Coaxing the Roughneck

“They are lucky I have refrained from murdering them,” I growl through my teeth. My throat is too dry to swallow. “It could get to that point. You have to understand, every year—every year she gets better and better and she was already a fucking angel to begin with.” I drag my hands down my face. “I think about her every waking moment of my life.”

“What do you think about?”

“Fucking her. Giving her head. Marrying her again. I think of us in front of the church altar and replay her saying the vows, over and over and over.” I’m breathing hard now, my chest shuddering up and down. “What if she leaves me?”

“Do you have any reason to believe she would leave you?”

“No. But she is an angel and I am a brute. People stare at me for a very different reason than they stare at her.”

When I arrived in New Orleans, I took Cindy home to her tiny little apartment and we didn’t get out of bed for three weeks. Only to bathe or eat. I kept her flat on her back and on her knees, her screams echoing off the walls, until I noticed her skin was starting to lose its glow from the sun. I was horrified at myself—and I never quite recovered from that horror.

This was why she’d left the rig. By keeping her from the sunlight, I was fulfilling the prophecy. I was harming the only person I’ll ever love.

Immediately, I brought her outside. To gardens. Rooftops. Beaches. To places where I felt uncomfortable. But having her hand in mine made it all right. And eventually I got used to being on the street, in a restaurant, in the store. I got used to being among the living again. She resuscitated me. She gave me a new life.

Cindy sold the rig and we used that money to bolster her landscaping business. To buy tools and equipment and advertising. We added a new component to her services. I build now. I build trellises and pergolas and benches and gazebos. We own a warehouse where we grow our own flowers and plants and I keep my building materials there, too. Our fleet of employees just reached forty people last week and we’re thriving.

Our life is perfect. But I’m not.

I can’t allow Cindy to take jobs without me following in the shadows. I have to be there. I have to guard her. Have to keep the fucking vultures away from what is mine. I have to make sure I’m doing everything in my power to make her happy so she won’t try to leave. So I won’t choke the health out of her again.

“She left once,” I croak. “On the rig. She could do it again if she knew…”

“That was a special circumstance, Butch.”

With a shaky exhale, I get up to pace, my heart tucked up behind my jugular, pounding away. “She’s too perfect for me. She’s going to realize it. I’ll wake up one day and she’ll be gone.”

Tobias doesn’t say anything for long moments.

It’s quiet so long that I arch an eyebrow at him. “What?”

He hesitates. “This is against my principles. Against my oath as a therapist, really. But hell, I’m old and I’m going to retire soon, anyway. I have a unique way of solving this problem of yours and I’m going to do it.” With a groan, he pushes up from his chair and hobbles over to his desk, removing a tape recorder from the top drawer. Laying it flat and resting his finger on the play button. “As you know, I have sessions with your wife. Not frequently. Just enough to make sure she’s handling your flashbacks and nightmares okay. Obviously, since you’re not having the dreams so often anymore, I’ve seen her a lot less.”

I can barely hear him over the racing of my pulse. “Is she on that tape?”

“Yes.”

The urgency inside of me to hear her voice is so overwhelming that I have to sit down. “Please.”

Tobias sighs. Nods. And hits play.

Cindy’s sweet voice fills the room.

“Is it normal to be obsessed with your husband?” The recording crackles as she laughs breathily. A long pause ensues. Then, “Sometimes I have to force myself to give him a break. I’m always wrapped around him or hitting him up for a kiss when he’s trying to work. I don’t want to be clingy, but…” She blows out a breath. “He’s so beautiful and hard-working and the way he loves our children…I fall in love with him more every day. Every year. And I don’t know where it’s going to end. I don’t even like him going places without me because these women…they stare.” There’s a pout in her voice when she says, “But he’s mine. I’m…infatuated. Endlessly. With my husband.”

Tobias stops the recording.

My heart is going to beat out of my fucking chest.