L.O.V.E. Therapy

Fuck. Had he just said that out loud?

"I'd have loved to be there for you. But you didn't let me in because... because you have to keep your image of Dennis Almighty?"

Linda sat there trying to process everything that had happened, everything that Dennis had finally told her.

Her mind couldn't seem to hang on to any single thought for longer than a few seconds before it flew off like a flock of startled birds.

On one side, all the bad stuff bumped around. The last two years suffering in silence. Feeling unsupported, unloved. Her soul withering like a petal detached from its flower. Her dreams moving a little further and further out of reach.

On the other side, she considered all the progress they'd made. Not to mention all the revelations she'd had since she and Dennis had started counseling.

Could they have a successful union if he kept things from her? After everything they'd been through over the past few weeks, if he still couldn't be honest with her, what hope did they have as a couple in the future?

"I'm sorry, Dennis, I don't know if I can get past this. This is not how a marriage is supposed to work. I need time to process all this new information. Please don't call me till I'm ready to talk with you."

Like a man sentenced to death he stood there with his head down. He could only stand paralyzed as his wife walked away from him.

Again.

CHAPTER 15

Linda climbed into her car, punched Yaron's number, and asked him for an emergency session.

"You can come over right now," the therapist said. "I have an opening."

Anxiety turned over in her stomach as she entered the counselor's office.

"Linda. What an unexpected surprise," Yaron greeted her. "You seem agitated."

"Hello, Yaron, thank you for having me at such short notice. I need to talk with you about something that happened."

"Dennis isn't coming?"

"No."

He studied her expression for a few seconds. "I see,"

Linda fell onto the pillow and stared at the therapist, although she wasn't really seeing him.

"I discovered Dennis has been keeping things from me. He bought us a new house with money he'd been setting aside during his time working at the mines. He bought it a yearago... and never told me."

Yaron whistled through his teeth. "Oh boy."

"Yes." She threw her purse to the side. "Then, he put it back in the market to pay for the Daycare Center I want, trying to hide what he did from me."

A beat of silence passed. "To give you your dream. How do you feel about it?"

"How do you think I feel? I'm royally pissed at him. We can't go forward if he can't be honest with me. I just simply can't stay in a relationship where there is no communication."

"Why do you think he has had so much trouble communicating with you in these last two years?"

"He said his work in the mines messed with his mind. He said that he shut me down because he didn't want to look weak in front of me. His father was like that."

Yaron nodded, "I suspect that when Dennis returned, he was suffering some minor form of PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder, it's not uncommon in people who work stressful jobs."

"Is that the same thing that soldiers get when they go to war?"

"Yes, but there are different types. The symptoms include feeling detached from people, not being able to have positive emotions, problems paying attention or focusing... Sound familiar?"

Linda was lost in her thoughts now.

"He seems to be doing better since we started counseling."

"Yes, he does. Some people recover after a period of adjustment. I suspect at first, Dennis kept his defenses up to protect himself and protect you. He found a routine that allowed him to function and he never left it till you pushed him out of it."

"What am I going to do? I do love him, but this is too freaking much!"

Yaron sighed, "I've never seen two people who are more in love with each other than you two. Since the first session, I was sure you were going to make it. There wasn't a chance in hell that man was letting you go." He made a pause and added, "Dennis would stop a bullet for you. He loves you so much that he would give you his heart for your life."

Linda gave her therapist a bitter laugh, "He can give me his heart, but he can't open it up to me."

"I didn't see the secret house coming," Yaron admitted.

"That makes two of us."

Yaron gave Linda an understanding smile. "It wasn't right for him to keep the house from you, Linda. It wasn't right to shut you down." He started to hedge. "But..."

She turned her head. "But what?"

"Change within a person doesn't happen overnight. He has to work on it every single day. It's like exercising a muscle, the more you do it, the better you get. It gets easier if your significant other helps you and supports you," Yaron said, marking every word. "Dennis bought this house a year ago when communication had broken down between you two. It's reasonable for him to think revealing it now might cause the worst damage."

Linda chewed her lip and waited for the therapist to say more.

"Let's untangle this. The fear of losing you trumped honesty, in this case. Not an excuse, just a reality. And we've both learned that Dennis expresses his love and appreciation through deeds. Do you think there is anything Dennis could have said that would have made the secret house right?"

"No," she said quietly, aching to feel her husband's arms around her. "I would have never understood why he kept the house from me."

Those words settled in the room, but she kept her eyes closed.

Yaron shifted on the pillow, "Close your eyes. Let's put yourself in Dennis's shoes." Linda complied. "When you're upset, it is easy to focus on what your husband has done rather than why. So instead of listing all the hurtful things, step back and try to understand what is driving his behavior. Go to the moment your husband realized he could present you with your dream of the Daycare Center and avoid losing you again in one fell swoop. What do you think he's feeling?"

"Duty. He feels it's his responsibility to provide for me. Fear. He's afraid of losing me again if he comes clean. Love. He'd do anything in his power to make me happy," she whispered."

"You have the Daycare Center, Linda. What is Dennis's dream? What do his actions tell you about his life goal?"

Her heart pounded loudly in her ears. When was the last time she asked him that question? "Me. I'm his dream. He wants to make me happy. He worked a shitty stressful job for years to give me my dream house. He worked on it for a year, and then he was willing to sell it to help me to get a place for the Daycare Center. Everything he did was thinking of me."

"Exactly. He lives to makes you happy. Everything he did was looking for your happiness."

"Yes," she whispered in an uneven tone.

"Real love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. The other person's happiness is more important than your own."

"Wow," Linda exhaled. Emotion overflowed her. She felt the force of her husband's love surround her

She had been angry and now was not. She longed to respond.

An idea came to her, real and vivid. It was beautiful. So right that her blood started to flow at high speed, nearly propelling her off the pillow.

"I have to go make this right," she said, standing and reaching to kiss her therapist's cheek. "Thank you, Yaron. I was truly lost when I came here."

Before she could reach the door, his voice stopped her.

"Linda."

She glanced back over her shoulder. "Yes?"

"Good luck," he said, smiling.

"Thank you!" She rushed back into the room to hug the therapist, plans formulating in her head faster than she could catalog them.

Linda jogged from the therapist's office with purpose. And love. So much love for her stubborn, old-fashioned, complicated, sexy husband. She had a lot of things to do to pull off her plan.

CHAPTER 16

Dennis threw a right hook at the punching bag and listened to the satisfying rattle of the chains. A left jab came next, followed by a series of rapid punches. Sweat poured down his forehead and into his eyes, but he continued to punish the bag.

Finally, when his arms were spent, he stepped back and doubled over, his sides heaving with exertion.

When he could manage to stand up straight again. Two days had officially passed since Linda had walked away from him in front of their dream house. The more time slipped by, the less likely it was she could get right with his lie by omission.

The rage he'd been directing at the punching bag for the past hour was aimed at himself. There were no excuses to fuck up so spectacularly this time around, he had learned the tools to communicate with Linda and he hadn't used them.

He would have continued whaling on the bag indefinitely, but he heard an 'oof' and found Paul Olson wincing on the other side.

"I'm fine," Paul wheezed. "I should have known better than to walk behind the bag while you were trying to kill it."

"Time to hit the showers," said Paul. "We need you at the job site."

Dennis's right eye started to throb. "Said I was taking a few days off."

"Yeah," Paul said, tugging up his jeans and sniffing. "I need you and you owe me. Go clean yourself off and let's head out."

Dennis let out a long sigh and nodded.

"Come on," Paul said. "We need you to calculate loads on beams and columns. If you don't, we're looking at a two-week delay. Minimum."

All of this sounded ridiculous to Dennis, but his head was having a hard time making sense of basic math right now. His sense of responsibility poked him in the gut until he had no choice but to gift his friend with a curse and stomp toward the locker room to take a shower and change.

They rode in silence, Dennis on the passenger side of Paul's minivan. Dennis frowned when Paul took a turn to the right instead of going left toward the house they were renovating.

"Where are we going?"

Paul Olson scrubbed at the back of his neck, and, suspiciously, he seemed to be subduing a smile. "Shortcut?"

Something was up. Dennis faced front again, his muscles tightening up when Paul took another right turn toward the lake. Dennis knew this route so well, it was programmed into him.

"I don't want to go to the house I bought for Linda. That damn house probably cost me my marriage"

Paul reached over and patted his friend's shoulder. "I know. Trust me."

Beyond throwing himself out of a moving vehicle, he didn't have much choice.

Dennis barely registered the abundance of cars parked on the block because he was too busy remembering what happened the last time he was in that front yard.

Paul climbed out of the van and physically forced Dennis out onto the driveway. He grabbed his arm tightly giving him no choice but to walk toward the front door.

Paul pulled open the front door of the house, and Dennis was greeted by... applause?

All their friends were there, his boss Percy and his wife Laura with their little girl, Paul's wife Mary with their two daughters. He looked around and was greeted by the rest of his coworkers with their loved ones. Grace McAllister smiled at him. Her brother Steve was standing at her side with his wife, Diana. Even his therapist was there. He almost didn't recognize him because he was wearing a suit. His parents were also there in the back. What was going on?

White cloths were draped across the ceilings, wrapped in tiny lights. There were flowers everywhere. Music played softly. He continued to search the sea of faces for the only one he needed to see. The only one he needed to see every single day of his life. He couldn't find her, though.

Paul grabbed his arm again and led him to an empty room. "We need to change."

A suit for Paul and tux for Dennis were resting on a couple of chairs.

"Paul, what's going on?"

"Shut up and change into the tux," his friend said and winked at Dennis.

Dennis walked out of the room and a figure appeared at the end of the hallway that led to the backyard. Backlit by the afternoon sunshine, her figure was shadowed at first. She walked slowly into the room.

Dennis stumbled back and covered his face with a hand. Linda was wearing a wedding dress.

The same dress she had worn when they had married at the courthouse. He could only stare, taking in every beautiful detail. Her hair was up and clipped with something shiny; the skin of her face and bare shoulders glowed beneath the strings of lights. In her hand, she held a blue bouquet that, he realized after a glance down, matched a boutonniere that had been pinned to his tux. And she was smiling at him.

Linda's father stepped out of the crowd and guided Linda toward him, the music began to swell. He could barely tear his eyes off her long enough to notice a man holding a Bible beside him.

This was a wedding.

He wasn't dreaming. This was real.

What had he done to deserve this?

He wanted to ask his wife, but when she stopped in front of him, he choked with emotion, and he was only capable of asking her with his misty eyes.

Linda handed her bouquet to a nearby Laura and swiped at the tears in her own eyes. Then she took his hands, squeezing them tight.

"Linda," he rasped.

"Dennis," she said, taking a deep breath. "First of all, I'm sorry for doing this to you. I know you don't do surprises and here I am in a wedding dress." Laughter rippled through the room. "But you..." She stepped closer. "You love me fiercely and quietly, you always have, and you've started loving me out loud these last few weeks. Instead of letting one mistake detract from that, we're going to trample right over it, okay? I'm going to love you out loud, too. And since you need actions, here I am. I'm marrying you again in front of everyone in this house where we'll grow old."

"No, if we don't sell the house you can't fulfill your dream," he managed, reeling from the affection shining from his wife's eyes. "You need the money. You're not losing the Daycare place now."

"Actually, I won't." She smiled so beautifully, his whole body ached with the need to hold her and never let her go. "When Grace told everyone what had happened, people started to offer their help. She created a GoFundMe and the response has been pretty amazing. It seems there are a lot of people with toddlers in Middletown who think a Daycare Center is a wonderful idea."

She blushed adorably. "When the owner of the place knew that I planned to open a Daycare Center, he agreed to a lease with an option to buy. I'd have never guessed that Marcus Carter had a soft spot for kids."

Linda laughed while Dennis tried his damndest to absorb the information.

"By the way, I quit my job at McDonald's."

"It was about time."

They both laughed.

"We don't love each other the easy way, Dennis, but our hearts are in the right place every single time." The lights caught the sheen in her eyes. "The words will come from you; the deeds will come from me. I trust that. And if we screw things up we have Yaron to help us with some weird and wonderful homework."

Dennis and Linda smiled at their peculiar therapist making him blush.

"What we have between us is real and it's big and sometimes the magnitude of it creates flaws. I'm accepting those flaws because they mean I get to love the most wonderful man I know."

"I love you so much, Linda," Dennis said fighting back the tears and losing the battle relentlessly down his face. "Thank you for loving a flawed man."

She kissed his palm. "Thank you for loving a flawed woman."

"Flawed?" He swallowed hard and stepped closer to Linda.

"Agree to disagree," she said with a smile.

Forcing himself to stop staring at his bride, Dennis threw a look at the pastor. "Please make this official before she changes her mind."

Everyone laughed.

Then they celebrated.

Late that night, Linda and Dennis camped on the living room floor in sleeping bags, making love again and making plans for their future home until the sun came up.

EPILOGUE

This was really happening. Linda stared at the parents leaving their young kids at her Daycare. It looked like every married couple with children in Middletown had enrolled their children in Linda's Center.

Dennis was standing behind her, smiling, supporting her on her first day. God, she loved the man she'd married. Twice.

In the last weeks, life had been hectic, to say the least. Starting a new business and moving houses was something they'd just about managed, thanks to the love and support from their friends.

Sometimes Linda stood in her new kitchen and felt as if they'd been living in this house all their lives. The walls hugged them close, sighed as they fell asleep, and greeted them like open arms in the mornings. It was heaven. At night, Dennis and Linda sat wrapped in blankets on the porch and made plans. How they would build a custom pergola. The parties they would host, and the children that would fill the empty rooms.

Dennis had always been the man of her dreams, and he was trying hard to change and learn how to express himself. Linda was doing the same, having learned what made Dennis feel loved. It was as if they'd been living in the same house speaking different dialects. Now they used their love languages to translate affection into something each could understand.

Linda would like to say it was easy but honestly, it wasn't. She had thought that everything would fall into place after they got married again and moved into the new house. But of course, it didn't. Yaron stressed that there were no magical solutions or quick fixes, so they continued facing their problems and learning the tools to sort them out.

On one of their sessions, Yaron said something that got stuck in Linda's mind. She put the quote in a framed picture and hung it above the mantelpiece.

"The couples that are meant to be are the ones who go through everything that is meant to tear them apart and come out even stronger than before."

THE END