Chapter Forty
FORTY
Oliver
Tonight is too heavy. Love a motel though. I try to hang on to the new location change. The ten p.m. swerve.
Fun. Cool.
I’m not that surprised we needed to get out of Victoria for a night. Needing safe places to reconvene is pretty typical.
Problem: The twenty-pound weight plates on my chest have quickly amassed into a hundred pounds.
I can’t throw them off.
Cannot breathe.
Beside the TV behind me, my sister’s phone is counting down to her pregnancy test results. I don’t want to be here when it beeps. She doesn’t need me for comfort. Rocky has that handled.
I twirl a finger in the air as I walk backward to the door. “Making a vending machine run. Text me junk food orders if you want anything.” I make a peace sign on my way out.
I shut the door. Leaning against it, I inhale.
Exhale.
Breathing should help. Why is that not helping? I tug at the collar of my shirt, grimacing, and I make my way toward the outdoor vending area.
Crickets chirp, and moths flap beneath the dulled lights illuminating the concrete pathway. The heat is sticky. Cumbersome. I dig my phone out of my khaki slacks.
I know what has me so fucked-up.
I know my brother and sister would not approve of this. So I cast a quick glance backward, then I dial a number. Phone to my ear, I stroll toward the flickering lights above two vending machines.
“Spider,” she answers fast.
Mom. I run my tongue over my molars. My eyes scald faster than they should. I can control this. I can control this. I can…not.
I press the heel of my palm into my eye socket. Fuck. “Can I ask you something?” I train my voice to stay steady. To carry no weight.
“Anything.”
Her voice is pure sunshine. It’s not even manufactured. I saw myself in her. I thought, I don’t pretend. I just am this way. I’m not made to feel like I’m sinking.
I’m made to break up conflicts between Nova and Rocky.
I’m made to take the risks no one else can take.
I’m made to cut the tension when the room is strained.
So, why do I just want to fall down and scream? Hailey is safe. She’s safe. She’s not hallucinating. She’s okay. That should be enough.
I adjust my grip on my burner phone. “Did Dad ever have an interest in kids when you were working with him?”
“In what way?”
“Did he want them?” I reach the vending machines and lift my dark sunglasses to my head. One is snacks, the other drinks—just Fizzle products. I fish out my wallet.
“Well…” She trails off, thinking. “We always talked about what kids would look like—the four of us. The way you would when you’re young and not thinking it’d happen right away, but for us, it was about, How does this work with our work?
We all had those conversations. Made pros and cons lists, wondered if it’d be worth the risk, and little did we know, it’d just fall into our laps.
Brayden was all alone, and Addy and Everett weren’t going to leave him with Varrick.
And then you three were a big surprise not long after we left Victoria. ”
“So those conversations you had about little baby grifters,” I say lightly, propping my phone with my shoulder and taking out a couple dollar bills, “it was hypothetical for all of you?”
“We were in our early twenties. None of us wanted kids that young, spider. It was a big, big risk.” I hear her voice go unsteady. “I mean…it wasn’t unusual for Varrick to want to take the risk. Why are you asking this anyway?”
“My brain. Cycling through the ways I came into this world.” I feed the bills into the machine and say, “By immaculate conception.”
She laughs.
“By force,” I add.
Her laugh cuts into a sharp breath. “No.”
“By accident on your part.”
“Yes.”
“By accident on his part.”
She’s quiet.
“By manipulation.”
“I…I don’t know. I can’t know if he messed with my birth control. That was a long time ago.”
“Did you ever suspect it?”
The phone is dead quiet for a solid fifteen seconds. I check to ensure I didn’t lose connection. I wait for her to respond in case she’s not alone.
“I did…once or twice. Addy thought maybe he switched my pills with placebos, but to be honest, spider…” I’ve rarely heard my mom cry. Even now, she sucks in a noise that’d follow tears. “I didn’t want to believe it. Because that’d mean he wanted you three, and I wanted you all to myself.”
I press a hand on the glass. More weight slams down on me. I thank her. Tell her I need to go. We say our goodbyes, and I tap a couple numbers on the vending machine’s keypad.
Do not freak out, Oliver.
I watch a Payday dispense. My eyes can’t stop burning. Breathe. I put a hand on my taut chest, then quickly collect the candy bar.
It’s too heavy.
I squat beside the machine. I balance my forearms on my knees. Breathe. I gasp for air. Breathe. I stare up at the lights blinking in and out. Breathe. Oxygen won’t reach my lungs, no matter how much I try to inhale.
I tear the wrapper. I break the candy bar in half. Caramel and nuts. Then again into fourths. I can’t breathe. I can’t even remember the last time I ate candy. Going to need to run this off…No, because how can I even eat it when I’m suffocating?
I hate this feeling.
I want nothing to do with this feeling.
How do I get rid of this feeling?
“Oliver?”
I can’t even see him. A hot, disorienting film coats my eyes. I just hear Jake and his hurried footfalls. Relief is so far away. I might pass out. I might actually pass out squatting beside a vending machine holding a Payday.
A Payday, it’s hitting me like another fifty-pound weight plate. Right as Jake crouches down in front of me. Right as he clasps the side of my jaw. Right as he tells me, “Oliver, Oliver, I’m here. It’s okay, hey—”
“Jake,” I choke out and fall on my ass, trying to kick him back. My hands are covered in peanuts. Jake is deathly allergic to nuts.
He rests a knee beside me. Not giving up on me, and that about rips something inside me—because I’m going to kill him. I am actively killing him while he’s helping me.
It takes all my energy to chuck the candy bar down the pathway. Several feet away from us. I scrape my hands against the pavement.
He sees the nuts. Instead of bolting away from me like he should, he props his arm on his bent thigh and intakes a weird breath.
“Go,” I choke. Breathe. “Koning.”
“You’re having a panic attack. I’m not leaving you.”
I can’t argue with him. I don’t have the breath. Quite literally. Which makes me want to laugh, but I can’t even laugh.
“Just concentrate on me,” he suggests. “Just focus on the things you can see.”
I stare at his picturesque jawline. His eyes—a shade Hailey calls cerulean blue. Like the summer sky, she said. “Think…I can get…high in your eyes,” I say.
“Are you flirting with me while you’re struggling to breathe?”
Yeah. He’s ridiculously attractive. I’ve never been attracted to a man before Jake, so it’s been doing quite the fucking number on my body and brain. “Might as well…One of us could be…dead soon anyway.” Breathe. I gasp.
“I feel fine. Oliver?” He cups my face as black dots dance in my vision. I manage to refocus on his features. On his sheer concern for me. You’d think he loved me. Jake exhales when he sees me catching my breath, then says, “There are better ways to get me to straddle you.”
He is kneeling on either side of my lap. I am enjoying it, but…“I wish I were faking this,” I say with a slow breath, then eye him. “You’re within two minutes of peanut exposure. You’re positive you’re fine?”
“My throat is just scratchy.” He reaches down in his pockets. Right one, then left. He goes rigid. Must be empty.
I pat mine, then pull out an EpiPen from my back pocket.
Jake frowns.
“Didn’t want you to die on me, Koning. I memorized your fatal flaws.”
He takes the EpiPen. “How many are you hiding?”
I put a finger to my lips. “Secrets. I’d have to do very bad things to you if I showed you any more.”
Jake sits beside me against the stucco wall. Not near the peanuts I smeared on the ground. He glances over at me. “How many times have you had panic attacks?”
“This has only happened once. When I was sixteen.” I tip my head toward him. “To be a kid again.” I laugh weakly and it catches in my chest.
He smiles only a little.
“Tough crowd,” I tease, pressing my head back to the stucco. “The first time, Hailey found me.”
“Where were you?”
“Four Seasons in Austin. Beautiful suite. I got back late, late from a job where I found myself in a pickle. To get out, I pretended I’d been mugged, attacked.” I mime knuckles to my jaw.
Jake’s mouth drops. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did punch myself in the face.” I stretch my legs out.
“I did it well, too. Gave myself a busted lip and a black eye.” I swallow a knot.
Check on him. He’s breathing fine. “It’s not doing it that overwhelmed me.
I like pushing myself. It was the anticipation of being lectured for it.
I cared too much about being benched. I didn’t want to be treated like a child needing a time-out. ”
“Who disapproved?”
“Everett. Hailey’s dad hated when I improvised to that level. I think he thought I’d be the reason they’d get caught, eventually. I had way more faith in myself, but looking back, I was just sixteen.” I roll my stiff neck. “I’m made of mistakes that I learn to let go of. The only way to move on.”
“And Hailey found you?”
“Yeah.” I nod. My eyes feel swollen picturing the memory. “I was waiting for her parents to get home. I’d been in the suite, sitting on the couch holding a bag of ice to my face. And it hit me.” I turn my head to him. “The weight.”
Jake frowns. “What’d she do?”
“Hailey things.” I smile a little. “She walked in while I was gasping for air, sat on the coffee table, and bent her head to mine. Forehead to forehead. She was forcing me to just stare into the pits of her eyes.”
I instantly breathed deeper. Her inhales were mine. Her exhales were mine.
She whispered, “You’re okay, Olly. You’re bleeding, but you’re okay.”
“Don’t move,” I murmured.
“I won’t.”