L.O.V.E. Therapy

They jumped apart like guilty teenagers whose mothers had caught making out in the family room. And something amazing happened. They both laughed.

"Busted," Dennis said twisting his mouth.

Linda looked up, smiling at Dennis. "Feels like old times."

"Yeah," he said grumpily. "It does."

CHAPTER 10

Linda shifted uncomfortably on the pillows in Yaron's office. Dennis was sitting at her side.

"Something doesn't feel right," thought Linda.

The first two sessions had been cathartic. They had made progress. So why did the issues between her and her husband still feel unresolved?

"We've been presented with Linda's needs," Yaron started, "This session we will focus on what Dennis needs." Linda's serene expression felt frozen on her face.

She should have seen this moment coming. After all, she wasn't the only member of this marriage. Of course, Dennis had needs as well.

"What is something that Linda does that makes you feel appreciated?" Yaron asked Dennis.

"She goes grocery shopping. She cooks. She cleans the house. She does the laundry." Dennis shifted restlessly on the pillow. Linda couldn't move at all. "She contributes a well-earned paycheck."

"Okay. Houses chores, shopping, and a paycheck are a contribution to the household, which is very important, but it's not meant to express love or appreciation specifically to you, Dennis," Yaron explained. "Let's talk about the food. What do you typically make, Linda?"

"Um..." she gulped hard. "I cook during the weekend and place the prepared meals in the freezer, so we can defrost them during the week."

"So the food isn't just for Dennis, it's for both of you?"

"Yes," she whispered, her pulse jumping in her wrists.

The cushions on the couch dipped as Dennis moved closer to her. "What is the point? I'm a grown man. I cook dinner for myself some days."

"If I'm not doing that, I'm doing nothing. I've been doing nothing." Linda laid her ice-cold hands on the sides of her face. "Oh my God."

When she had first walked into the office, she'd had the upper hand, and now it was slipping. The very fact that she'd wantedto have an upper hand when they were trying to get an even footing increased her discomfort.

"Linda?" Yaron prompted. "Are you okay?"

"Enough of this!" Dennis ground out, putting a protective arm around her shoulders. "You're upsetting her. She works all day in a job she hates, standing on her feet to get a paycheck because I'm not making as much money as I did working in the mines. She has been dealing with me for the last two years... And you think she hasn't been doing enough?"

"The way you protect Linda is a positive thing, but in this case, however, I think this is important, Dennis." Yaron's lips tightened. "You might need to control that protective urge for the purposes of this discussion."

Dennis was silent for a few beats. "I don't know if I can."

"Try. It's important that you're not just giving, that you're also receiving. In a balanced relationship, you both give and take," Yaron leaned forward, elbows propped on the knees of his ripped jeans. "Have you considered that maybe there are reasons why this marriage hasn't been working for you, too? And not for just Linda?"

"No, I haven't," he gritted. He looked at his therapist defying him to say otherwise.

"You should," Linda whispered. "You should consider I haven't been a good wife to you, either. I... I don't think I have..."

He scoffed. "Stop, Linda. Just stop this."

"Look me in the eye for ten seconds, Dennis. The way I couldn't do last time." During their first session, she had seen pain, apology, love, even need, in her husband's eyes. She needed that reassurance right now more than she needed her next breath. "Look me in the eye and tell me you were happy in our marriage."

Dennis took her chin in his hand and leaned close, unflinching as their gazes connected. This time, though, there was a barrier up. He was hiding. "I was... I was... happy."

Linda made a sound and covered her mouth.

"If I wasn't completely happy, Linda, it's only because you weren't."

It was hard to watch her husband struggling to come to grips with his own lack of happiness, all the while desperate to reassure her.

"Dennis." Yaron's voice brought her husband's head whipping around, his expression was decidedly dazed. "Let's talk about what Linda could do, instead of what she hasn't done. I'm going to give you a few examples of expressions of love, you tell me which one appeals to you most."

Dennis took a deep breath and shrugged a jerky shoulder.

"Linda saying thank you for working hard." He let that option settle. "Linda surprising you with a new pair of sunglasses. Linda going with you to a movie. Linda filling the gas tank of your truck without you asking..."

It was subtle, but Linda caught her husband's nod out of the corner of her eye. Also did their therapist.

"So you not only prefer to express your love through deeds, that's how you need love expressed to you in return."

"Maybe," Dennis said hoarsely.

Linda slipped her hand beneath her husband's, interlocking their fingers. "Try to talk through it, please?"

A muscle jumped in Dennis's cheek. "Not gas pumping," he said in a low voice. "I wouldn't want her to pump my gas, ever, and I don't care if that makes me a chauvinist. But I guess... I don't know. It would be nice to know she'd thought of me."

The unshed tears that had been poised behind Linda's eyes lost the fight and cascaded down her cheeks. Her face felt freshly slapped. All this time, she had blamed Dennis entirely for the decline of their relationship. But she'd been equally to blame.

Oh my God. This is my doing as much as his.

She might have fought in the beginning, trying to rekindle that old wildfire that had always burned between them, physically and emotionally. Somewhere along the way, she had quit. At least, Dennis had tried in his own secret ways to make her feel cared for. Protected. She had done nothing but blame him and build resentment against him.

When Dennis saw Linda crying, his face paled. "Don't cry, Love. Please." He reached for her, hesitated, then caught her around the waist, whispering comforting words.

Every day, going through the motions and being so angry at him. How come she didn't realize she was doing the exact same thing? How could she have been such a hypocrite?

Tears burned tracks down her cheeks, and Dennis watched them in horror. Finally, he leaned in and started to kiss them away.

"Shhh, Linda. We're going to work this out. You're my wife and I wouldn't change that for any damn thing in the world. I'm your man." He exhaled roughly. "Details, right? Words? Do you need to know I'm always paying attention? Remember that time I left to work in a mine for the first time? Your mouth tasted like the blueberry muffin we split from the bakery, and I'd have done anything to have some blueberries with me trying to get that taste back in my mouth every fucking day I was away."

He turned her face, moved his head, and kissed the freckle behind her ear. "I missed you so bad. I miss you now."

That ice in her heart melted and dripped, halfway to vapor. "I miss you, too."

"Come home, please."

Linda wanted nothing more than to do that. Go back to her husband and hope everything would work out. Hope that their new self-awareness would make all the difference. But she wasn't willing to gamble. She had only learned a few minutes ago that she'd played an active role in getting them to this point. She needed time to get her head around that. To go back and comb through the past years through an entirely different lens.

They both needed to work on themselves, and their marriage, at the same time. They would never do that if they fell back into their old routine.

"Okay. Let's talk homework," Yaron clapped his hands together. "Linda, Dennis needs acts of service to feel appreciated. I will leave those up to you, but let me reiterate that, as your therapist, I feel strongly that sex should remain off the table."

Linda bit down on her tongue and forced a smile. Dennis dropped his face and groaned.

"Dennis, please continue exercising your vocal cords. Find ways to give Linda the words she needs to hear. You did a tremendous job on that today." Yaron said giving him the thumb. He beamed at both of them. "It might not feel like it right now, but we've had a very successful session."

CHAPTER 11

Aday after their rocky third therapy session, Dennis was grabbing a quick workout in the basement, hoping to burn off some of his excess mental and sexual frustration, when he heard the sound of water running in the house and frowned. There was no one home, he couldn't be more painfully aware of that fact, and none of the appliances were turned on.

He stood there, double-checking that he indeed heard water running. With a frown, he walked barefoot and shirtless down the hallway, toward the kitchen, to investigate. His pulse started to race at the possibility that Linda had come home, but there was no one there.

A sound from outside the house brought Dennis to the front door. He opened it and found his wife in the driveway. Washing his truck.

He was so stunned by the sight, all he could do was stare. His wife was in tight black yoga pants and an old sweatshirt, hair up in a bun.

Gorgeous, so fucking gorgeous in the setting sun.

As much as he hated watching her perform any kind of manual labor, he couldn't help but be thankful just to have her there, whether it was temporary. She'd made up her mind to go about their second chance the right way. He needed to respect that.

Their therapy session had knocked Dennis on his ass, although he still didn't believe Linda was responsible for their situation. He was a quiet asshole who hadn't been giving her the words she needed. She'd done nothing wrong, and no one could convince him otherwise. Watching her cry over that bullshit yesterday had been pure torture.

Still. He could admit that Linda giving him real, tangible evidence that she loved him made his heart beat faster.

While he wanted to strangle his therapist for making his wife cry, he could also maybe admit he needed some evidence that this woman still loved him. He needed it badly.

When he stopped working at the mines, Linda had shown him evidence of her love regularly. Spontaneous hugs, elaborate date nights at home with candlelight, or simply tellinghim she loved him. It was becoming obvious to him that she'd eventually stopped doing those things because he had been showing her his love in an entirely invisible way. How could she have known he had been saving up for a new house? How could she know that he had been protecting her from his precarious state of mind?

Now, having her show him she cared, that she had thought about him, flooded him with gratitude and relief. But he couldn't accept the gesture, could he? Seriously, it might kill him.

Dennis came out of the house, letting the screen door slap against the doorjamb. "Thank you for doing this, honey, but you're going to get sick out here. Come in out of the cold, Linda."

She pulled up the right sleeve of her sweatshirt to her elbow and dunked the sponge back into the bucket she'd filled.

"I'll be done in fifteen minutes. Could you grab the grocery bags out of my backseat, please?"

"I'll do it when you stop washing my truck and come inside."

There was a flash of something in her eyes that he'd seen at the therapy session. Guilt. Remorse. A little bit of sadness. He didn't like it.

"I'm digging in my heels," she said.

"You've been doing a lot of that lately." Dennis instantly regretted his words when she broke their eye contact.

"I've got on two layers under this sweatshirt. Please just let me do this?" Her voice was laden with determination. "I need to do something for you."

Warmth rolled into his chest. "Will you stay for a while afterward?"

She stopped soaping for a moment, looking at him over her shoulder. "Yes."

That single word made anticipation sing over Dennis's skin, but his body needed to chill the fuck out. He was horny enough to read sexual intention into a single word. If he had learned anything by now, it was that his wife wasn't breaking the no-sex rule. And he hadn't caved on his promise, either. Next time he got relief, it would be inside Linda.

Dennis opened the back door to retrieve the bags from Linda's backseat. In the meantime, she had turned on the small vacuum cleaner they used for their cars and bent forward, leaving her tight, round ass on display. Her hips tilted enough that he could see the stretch of Lycra over her pussy. Pure torture.

By the time Dennis returned to the house with the grocery bags in his arms, his dick was hard enough to jimmy a lock.

He went back outside and stood behind her. "Did you come here to torture me?"

She flipped off the vacuum. "No." She stood up. "No, I didn't."

"My body hurts. I miss being together."

"I know." She abandoned the vacuum, hands wringing at her waist. "I'm thrown off by what happened at our session, you know? Realizing we've both let this marriage get to this point, and I'm feeling kind of scattered.

"Like I've been seeing everything all wrong and I've just... I've fallen hard off my high horse. And I don't know how or if we'll make this relationship work, but I know when I woke up feeling lost this morning, I wanted to be near you. Can we just spend some time near each other for a little while tonight?"

"Yes," he said, voice resonating. His whole body resonating. "I want that."

"Me too." She wet her lips. "I'm going to finish up here. Can you go inside and preheat the oven for me?"

Backing away from her was fucking agony, but he did it. Anything to not screw up this chance to have her cross the threshold of their home, even if it was just for a few hours. He stopped to glance back at Linda on his way into the house and found her watching him from beneath her lashes.

Dennis dropped the groceries off on the counter and adjusted his hard cock through his sweatpants. He planted his hands on the edge of the kitchen counter and breathed in and out. "Okay, not jerking off was a bad choice. But I can do this. I can be in the same room as my wife and not fuck her until she screams the town into a power outage."

He was still fighting to control his urges when Linda walked in.

"Your truck was already pretty clean," she said, tucking loose hair into her bun. "I feel like I cheated on my homework." Her laughter was kind of skittish, reminding him of those first few middle-school dates to the coffee shop when they were just getting to know each other. "Wow. Why am I so nervous?"

"This is your home. I'm your husband. You shouldn't be..." Dennis dragged a hand down his face, laughing without a drop of humor. "I'm nervous, too, Linda."

Her breath caught. "You are?"

"Yeah." Now that they'd returned to the scene of the crime, it became even more obvious how drastically their communication had dwindled. Their voices sounded almost foreign filling the kitchen together at the same time. "You see me as less of a man knowing I'm nervous?"

"What?" She pressed a hand to the center of her chest. "God, no! It makes me feel like I'm not crazy. It puts us on the same team."

Surprise prickled up his spine. "I want to be strong for you at all times," he said hoarsely. "Isn't that my job?"

Her features softened as she regarded him. "Marriage isn't a job, Love."

She hadn't called him 'love' in so long, his insides jolted upon hearing it.

Linda crossed to the counter, close enough to Dennis that he could count the goosebumps on her neck. "It makes me feel closer to you when you let down your guard. Makes me feel like I can do the same."

Dennis was barely aware of moving closer. He found himself behind Linda, zeroed in on the freckle behind her ear as she unloaded shopping bags and prepared dinner.

"Tonight is about you, Dennis. I want to make you happy."

The simple statement that she wanted him happy made his chest expand to the size of a marching band bass drum. Watching her prove it? Even better.

Linda had come over, cleaned his truck, and now she was cooking him his favorite dinner.

"Dinner is on the oven," she breathed, fidgeting as she faced him. "Do you want to watch TV or..."

"Can we dance, Linda?" before she could answer, Dennis stepped into the warmth of her space, capturing her left hand in his right.

"Dance?"

"We used to do that all the time," Dennis turned on the stereo, selected a compact disc, and seconds later, some soft romantic music filled the room.

"I don't know i-if that's a good idea."

"You don't? The therapist said we're allowed to kiss. Dancing must be on the approved list, right?"

"First you want to dance and now kissing. You can't just throw all of that out there," Linda grinned at him.

Dennis grinned back and rubbed his right thumb in a circle around the palm of her hand. "I didn't ask to kiss you. I said I wanted to dance." He slipped his left hand around the small of her back and eased their bodies together. "You made that leap. I forgive you for sexualizing me."

"Shut up," she said on a giggle, then cut herself off with a gasp when she realized they were dancing. "Oh, you think you're slick?"

"Did you seriously forget how much game I have, Linda? Maybe you need a reminder."

He brought her tighter to his body, groaning inwardly over the tits that poked into his chest, the press of their thighs.

"Maybe I do," she whispered, her breath fanning over his mouth. "Just remember the rules, okay?"

It was amazing to simply hold his wife again. For the last five years, whenever they touched, he got impatient almost immediately to satisfy her. Please her. Now he wondered if he'd been trying to overcompensate for not giving her what she really needed. Affection. Intimacy without sex.

For the love of God, don't fuck this up.

"When you were standing at the counter, the sunset was coming in through the window. All around you, turning these little curls near your ears to gold. I was thinking, I wish I was a painter or a photographer because keeping something that beautiful to myself makes me a selfish bastard. Even though I want you that way. All for me." He closed his eyes and breathed in roughly through his nose. "Every perfect inch."

"You can be such a smooth talker when you want." She said blushing.

Somehow they continued to turn in a slow circle in the center of the kitchen.

"What have you been doing without me around? Do you cook?" Linda asked her husband.

"God no! I've been eating take away from The Jammed," He stretched his fingers across the small of her back, trying to reach as much of her as possible. "Been sleeping with the television on. I know you hate that, but it's too quiet otherwise."

"Surely you're not implying I usually fill the silence with snoring."

"I wouldn't dare." He chuckled. "Nah, you don't snore, but you murmur things."

She looked up at him, her mouth close. So close. "I do?"

Dennis nodded. "Sometimes you ask for me."

"What do you do when I ask for you?"

It was getting hard to swallow. "Kiss your shoulder, hold your hand."

"You do?"

No way she couldn't feel his erection with their hips pressed together, snug and restless. Any minute now, he was going to screw this up. Break the rules. Push too hard.

Talk. Talk. She needs words.

"I was trying to distract myself this week, so I cleaned out the basement and found one of your mother's boxes. There are some recipes on notecards banded together," Dennis swallowed hard, begging blood to return to his brain.

"Please Dennis, stop talking and kiss me"

"I can't. I can't do it. The dam will break."

"Please? I miss kissing you so much."