Pretty Amazing Grace {Ryan Blaney || Sequel to Sweet Caroline} ✔️

eleven

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"And how did that make you feel?" That question made Lydia pause, searching for the right words to explain the emotion she had felt when Ryan yelled at her in the courthouse.

"Scared?" She offered, biting at the skin around her thumb. Her therapist blinked a few times, waiting for Lydia to elaborate.

Lydia let out an exasperated sigh. It had been a long time since they had talked about her trauma -- she had tapered her sessions off until she went only once a month, only discussing parenting challenges. She hadn't even told her therapist about Ryan reentering her life.

Lydia had considered herself healed. She had never really confronted what had happened to her, always focused on just being able to move past it -- her eyes always on the horizon.

It had been easy to just put what had happened in a box. She had learned how to cope, how to forget about it. But in an instant, the box had opened and now she didn't feel safe.

She remembered the flashes of Ryan and Kyle after she passed out -- she hated that her mind had made that connection. That had to be why she had been so upset -- her mind had been thrown back into survival mode.

"I don't know." Lydia murmured. "I think maybe when he yelled at me, it threw my mind back into survival mode and I don't know how to stop it. Logically, I know that Ryan was just upset about what I had done and he was lashing out. I know that he's sorry, that he would never hurt me. But I don't know how to stop feeling scared almost every time he walks into the room?"

It had been over a week since everything had happened. Ryan had been staying at the house, holding Lydia while she slept every night. He had stopped pushing, he hadn't apologized, he hadn't asked if they could talk. Ryan had seemed content with the idea of figuring things out in therapy.

And yet, any time he walked into a room, Lydia's stomach bunched into a tense ball, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for his anger to re-emerge. She hated that.

"It's going to take time to rebuild the trust. It's going to take time for your brain to ease out of survival mode. But you guys going to therapy apart and together will help speed things along." Her therapist smiled. "You have to be patient."

Lydia nodded, patience wasn't really her biggest strength. She just wanted things to go back to normal, back to how they had been before Stacy had ripped everything apart with her blackmail.

They hadn't had sex since the day that he picked her up from the hospital. While she had originally just intended to space out, to give Ryan sex so he would drop wanting to talk. But he had turned his focus on her and no matter how hard she tried to not, her body couldn't help but respond to his.

That had never happened with Kyle -- a testament to their connection. When Ryan told her that he loved her, the earnestness in Ryan's eyes reminded her that this was different, that history wasn't repeating itself.

Lydia wasn't sure what would happen in therapy with Ryan but for the first time since everything had happened, Lydia felt like things would actually be okay.

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"I think I messed everything up." Ryan chewed on his lip. "I shouldn't have listened to my sister."

"Why did you then?" His therapist questioned, jotting something down.

Ryan shrugged for a moment, "I was scared?" He offered before pausing for a moment. "I was scared that I was never going to get to see either Caroline and Lydia again."

"Why?" The question was simple but the answer forced Ryan to furrow his brow. "Is it because Lydia already left once?"

Ryan nodded, fighting the tears that were welling in his eyes. He had avoided admitting that was the reason that he had reacted to everything the way he had.

When Ryan watched Lydia drive away, it felt like a part of him was gone. All he could think about was the first time Lydia had driven away from him and the hell he endured afterward. He couldn't miss out on five more years or what was more likely -- the rest of Caroline's life.

He had called Elle out of desperation, out of habit. He knew that she would be extreme and he went along with it.

Hindsight is 20/20 and Ryan desperately wished that he could do everything over again.

But there had been small progress made, the more Ryan thought about it, the more he knew that couples' therapy was going to be their saving grace.

He needed Lydia to know that he was sorry for the way he had spoken to her in the courthouse. Instead of relief when he finally saw her, he felt anger.

His anger was probably a by-product of having Elle in his ear, telling him that she knew that Lydia was up to no good. Paired with Lydia's flightiness, Ryan had automatically assumed the worst and he unloaded on her, even while he watched her crumple.

Ryan wasn't sure he'd be able to forgive himself for that.

"Are you still scared that she's going to leave?" His therapist folded his hands.

"No." Ryan's response was immediate. "She didn't leave because she wanted to, she left because she was afraid."

When Lydia told the court what had happened, why she left -- it felt like Ryan's world was crumbling. He felt like he had failed to protect them, he should have known and anticipated that Stacy would target them.

"And you and Lydia? What's next for you two?" The therapist shut his binder, a sign that this session was almost over.

"We're going to couple's therapy." Ryan was actually excited to go. He knew that this was the start of figuring things out, the start of working through what had happened.

Ryan had tried to contain his hope but it was hard to when Lydia had been curling up in his arms every night. And every morning when they woke up, there was a little less guardedness in her eyes.

Ryan knew they were going to be okay.

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