“No,” he says, avoiding looking at me.
“Are you lying to me?”
He peeks up at me through his dark curls. “Yes …”
“You need to rest.”
“But I want my sandwich,” he says, trying to get off the bed again.
“I’ll get the bloody sandwich, just stay still.” I shove him back and head to the kitchen. I’m surprised he’s got as much mobility back as he has. Trying to force the man to rest has been a nightmare over the past few months. There have been mood swings and arguments in between all the soft moments, and yetI’ll happily put up with his grumpy arse for the rest of my life now that he’s mine again.
“Teddy?”I call out, looking in the living room for him. I slept like a log and didn’t notice him get out of bed, but now I can’t find him anywhere in the house. My palms sweat, and prickles go up my spine as I open the back door. “Teddy?” I shout.
I try to stay calm, banging the Wellington boots upside down against the wall before sliding them on and grabbing my coat. It’s four in the morning, and the air is frigid as I step outside. I make my way across the fields, hopping over stiles and avoiding sheep as I go, until I finally get to the back field where I spot Heather and Rosie lounging about. As I get closer, I find Teddy wedged between the two of them, fast asleep. “Teddy, get up.” I shake his shoulder. He groans, batting my hand away. “Come on, it’s not warm enough to sleep out here.”
His eyes flutter open, and he rubs his face. “Sorry, I had a nightmare.”
I hold my hand out to help him up. “You should have woke me up.”
“It’s fine. I’m used to them. I like to come down to see the girls anyway,” he says, stroking Heather’s nose.
I don’t know why it didn’t click last time, maybe because I was in a spiral of my own, but now I realise why he said they calm him. “You ground yourself,” I mutter.
“I what?”
“You use the cows to ground yourself. They break the cycle of anxiety, which helps you to calm down.”
“I haven’t heard of that before.”
I’ve been thinking for a while now that I should bring this up with him. We talk about how we’re feeling and about what happened with Shane quite a lot. Neither of us wants to keep things locked up inside again, but I know that’s not enough. “Have you been to therapy at all?” I ask carefully.
“No. I didn’t need therapy. Idon’tneed therapy. It was all getting better. Just … these past few months, it’s like I’m right back where I started.”
“Everything’s heightened again? The nightmares, the mood swings … flashbacks?”
“Yes.”
“Noah made me start therapy when I was twenty-five because I was yelling out in my sleep and would keep him up all night. It took a lot of persuading, but I did it. I told her about my relationship with my mum, and about what Dean did to me, but I was too scared to tell her anything about Shane because I thought I’d get in trouble.” I reach out to stroke Heather, flexing my fingers in her undercoat. “Even without telling her about Shane, I was told I had complex post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“PTSD?” Teddy asks quietly.
“Yeah, but as it was going on for years, it became a little more complicated. Both are the result of trauma, and Teddy, what Shane did to you was traumatic, even before he stabbed you. You get that, right?” The expression on his face cuts right through me. He still hasn’t told his family about what happened to him in Surrey. Kept it all inside for years, and now he’s realising that what I’m saying is making sense. I’ve been there too. I didn’t understand how everything that happened in my childhood was leaving more than physical scars, and I didn’t want to admit that even when I was free of my family, my body still didn’t register that I was safe.
“It’s nothing like what he did to you, though. He was just trying to scare me.”
“No, Teddy. He was trying to kill you,” I say sternly, because I think he’s still not realising the severity of it all. I step close to him and cup his face. “Now I’m here for good, I want to try and find a therapist in Portree. Maybe … maybe you’d want to come with me to check it out?”
He blinks slowly, then bends down to kiss me gently. “I can try.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
“Two cappuccinos for Bailey,”the server calls.
I rush over to the counter to collect my order, then head down the street to meet Teddy. He’s just coming out the door when I get to our therapist's office, his mouth splitting into a wide grin when he sees me.
“Everything go okay?” I ask, thrusting the coffee into his hand.
He nods, taking a sip. “Today was less heavy. He told me how to calm myself down from panic attacks—which I didn’t realise I’ve been partly doing instinctively, anyway. But there were some new things to try. Different ways to ground myself.”
