Dan propped himself on his elbow to stare down at her until her giggles subsided into a bubbly smile. His fingers traced along her jaw, igniting skin that had no right to be so sensitive.
“Do you have to go into the clinic today?” he asked.
“No, Mondays are all lectures.”
He hummed approvingly. “I have an idea. You’re not going to like it.”
“What’s that?”
“What if—and hear me out—we play hooky today.”
A laugh burst from her lips. “We can’t!”
“Why not?” Dan asked, nuzzling into her throat.
“Because…” Harper found it nearly impossible to come up with reasons while he pressed kisses along her jaw. “Because we shouldn’t?”
Dan clucked his tongue. “You’ll have to come up with something more compelling than that, Horowitz,” he said, turning them both to their sides and fitting Harper against his chest, trailing his fingers softly up and down her arm.
All her possible arguments were shot to hell at that point. Despite the countless things she needed to get done, she didn’t want to leave their happy little nest. It wasn’t in her nature to find comfort in stillness, contentment in being.
But, for the first time, she found that with Dan.
The weight of that truth pressed against her heart. She scrambled for some way to show him how much it all meant. His affection, his humor, his body—they all filled a void in Harper’s heart that she thought she’d patched up years ago but had really only taped over.
Harper didn’t have words for all that she felt, and a trickle of anxiety moved down her spine at the confusing mess of it all. How could she be with Dan if she couldn’t even tell him her feelings?
“Harper, I can hear you thinking. That’s not how you play hooky. Rest that beautiful brain and sleep.” He pressed a kiss to her neck and let his lips linger.
“Do you know what a honey mushroom is?” she blurted out, plucking at the hairs on his arm, which was wrapped around her.
He was silent for a moment before letting out a husky laugh. “No. Why?”
“It’s the largest living thing on earth. Larger than trees, elephants, whales—this one living thing takes up over three square miles in Oregon.”
She could almost feel him turning that random fact over in his brain. She was glad she wasn’t facing him. This would be so much harder if she had to look into his eyes instead of at the wall.
“Like the mushroom cap is over three miles across?” he asked.
Harper shook her head. “No, no. That’s the amazing part. When you look at it—the part you see aboveground—it’s this tiny little mushroom head. It looks so insignificant. They just pop up here and there.” She gestured with her fingertips as though she could draw them in the air. “But it creates this root-like system called hyphae. And the hyphae—it spreads and grows and, kind of … takes over underground. One living thing, every cell genetically identical, spreading below the surface to take up this enormous amount of space.”
Dan was quiet for a moment. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked, placing a kiss into her neck.
Harper swallowed and fiddled with the edge of the sheet. “Because that’s what my anxiety feels like—a honey mushroom.”
She felt Dan tense behind her, but she pushed on. “A lot of times, someone on the outside, like you, maybe, sees these clues to it—my fidgeting, my mind seeming a million miles away, panic attacks. But inside”—she tapped her chest—“it’s this intricate network of sharp pain and fear that’s constantly growing and pulsing through me. It’s always there, right beneath my skin, huge and controlling, but no one can see it. I just feel it. And it hurts. So badly. It makes me want to curl up into a ball or sprint out of my skeleton. This huge, inescapable thing inside me that controls me.”
She paused, picking aggressively at her nails. “It feels cruel to have your own body do that to you.”
They were both quiet for a few minutes, Dan absorbing her words. She was scared of what he might be thinking, how he might be judging her. The constant beast of shame pressed on her psyche. But, in that vulnerable hour of the early morning, she found a bit more courage and pushed on.
“My anxiety became really bad after the accident,” she said, switching gears. “After losing my mom.”
Dan’s arm tightened around her.
“I had always been an anxious kid—my mom used to run her hands through my hair when I’d start falling into an attack. She’d tell me I just felt things a little sharper than everyone else, but I’d be okay … But after she died I—” She stared at the wall, her nostrils flaring as she pulled in deep breaths. “It got really bad. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t function. I was always afraid another attack would come. Another panic attack would swallow me whole and there was no way I could survive it without my mom. My aunt and uncle took me to a psychiatrist and he diagnosed me with … what were his words?” She blinked a few times, searching her memory. “I think he called it ‘Chronic Panic Disorder enhanced by post–traumatic stress.’” She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and a tear slid down her cheek that she quickly brushed away.