There was no shooter lurking in the dark. The only villain here was the malfunction in my brain.
The tingling turned to a burn. I closed my hands into tight fists, trying to force the sensation away. I’d stopped it before. But I knew I was already too far gone.
A light sweat broke over my body, while inside, I felt chilled to the bone.
“Come on, man. Keep it together,” I said through gritted teeth.
But the band around my chest was tightening, tightening. The breath I held began to leave my lungs. The sound vanished from my ears, replaced with the muffled thud of my own heartbeat.
My breath was a thin wheeze.
There was no stopping it. No talking myself down. Cold sweat coursed down my back.
“Fuck me.”
My hands clenched into fists as the band around my chest got tighter and tighter. My heart raced under my ribs as the ache spread. I made it through the door to the foot of the stairs before my legs gave out. I crashed into the wall and slid down to the cold tile.
“Not real. It’s not fucking real,” I repeated between thready inhales.
Panic was never the solution. It would never serve you in times of crisis. As a cop, that had been drilled into my head. I’d been trained to stay calm, to follow procedure, to operate on instinct. Yet no procedure, no training had prepared me for these kind of attacks.
I was burning up and freezing at the same time. Pain radiated through my chest and my vision started to go dark around the edges. Spots of light danced in front of my eyes.
I hated myself. Hated the weakness. The lack of control. Hated the thought that this was all in my head. That it could happen anywhere. I couldn’t do my job if I was curled into a fucking ball on the ground. Couldn’t protect this town if I couldn’t even protect myself from the monsters in my own fucking head.
TWELVE
WELCOME TO THE DANGER ZONE
Lina
“Great job pooping on the grass and not the sidewalk,” I told Piper as we scurried toward the entrance to the apartments. She pranced confidently toward the door like it had been her home for more than three days.
It was a cold, quiet night in Knockemout. The air was crisp and still.
I slid my key in the lock, opened the heavy door, and froze.
“Nash?” I ushered Piper inside, let the door slam shut behind us, and raced to his side.
He sat on the floor, his back to the wall at the foot of the stairs, his knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped around them, hands fisted.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
I ran my hands over his shoulders, down his arms. He caught my hand with one of his own and squeezed hard.
“Just…catching…my breath,” he managed.
I held on tight to his hand and used my free one to push his hair back from his forehead. He was sweating and shivering at the same time. Either the man was down with the flu or he was on the tail end of a panic attack.
“You okay?” he asked me.
“I’m fine. So are you,” I insisted. “You have enough air.”
Grimly, he clenched his jaw and nodded.
With a whimper, Piper shoved her face under Nash’s arm and crawled into his lap.
“We were out for a walk. I thought I’d take her out one last time so you wouldn’t have to when you got back. She did her business and we took a stroll around the block. I think her limp is a little better. Did the vet say anything about PT? I read this article about acupuncture for dogs.”
I was babbling. The man had scared the shit out of me again.
“Relax, Angel,” he rasped, his grip on my hand starting to loosen. “It’s okay.” His other hand came up and stroked down Piper’s back.
Still holding his hand, I sat next to him on the floor. My shoulder and arm pressed against his. His body’s fading tremors rolled through mine and I absorbed them.
“I’ll relax when you stop scaring the hell out of me.” I bumped my shoulder into his. “Starting to fade?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“Then let’s get you upstairs before you crash,” I said. I got to my feet, plucked Piper out of his lap, and set her on the ground. Then I held out a hand.
He stared at it, head cocked, thumb pressing into the spot between his eyebrows.
“Come on. You know as well as I do that the crash sucks almost as much. You can either lean on me or I’ll call your brother.”
“Mean,” he said before taking my hand. It took effort from both of us, but I managed to get him on his feet at the foot of the stairs.
“Kids in elementary school used to call me Meana because I was so bossy,” I confessed. I ducked under his arm and wrapped my own around his waist.
“Kids are assholes,” he wheezed.
We tackled the first step together. Piper dashed ahead of us, tail wagging. Nash was holding back, trying not to put too much of his weight on me. But there was a long flight of stairs between us and his apartment.
“It started with these twins in elementary school, Darla and Marla. Pretty, popular, and they wore matching, name-brand outfits,” I told him.
“They sound horrible,” Nash joked. “Want me to do a run on them? See how many times they’ve been arrested?”
I laughed and felt him give me just a little bit more of his weight.
My legs were trembling from my workout that morning. I was not looking forward to sitting down to pee tomorrow.
“So what are the odds that you’ll magically forget this ever happened tomorrow?” Nash asked as we took a break halfway up the stairs.
Piper returned to us, sniffed anxiously first at Nash’s shoes, then mine, before running back to the top.
“I can be bribed.”
“Name your price,” he said, taking the next step.
“Cheese sticks,” I decided.
“The cold, peeling kind or the clog-your-arteries kind?”
He still sounded winded as we trudged along, but not like he was fighting for every molecule of oxygen.
“No contest,” I scoffed. “Give me all the deep-fried goodness.”
“I’ll keep you in fried mozzarella for the rest of your days if you never tell anyone about this.”
“Unlike some people, I respect the privacy of others,” I said pointedly as we finally hit the top step. Piper danced in front of us like she was proud of our accomplishment.
He sighed. “There you go again, Meana. Kickin’ a man when he’s down.”
I angled us toward his door. “Keys, hotshot.”
He didn’t quite manage to hide the wince when he used his left hand to dig into his pocket.
Bullet wounds and panic attacks. Nash Morgan was a hot mess. Emphasis on the hot.
I took the keys from him and unlocked his door. Piper darted across the threshold into the dark apartment.
Nash pulled me along with him as he reached for the light switch and flicked it on.
“Wow. Someone got their act together,” I said, noting the transformation inside. It even smelled clean.
“Yeah. Right,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Let’s go, big guy,” I said, kicking the door closed and guiding him over to the couch.
He collapsed onto it, eyes closed. His face was pale and sweat still dotted his brow. Piper hopped up next to him and put a tiny paw on his thigh.
“It’s time for the Lina Special,” I decided, depositing the dog leash on the coffee table.