Ryan (Mallick Brothers 2)

"It is," I admitted, feeling the butterflies in my belly, the conversation still fresh in my mind from three nights before when he came home from work, dropped down on the couch, hauled me into his lap, and had the talk.

The relationship talk.

And he had instigated it.

I don't think I had ever had the relationship talk with a willing man before in my life.

It was yet another wonderful thing about Ryan. He wasn't scared of anything. Not even commitment. He made that abundantly clear to me when he informed me that, so long as I agreed, I was his and he was mine and that was that.

So, yeah, that was that.

I still got the warm and fuzzies when I thought about it. Which was often. Because... come on! If you had someone like Ryan Mallick, you obsessed over the sheer luck that brought you two together.

Forty minutes later, I was leaving Amy's office with a promise to try to continue my exposure therapy and she even penciled me in for another in-person session later that week. Hopeful. She was hopeful.

As we walked down the street and dipped into the diner, so was I.Ryan - 11 monthsIt wasn't always linear; healing often isn't.

The first week, she went nuts. She went to therapy twice, went out to lunch with Bry, grabbed coffee with me, and even braved her apartment to clean it out and move more things into my our apartment.

Then the following Friday, we tried to head to Famiglia for dinner, something she was excited for, had spent hours dolling herself up for. She was beside me in the car trying to figure out what was her favorite thing on the menu, of which she had extensively tried in the past obviously. She had decided on the chicken alfredo when we finally parked and climbed out.

But two feet in, she froze. Her hand went to her throat. Her eyes went huge. Her breathing stopped. We paused, seeing if she could breathe through it, force herself to deal with the symptoms. In the end, the anxiety won out.

We went home and ordered it to be delivered while she sat and obsessed about 'failing'.

But the next time we went, it was fine.

That was just how it was, especially those first few months. You never really knew if it was going to be a good or bad outing but, after me reassuring her a couple dozen times about it, she started to believe that it didn't matter to me. And it didn't. I wasn't the kind of person who liked going out all the time anyway so when she just couldn't force herself to go through with it a time or two, it genuinely wasn't a hardship for me to head back home instead.

It never became 'not a problem'. There was no real 'cure' for her anxiety and agoraphobia. But she got better at managing. It got to the point where she never said she "couldn't" go to a certain place, but that she had issues there a lot and would try. Sometimes trying was enough, sometimes it wasn't.

But every day, week, month brought with it progress.

That had always been all I wanted for her.

After about six months, she finally agreed to letting her lease lapse and sold, tossed, or moved the rest of her stuff in with me. Without that rent to pay every month. Actually, without any bills but things like her cell, health insurance, and various subscription services, she was doing alright with just her money coming in from her stories.

It was a bit too soon to convince her that she wouldn't have to worry about money anymore anyway, that I was at the point where I knew I was eventually going to have her popping out a bunch of my kids and she would be staying home to take care of them anyway so she didn't need to worry about work unless she wanted to.

Actually, on her birthday, Fee and Hunt showed up at our door with all three hellions who proceeded to drive Rocky crazy for an hour. Fee brought her about a year's supply of clothes. And Hunt made her something that had her running to him and throwing her arms around him.

See, Hunt, aside from doing tattoos, also made furniture.

And having had a heads up about her birthday, had set to making her an elaborate writing desk to work on. The leg had been knocked loose on her old one and because it was that fake wood shit, couldn't be fixed and we hadn't gotten around to a furniture store. Mainly because I kept putting it off because I knew Hunter would make one ten times better than anything we could find in a store anyway.

Eventually, I got her to my parents' for Sunday dinner where she spent the beginning of the evening holed up with the kids, them being more of a comfort zone thing for her. Then she worked herself up to joining the rest of us and after about an hour, my mother not-so-discreetly asked me to help her with something in the kitchen.