Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
A week pretending to be Mack’s girlfriend had felt so different.
They had disagreed, but it had never felt like the end of everything.
And she had felt safe with Mack. Waking up in her arms every morning had been so centering and calming.
She had laughed more this week than she had in all her nine years with Skye combined.
And then there were the kisses. Who knew Mack could kiss like that?
And the way Kayla had wanted her last night. There was passion there, too.
Now it was finally clear. She wasn’t running all over this resort worried that her best friend was mad at her. She was running around like this because she was in love with Mack, and she was screwing it up before it had really even started.
It wasn’t easy, but Kayla forced herself to stand. She wasn’t going to find Mack sitting here watching Linda and Manny. It was time she got back to the search.
Hours later, Kayla dropped back into the chair by the side of the pool.
This time, there was no Linda and Manny.
There was no fighting newlywed couple. There was no one around to hear the way her panting breaths were becoming erratic.
She hovered on the edge of a panic attack because, most importantly, there was no Mack.
She had scoured the resort again. She had even tried to be sneaky in some spots in case Mack was looking out for her and had been hiding whenever she saw Kayla coming.
After all, where the hell could she be? She had to be tucked away somewhere, seriously hidden, to have avoided Kayla all this time.
She had to be seriously angry. Or seriously hurt.
Kayla’s hands started to shake, but she managed to wrestle her cell phone out of her pocket.
The glare of the sun fought against the facial recognition, and she swore and screamed in frustration.
She didn’t want to be doing this, and now her damn phone was making it harder. How could this day get any worse?
She answered her own question as she scrolled through her contacts.
Instinct made her want to call her mom, but she knew she couldn’t.
She’d told her mom the lie, and she wasn’t really interested in sharing the disastrous details of her romantic life with her mom.
Especially since she was also sort of Mack’s mom. Seriously weird.
Tara was clearly out. She was an incredible employee, and the only person on Earth Kayla trusted completely with her boys, but she was about as emotionally supportive as a three-week-old burrito.
Plus, it would be beyond inappropriate for her to ask for relationship advice from her employee.
The last thing she needed was to come home to a call from her HR consultant firm.
She’d known all along who she needed to talk to.
She just didn’t want to admit it. Still, as her hands continued to shake and her breathing became more erratic, she had the awareness to open a text message addressed to Dr. Frost. She stared at the blinking cursor in the text field for a long time, hoping it might just formulate a message all on its own.
Eventually, she settled on the straightforward approach and texted just three letters.
SOS. After her phone made the little whoop sound to confirm that the text had been sent, Kayla dropped it and ran her fingers through her hair.
She tried and failed to think about something, anything else.
The strangeness of the situation hit home to her in that moment.
For the vast majority of her life, she’d had a person to talk to when everything went to shit.
Any hour of the day or night, she could reach out, and Mack would talk her down.
Even when she’d been physically incapable of going to her for help when Skye broke her heart, Mack had come to her. Mack had helped her fix it.
Now she wanted Mack, but she didn’t want Mack to fix it.
She wanted to be the one to fix it for Mack.
She didn’t want Mack to just take care of her.
She wanted Mack to give her a chance to fix it herself.
She wanted that so desperately that she had run around all day on an aching knee in the blistering heat.
She would have walked across the surface of the sun. She would have crawled over glass.
Kayla’s phone buzzed on the chair beside her, and she scrambled to answer.
“Hello?”
“Kayla? It’s Dr. Frost. Are you okay? Where are you?”
“Hi, Dr. Frost. Thank you for calling. I’m in St Lucia. I’m…I don’t think I’m okay. I think I’m having a panic attack.”
Dr. Hell on Heels was nothing if not calm under pressure. Her voice was steady and firm, and Kayla chastised herself for using the unkind nickname, even in her own head. “Take a few deep breaths with me. Can you hear me breathing, Kayla? In…and out. Breathe with me. In…and out.”
Kayla closed her eyes to block out everything else and focused on the whooshing sound of her therapist’s breathing through the phone.
She breathed along. Counting seconds as she took oxygen in and pushed the negative thoughts out.
Mack would come back. Mack would talk to her.
She could fix this. By the fourth deep breath, she could feel her heart rate slowing.
Her hands weren’t shaking so badly anymore.
By the seventh breath, she could open her eyes.
Dr. Frost said, “That’s very good. Let’s do some sensory grounding. Tell me five things you can see.”
“A swimming pool. A table. A chair. A bottle of sunscreen. A plumeria tree.”
“Very good. Now tell me four things you can touch.”
Kayla reached down and touched her skin. “My leg. It’s warm from the sun. A wicker chair. It’s rough in a few spots and smooth in others. A glass table. It’s cool because the umbrella is giving it shade. My running shoe. It’s gritty and a little damp from the beach sand.”
“You’re doing a wonderful job, Kayla. How about three things you can hear?”
“The ocean waves. People laughing at a cabana somewhere nearby. The umbrella whipping around in a strong breeze.”
“And two things you can smell?”
Kayla smelled the air and realized her lungs were filling all the way now. “I can smell the flowers from the plumeria. And something grilling at the restaurant nearby. Fish, maybe?”
“And one thing you can taste?”
Kayla licked her lips and caught a bead of sweat. “Salt. I think it’s sweat, but it might be from the sea spray.”
“That was really good. Thank you for doing that exercise with me. How are you feeling now?”
Kayla took stock of her body, and it felt like hers again. “Much better, thank you, doctor.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Now, why don’t you tell me what happened that made you panic? You’re on vacation, right?”
“Right.” Kayla suddenly realized she hadn’t thought to cancel her appointment for this week. “I’m sorry I forgot to reschedule our appointment for later today.”
“That’s quite alright. We can have that appointment now. So, what happened?”
Kayla took a deep breath and launched into the story.
For the first time, she told Dr. Frost the absolute truth.
She confessed about the coffee date with Skye and how she’d lied about getting married.
Then about the fake engagement, the joint honeymoons, and the Plan of Seduction.
Dr. Frost listened and rarely interjected, even to scold her for her dishonesty, and Kayla appreciated the freedom.
She didn’t even draw a veil over the make-out session with Mack or the almost-sex from the previous night.
Part of her was relieved to get it all out in the open.
She was less relieved and only slightly less honest when she told the story of the race to the rocks and the challenge to Skye to marry her instead of Amy.
She had to close her eyes when she described the kiss and Mack’s reaction.
She couldn’t face the world she’d created, in that moment.
After explaining her frantic trips around the resort in a fruitless search for Mack, she ran out of steam.
Her story done, she collapsed back against the wicker chair.
Dr. Frost said, “Well, you have had a busy week.”
Kayla’s laugh tasted bitter. “That’s a very nice way of saying I’m an idiot.”
“I didn’t say you are an idiot because you aren’t an idiot. You are impulsive and competitive, and your emotions are big. Often times bigger than other people’s emotions, but none of that makes you an idiot. It makes you uniquely you.”
“I’m pretty sure I ruined my own life, but I appreciate you giving me a gold star for being special.”
Dr. Frost deadpanned, “I forgot to mention that you use sarcasm to cover those big emotions sometimes. It’s quite charming.”
The banter made Kayla laugh for real, and then, for some horribly embarrassing reason, she started crying.
Once she started, she found it incredibly hard to stop.
She blubbered out an apology, and she was pretty sure Dr. Frost said something kind in return, but she had to put the phone down or risk dropping it.
Once she’d collected herself enough to speak, she switched the phone to speaker and rested her cheek on the cool glass surface of the table next to it. She said, “I’m really scared, Dr. Frost.”
“What are you scared of, Kayla?”
She’d never been so happy to have an appointment where her therapist couldn’t see her. For some reason, it made honesty much, much easier. Or maybe it was the feeling of hopelessness that allowed her to find the courage to speak.
Kayla took a deep breath and said, “I’m freaking out, and I haven’t freaked out like this since…you know.”
“Since your breakdown. Since your hospitalization.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you afraid you’re going to break down and have to be hospitalized again?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember what we talked about with going to the hospital?”