Handcuffed by Her Hero by Angel Payne Page B

come
to park his beautiful ass in so much of it? When should she have pushed herself
back from his massive shoulders and told herself that they wouldn’t be there
forever? That one day, she’d be looking at the horizon without him in it?
    She should have known. She should
have seen.
    She ducked her forehead back
against her knees. “I just want to go back three months.”
    “You think that would give you
the answers?”
    “No. It would prevent the
questions in the first place.”
    “Because you’d make sure to keep
Zeke in his compartment this time. Is that it?”
    The concrete was gone from
Sally’s voice. She didn’t need it. The question did a fine job of crushing
Rayna’s logic on its own. “Shit,” she whispered. “Maybe I’m just screwed.”
    Maybe she’d been that way from
the beginning. Perhaps from the second the man had scooped her from the dirt in
that jungle, some chromosome had gone rogue and let in stupid expectations
through a back window of her psyche. That meant Zeke was more than right
yesterday, accusing her of turning him into Superman or worse when all he’d
been doing was his job.
    Yeah. Screwed. That was her.
    She lifted her head enough to
shoot another despairing stare at Sally. “Why did I pick now to be an idiot
about this crap?”
    The therapist barely moved. “Why
do you think now has anything to do with it?”
    She should have looked away once
more. She knew what Sally was getting at—and dreaded it. About three weeks ago,
during a session where Rayna had been more confused than usual about the
inability to disconnect from Z, an inquisitive look had crossed Sal’s face. Two
seconds later, she’d made a suggestion that first had Rayna giggling.
    Hypnosis.
    She hadn’t laughed for long.
Sally stated her case with serious intent. The therapy was doing wonders for
the guys who’d seen intense battle, and maybe a focus like that would help
Rayna feel more independent of her attachment to Zeke. Still, Rayna rolled her
eyes and accused Sally of simply wanting to see her dance like a duck or break
into a Beyoncé tune.
    The subject hadn’t gotten dropped
for long. Sally had been persistent in her suggestions about the therapy. Like
now.
    But there was a difference
tonight. Rayna was officially desperate enough to listen.
    She straightened a little.
Released a weighted sigh. “You really think it’ll help, don’t you?”
    Sally smiled softly. “I think
there might be something in your past that you don’t see now that might explain
why you’re in bondage to these feelings for Zeke.”
    Bondage. Zeke. If the woman only knew
how perfectly she’d tapped that vein. “You mean, like something I’ve repressed?
But why?”
    “Perhaps it’s too traumatic to
carry in your active consciousness,” Sally offered. “Or it happened so fast,
you’ve mentally filed it away as non-important.” She tilted her head in contemplation.
“Our minds are like a big sweater, woven with fibers of our experiences, present
and past. Sometimes the tiniest of threads can unravel a whole sleeve before we
see it.”
    Rayna scooted her legs into a
crisscross. “You think I’m unraveling?”
    Sally took a deep breath. “Not
yet.”
    “Great,” she snorted. “So I’ve
still got half a sleeve left. Thanks for the assurance.”
    The therapist got up, crossed to
her, and crouched. “I think you have a need to understand things, Rayna. To
understand yourself. And after you’ve done that, you need to fix it. Goes
hand-in-hand with your need to care for people. None of it is bad, sweetie.
It’s probably why you went into the medical field.” When Rayna huffed, Sal
grabbed her hand. “Answer me something. If you guys get a patient who isn’t
responding well to a medication, do you give them a sweet little ‘too bad, so
sad, maybe we can help you next time?’”
    “No!” She glared. “We try
something else.”
    “Even if the patient thinks
you’re going to turn them into a Beyoncé-belting