I carried her to her bed. Not in the way I might have wished, but in the way she needed. After last call, I sent her to take a break before closing up, and she lay down on the couch and passed out in the mere minutes it took for me to usher out the final round of patrons. Since she’d done so much cleaning earlier in the day, I took care of the rest and then gently pried her off the couch and out the door to her own bed.

We had to do something about the hotel situation, though. Once I made it through the door, I laid her down, took her shoes and jeans off, curled up behind her, and marveled at the way her ribcage expanded under my hands with each dreamy exhale.

I had to keep telling myself I didn’t dream her. Some imagined specter sent to pry me apart at the seams she’d ripped open years before which were barely sewn up after.

Despite her coming to find me after all this time, she held herself back. She didn’t realize she did, as far as I could tell. But all the machinations of her mind were tucked away tight, and she kept pushing me. Not in the way she used to do. What she did now felt darker, rooted in something besides pride or whatever reason she and I fought so much before.

I realized she suffered from PTSD on the fateful night everything started five years ago. I wondered if she sought treatment for it, or if it grew worse over the years. Combined with the aftermath of her head wound: anxiety or depression, possibly both. I didn’t think I’d ever really get to have her while she didn’t accept it. Not to mention the fact she disassociated herself from the old her on a regular basis.

Sleep eluded me tonight. I sat up, slid my boots on, scribbled my number on the pad by the bed, and slipped out into the cold night. I spent more time at the bar than at home. When I got to my office, all I could see was her. I could even smell her in the air.

I needed to do something to help her, and yet, in this, I felt powerless. None of my medical training revolved around the type of mental illness she dealt with. And I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could force her into getting help. I tapped a pencil on the desk thinking about the few times I’d seen the obvious signs of at least PTSD, and there were more than I wished.

Helping her would take time. Something I could give her, but right now, it wouldn’t help me to keep rolling it all around in my head.

I turned on my laptop and started putting in the last week’s receipts….

When I woke up, the light streamed in my office window, and my face lay flat on the desk in front of my keyboard. My back kinked awkwardly, and pain beat from my neck to my ass. I really needed to stop falling asleep at my desk.

I checked the clock 10 a.m. Mara would probably be awake by now. The sound of steel hitting steel came from the hallway, and I ducked out, rubbing my neck while I searched for the source of the noise.

Mara stood at the stove with a frying pan. “Sorry I woke you up.”

“How did you get in here?”

She put some eggs in the pan and answered without turning. “You left the door unlocked.”

“You should have woken me up when you came over. My back is killing me.”

She flashed a cheeky smile over her shoulder. “I could give you a massage if you want.”

Damn, her touching me in anyway would be wonderful. But going too far felt like taking advantage of her current state of vulnerability. Even if she didn’t realize the danger.

Saint Fucking Murphy.

I backed out the door and went back to my office. It was the name they gave me in school because of all the time I spent volunteering at the local rehab center, and then the name they continued pressing on me when I graduated from nursing school. And even after I quit working for the nursing homes and took over the bar, they still taunted me with the nickname. Too noble for my own good.

I lay down on the couch, and she followed me in. “What’s wrong?”

“You mean besides the fact that both our lives are completely upside down? Nothing.”

She shook her head and braced her hips against the side of my desk. “Not sure what you mean by upside down. I didn’t have much of a life; I guess I still don’t.”

I sat up and scrubbed my hands through my hair. “That’s exactly what I mean. You didn’t have a life before because you were always moving. Then you were gone and disappeared for so long. You say you didn’t have anything then either. Now you’re here, and you are living out of a hotel room.”

“It’s not something I think about.” The look on her face said get to the point.

“You don’t think about the future or what you want to do.”

“I wanted to come here, meet you in person, and I did that.”

“But what’s next, what do you want for yourself? You have to have a dream, an ambition you aspire to reach?”

She shook her head and dropped her gaze from mine. I assumed she did it so I couldn’t read her. “I’ve sort of felt in between. Waiting for my memories to come back I guess. I thought maybe coming here might help.”

“You think being here with me will give you back your memories? I thought you said the doctor told you there was nothing you could do.”

“He did. Because there is nothing he can do for me. The mind can figure itself out, but medically speaking, I’m as healthy as I’m going to get. In fact, he called me lucky to have control of my motor functions. That I got off easy for only losing my memory.”

There was a doctor in Washington I wanted to punch in the teeth right now. “Great bedside manner there.”

She snorted. “I said the same thing. To his face even. He was a Colonel and didn’t care about the opinion of a former enlisted soldier. His job was to make sure I left in basically one piece and no more.”

We barely knew each other. She wasn’t the same woman who left me all those years ago, and her absence had changed me too. The long years made me harder and colder. Now less quick to help those in need for fear it would come back and bite me in the ass like it did so many other times. What I wanted to say next, I debated for a long minute. However, we wouldn’t be able to continue forward unless I did.

“Have you considered therapy?” I pushed out in one quick breath.

She didn’t react or say anything until a timer dinged in the kitchen. Instead of speaking, she left the office. I’d expected her to throw furniture at me or at least the pens in the cup on the desk.

Was it safe to follow her and clarify why I mentioned it? As I worked up the courage, she came back in with eggs on two plates and sat next to me.

“Thanks,” I offered, tilting my head to see I could see her face.

She ate quickly and quietly and took her plate back to the kitchen. I couldn’t touch mine as my gut rolled over. By asking her about therapy, maybe I’d driven her away.

I feared losing her more than anything else. The idea of her gone squeezed my heart in a vice which made it too hard to breathe.

I sat the plate on the desk and went to find her. She stood at the sink in the kitchen, the clean plate on the rack. Her shoulders were hunched, and her hands braced on the edge of the stainless steel.

“Look, I’m so…”

“Don’t. You don’t have anything to apologize for. I came back here to find you but also to see if my memories would come back. I don’t think they will now, and facing the reality with you staring at me on the other side hurts.”

She spun to face me, her fist pressed between her breasts. “I can’t breathe.”

Her legs knocked together, and I lurched forward to catch her in my arms before she hit the floor. “It’s okay,” I whispered as she shook in my grasp. “Just take slow easy breathes.”

It took a few minutes for her panting to get under control, and I cradled her in my lap until she finally stopped quaking. How could the world break such a woman? And if it did, how did I have any chance of making it?

All I could do was rock her back and forth until both our hearts started beating normally again. It hit me right under the chin, how close I’d been to losing her, and how I’d barely been living in the years I thought I had.

I tilted her chin up and prayed she couldn’t see the sheen in my eyes. “We will figure this out together. I’m here.”

She leaned up and pressed her lips to mine. Barely a brush against mine, and I felt like, for the first time, maybe we were on the same page.

“You’re right. Maybe some sort of therapy could help. At least let me figure out where I want to go from here. How I should proceed with my life after a chunk of it was taken from me.”

“Does that mean you’re going to stop pushing me to sleep with you?” I half-joked.

She swatted at my chest. “You like it, admit it. If I wasn’t insane, you might even be persuaded to give it up.”

“I do, and I will. But once we go down that road, there is no backing out. You’ll be mine, and I won’t give you up easily.”

She swallowed heavily. I could hear it before she nodded. “I understand why you’re hesitant, and I see no amount of professing my ability to make the choice myself is going to change your mind. If I go to therapy, do you think we can take the next step?”

I ignored the way my heart tightened up and shot into my throat. “It’s not just about therapy. I want you to want me because you want me, not because you wanted me five years ago and assume this version of you would want me too. I know you’re not the same woman, and I’m not the same man who wrote those emails to you.”

“I know that. I can see me being gone took its toll on you too.”

I pulled her neck in and braced my forehead against her, savoring the way she fit so perfectly in my arms. Her breath smelled like cheese, and I didn’t mind in the least.

“So what now?” she whispered.

So what now?

The question had zipped through my head every five minutes since she walked through my door. She wanted to stay, and I needed her here more than I could admit out loud to her or myself. The intensity of it burned through me until she mumbled an ouch, and I realized I’d pulled her hair in my need to hold her tighter.

“You’ll stay, and we will take one thing at a time. But I do think we need to find you an apartment first.”

“What about your place?”

“You might want your own space. Especially if you try therapy. It can be hard for two people who know everything about each other to live together, and we are mostly strangers.”

She cleared her throat and sat up between my legs. “I like mint chocolate chip ice cream. I don’t read the news because it makes me depressed. I like sticky notes, the Beatles, and light roast coffee.”

I chuckled and held out my hand. She shook it firmly and held tight long past when we should have separated. “Nice to meet you, Mara,”

“What about you?”

“I hate light roast coffee, ice cream in general, and the Beatles.” I laughed at the absurdity of it.

She clutched her chest in a mock wounding. “How could I have fallen in love with a man who hates the Beatles?”