“So, now that I’ve done that, what do you suggest I add to my bucket list?” she asked.

“You ever f**ked on a beach?” he asked back.

Her eyes fired but her lips said, “Uh… no.”

“Add that.”

She turned her eyes to her palm and faked scribbling on it, mumbling. “That sounds a lot more fun than a nervous breakdown.”

Deck smiled, tossed his book on the coffee table, leaned into her and hauled her to him. Stretching out full on the couch under her, Emme instantly settled full out on him.

Buford, lying on the floor beside the couch, lifted his head.

He inspected their new position, approved and settled back down on a groan.

“Um… honey,” Emme called, and he looked from his dog to her. “As you know, my parents are in town on the supposed errand of picking up a bucket of chicken. As the nearest chicken joint is in Chantelle, this will take a while. But as they’re multi-tasking and using this,” she arched her back so she could lift her hands out of his chest to do air quotation marks, “errand to make clandestine phone calls to my siblings in order to give them status reports on the state of my sanity, that said sanity being in question, they’ll be back soon. So, to sum up, you can’t make love to me on my couch.”

This was a shame.

It was also true. All of it.

And last, it made it even more clear something he’d been noticing since Emme and the doctor agreed she could go off the sedative.

Harvey Feldman was right.

He’d drowned out Emme’s light.

Now it was beaming so bright, he was blinded.

“You’re right,” he replied. “So we’ll just make out.”

“Making out with you tends to lead to other things.”

He grinned and asked, “How do you know? We’ve never made out.”

“This is how I know, honey. Because it’s always led to other things.”

Deck burst out laughing.

In the middle of it, he felt Emme’s mouth touch his so it faded to a chuckle.

When he caught her eyes, they were shining.

He stopped chuckling and his blood began to burn.

“I’ve always wanted to do that while you were laughing,” she whispered. “Always.”

Fuck. He wanted to make love to her.

He hadn’t had her in over a week.

He needed her now.

“You need to stop bein’ sweet or I’m barring the door against your parents. They can have chicken. I’ll be havin’ you.”

He watched her eyes fire again as her body melted on his and her hand slid up his chest to his neck.

“I think Dad would break down the door. He’s a little…” she paused, “in my space right now, and I need to give him that.”

That was the damned truth.

“Yeah,” Deck reluctantly agreed.

“But, even though I’ve slept more in the last two days than any healthy body needs, I’m suddenly feeling really tired so I figure I’ll have to go to bed early. And I don’t think they’ll mind if you didn’t keep them company.”

“This sounds like a plan,” he murmured.

“I love you, Jacob,” she declared suddenly, and his arms around her gave a squeeze.

“I know you do, baby.”

“Thank you for not giving up on me.”

Fuck, but Feldman was right. That beam was blinding.

He rolled so he was on top and her arms adjusted so they circled him. He lifted his hand and brushed the bangs off her forehead.

Then he caught her eyes. “You up for talkin’ about something?”

“Considering I’m entering intense psychotherapy tomorrow, I hope so,” she teased.

“Baby, I’m serious.”

The light of humor faded from her eyes. He missed it but he’d work at getting it back. But now they had shit to go over.

“I’m up for talking about anything, honey,” she told him.

“Right,” he said quietly. “When shit went down, what got us there was me comin’ down on you.”

“Jacob—”

“Let me finish, Emmanuelle.”

She closed her mouth.

He kept going.

“I was pissed. Out of my mind with worry. I got the call you’d visited him and I had to wait for you to get back. That didn’t make me in a better mood. I lost it and the results were f**kin’ great but the path to those results was a little shaky.”

He’d told her, due to his concerns, he’d had Feldman’s house watched and his phones monitored. He had not, however, had his emails checked, which was how they always communicated.

Emme had not been angry. Then again, when Deck had shared this, she’d been mostly sedated.

However, she didn’t get angry at the reminder now either.

Instead, she replied, “Things happen for a reason.”

“And those things would have happened without me losin’ my mind on you. No excuse, but you deserve an explanation.”

After he said that, she said nothing so he kept going.

“I had no idea where your head was at. You kept disconnecting and I also had no idea how to stop you from doin’ that. I had six days of not bein’ with you except for maybe twenty minutes, that whole twenty minutes we were up in each other’s shit. I knew something was wrong. I knew it was dark. I knew it had to have something to do with what happened to you when you were a kid. But I had no clue how to guide you where you could share, and I knew when you did, I was powerless to right what was wrong with you. I didn’t have those skills. I didn’t like that. Any of it. So I lost it.”

“Jacob, honey, stop it.”

“Emme, baby, that shit was not right.”

“You know,” she started, cocking her head on the seat of the couch, “when all that went down, I was coming home from Harvey, ready to face you, ready to try to work it out, whatever was wrong with me. And you know something else? It so totally was going to fail.”

He felt his brows draw together. “What?”

“I was so deep, so beyond reach, my parents after years didn’t reach me. My brothers. My sister. Friends. And even you, the first time I met you. The only thing that could break through was something breaking through. And that something had to be powerful enough to accomplish that. And that something powerful was your anger.” She gave him a squeeze. “You were angry at me but you were angry for a reason. I was doing something crazy. And you tried other ways but you weren’t getting through to me. It’s understandable you lost it, and bottom line, things happen for a reason.”