, the breathing exercises seriously, so if I had to let him ogle me to come to class, I was okay with that. Of course, that was my own ego speaking. I’d never felt ugly, but I’d never felt sexy either until Hunter.

  Not giving into having sex with him was very hard, but so was not asking him about whether or not he was trolling for women at night, or having nightmares, or how the VA group was going. I was dying to know how he was doing beyond our friendship, but I fought asking. I wasn’t his therapist. There needed to be boundaries, and his mental health was now in someone else’s hands.

  The good news was that except for innuendo and sexy comments, Hunter abided by my no-touch rule. He was a man with control, that was for sure. It was a good thing, because if he kissed me or touched me, I was sure I’d give in, just as I had the first time. That was one area he had more control than I did.

  A part of me wondered if his sexy banter was just a game for him. Like he was just teasing me. Not that he didn’t find me attractive, but I was sure it was not to the extent that I found him sexy. He could take me or leave me, which was why he could so easily abide by my no-touch rule. I knew that was my own insecurities talking. Therapists knew psychology and human behavior, but that didn’t mean we had our shit together.

  The thing I focused on was that Hunter was doing what needed to be done, and while I didn’t know what was going on in his head, or in his bed at night, I could see that he was less tense and less prone to striking out verbally than he had been when I first met him. That was progress.

  17

  Hunter

  Tuesday

  To be honest, I thought all that breathing and mind-body shit Grace was spouting the week before was a bunch of woo hoo. Seriously, how could breathing fix anything? I was breathing every minute of every day. And when she said it could trigger a flashback, it was all I could do to keep from walking out. But I wasn’t going to let yoga and breathing scare me, so I stayed. By the end, I’d felt more relaxed than I’d ever thought I could and nearly fell asleep at the end when we were laying on the floor in something the instructor called corpse pose.

  The moves themselves weren’t too bad. Grace was right that the class varied in ability, and the focus was on doing what I could and not trying to do things beyond my ability. The hardest part was in not getting a hardon as I watched Grace move. Jesus, she did fit her name. She could bend and stretch, and between each pose, she moved with such fucking grace. She was like a swan hidden behind librarian packaging. It didn’t help that her clothes left nothing to the imagination. It made me regret again how I’d fucked her on a desk the one time I’d had her. What I wouldn’t do now to get her fully naked in a bed to touch and taste every delectable curve that was bending and moving in front of me. And she was flexible. The positions we could try. My brain nearly exploded thinking about it.

  After our first class, I was jerking off the minute I got home, my dick was so fucking hard. And that night, I slept better than I had in a long time. That’s not to say there weren’t any dreams. But when Sara and Chase were yelling at me, and Grace told me to let go, I woke up and started that breathing the instructor taught us. Within a few minutes, my heart rate was back to normal. Fucking amazing.

  So now I was back to being erotically tortured by watching Grace move. I was a sadist, but I also knew she was a part of my improved mood and productivity. I was smart enough to recognize a good thing and work to hold on to it.

  “Ready?” Grace asked me looking over her shoulder in class.

  “Did you know about the other effect yoga has?”

  She quirked a brow. “What other effect?”

  “It makes me hard.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned back toward the front of the room. But I saw the small upward twitch of her lips. I grinned. That is until we started moving, and the effect started happening. Some poses were uncomfortable, nearly painful, when my dick was getting hard.

  After the class, Grace was rosy and soft, and I so fucking wanted to kiss her. The
urge was there a lot. I was determined that at some point, she’d let me touch her again, so I did my best to abide by her rules. I was sure she wanted me, and that all I had to do was bide my time. But fucking-A, it was getting hard to wait.

  My driver was waiting as we exited class, and like last week, I offered her a ride home. During the drive, she asked me about meditation.

  “My brain won’t shut up,” I said in response. “Left to its own devices, it goes places I don’t want to go.” It was strange how open I was with her about the demons rattling around my brain. There were times I wondered if she’d realize how fucked up I was, but if she did, she never let on. It was probably her training that allowed her to hide her true feelings about heinous things. It made me think I shouldn’t trust her kindness toward me. Unfortunately, there was some part of me that needed to be around her. It was fucking terrifying.

  “The racing brain is common for most people starting out. I can help you learn to quiet your mind and show you what to do if unpleasant thoughts creep in.”

  We were pulling up to her place, and I decided I wasn’t ready to let her go. “Okay.” I got out of the car and when she probably thought I’d drop her off, I made a move to follow her inside. “You said you’d teach me to meditate.”

  She looked surprised but then smiled. “I did. Yes. Come in.”

  Her apartment was like her; a bit prim. She told me to sit on the couch with my hands on my thighs and close my eyes.

  I did as she asked, noting her scent as she sat next to me. Even after yoga, she had a sweet scent to her, like peaches and cream.

  “Focus on your breathing. Think in and out, in and out.”

  I did as she said, but the heat of her body and intoxicating scent made it difficult. I popped one eye open to see her. She was sitting next to me, eyes closed. She was so pretty and sweet, and I couldn’t help myself. I leaned over and pressed my lips to her neck.

  She pulled away and chastised me. “We’re just friends, remember.”

  I saw the desire in her eyes, and while I wanted to respect her wishes, I needed her so fucking bad that I had to push my luck. “I’m working on mind-body connection. Your body is always on my mind.”